Millisecond lag in pedal attack

Dear HW people,

When I play my pedalboard, there is a little lag before the note speaks. Is there a way to adjust this in HW 6? Could it be a hardware issue? I'm using the 32 note Classic Organ Works board.

Thank you,
Karen

Does this happen with all samplesets or just some (and which ones)?

Do you hear the same delay if you MIDI-learn a manual keyboard to play the same pedal division? If the manual is attacking faster than the the pedalboard on the exact same pipe samples, the difference might be that the CM pedalboard doesn't send MIDI velocity, and your manuals do, or a MIDI connectivity problem.

Many samplesets have velocity sensitive attack speed, so a default MIDI velocity from the pedals can cause a slow attack (initial transient before steady speech) -- maybe even a gulp sound. If that's the situation, it's possible in HW to adjust the attack velocity range (but someone else will have to remind me how...).

Other possible causes: MIDI cable or USB port from pedalboard to computer needs to be changed, daisy-chaining MIDI from pedals through one or more keyboards, not having a powered USB hub to group MIDI cables together, or not using a good MIDI hub like a MOTU Express 128 if needed. There are MIDI hardware suggestions in the HW user guide near the beginning of the book.

[mdyde]

Hello Karen,

Some quick thoughts to add to Mark's comprehensive reply (thanks very much, Mark):

- See whether the problem occurs with the St. Anne's sample set, which doesn't use MIDI key velocity.

- If not, then for the sample set(s) that do exhibit the problem, try either adjusting the 'MIDI velocity sensitivity adjustment' to 0% on the 'Organ settings | Organ preferences | Audio engine' screen tab, which disables MIDI key velocity entirely for the relevant sample set, or do it just for the sample set's virtual pedalboard by right-clicking on the virtual pedalboard, selecting 'Adjust MIDI/trigger settings manually ...' and setting 'Velocity sensitivity' to 0%.

- If that doesn't help, try auto-detecting the virtual pedalboard to one of your MIDI manuals (instead of to your MIDI pedalboard), just as a test to see whether the problem is specific to the MIDI pedalboard.

- If the latency affects organs as a whole (not just the pedalboard), then if using a PC (as opposed to a Mac), make sure that you have your audio interface manufacturer's ASIO driver (not DirectSound) selected on the 'General settings | Audio device ...' screen, and that 'Number of audio buffers' is set to 1, and the buffer size set to something moderate, e.g. 512 (or 1024 or 256, bearing in mind that smaller buffer size settings are more CPU-intensive).

Wow, thanks you guys!!

I have a feeling it's the pedalboard because the manuals don't lag.

I will test this with St. Anne organ later today.

FYI: I mostly use the St. Paul & Peter Schnitger organ.

Really appreciate these ideas.

Karen

[mdyde]

Thanks, Karen. You're very welcome. Hope you manage to resolve it easily.

Hi Mark & Martin,

I believe the problem has been solved.

1. I changed my 100 year old midi cable to a new one. That seemed to help a little, or I could be imagining that.
2. The St. Anne organ definitely had a quicker response.
3. Both of my manuals responded quicker to the sample set stop than the pedalboard.
4. I right-clicked the virtual pedalboard and set the Velocity Sensitivity to 0. That did the trick!

Thanks again,
Karen

[mdyde]

Thanks, Karen.

Excellent.