MIDI latency with Roland FP-10?

JimZ · 2023-11-05T02:08:34+00:00

I am trying to determine why I have a small but noticeable delay when using my Roland FP-10 as a midi keyboard controller. I connect the FP-10 with a USB cable to my M1 MacBook Pro running a DAW (Reaper) using a virtual instrument (doesn't matter which one, but for specificity the free Soft Piano from Spitfire audio LABS). I turn the volume on the FP-10 up a little so I can hear it play through its own speakers as well as through the MacBook speakers. There's a slight but audible delay between the two. A guess at the value is 10 milliseconds (a non-negligible fraction of a sixteenth note at Allegro tempo). When I have a cheap Keith McMillan K-Board hooked up with same computer and software, no delay. Points to the FP-10 and not my computer or s/w. It's as if the midi from the Fp-10 has some built-in delay. I'd love to keep the FP-10, I like it as a standalone digital piano. But I need a decent keyboard for a midi controller, I thought this could do the job.

SouthPark

Not sure. Maybe it is 'audio' latency. Instead of having the sound come out of the FP-10 when you're working with the DAW, will it be ok if the FP-10 speakers are disabled?

JimZ

Certainly when using the FP-10 as midi controller, I would turn off the internal FP-10 sound. But the delay can still be felt as the time between when I press a key and hear the note. I might be able to get used to it but not for any real-time or performance application, which is what I'm looking for.

David B

JimZ I don't understand how you can get the sound to come through both your Macbook speakers and the FP10. In Reaper you have to pick a sound card to use, either the macbook or the FP10. Whichever one you choose is where you'll hear the sound coming from. How do you get the sound to come from both at the same time (with a 10ms delay)?

God Bless,
David

SouthPark

JimZ also check this Jim …. link

QuasiUnaFantasia

JimZ Are you sure that the K-Board does not have that same latency built-in, so that what you hear from it is already delayed?

I experience the same delay with my FP-30, so having the sound coming both from the digital piano and the VI at the same time, yields a kind of echo effect, with the VI trailing the FP-30.

David B How do you get the sound to come from both at the same time

In the FP-30 you cannot turn the speakers off unless you plug something into one of the headphone sockets.

Joannchr

JimZ If I read you correctly, the output sound on the MacBook is delayed by roughly 10 ms compared to the internal sound of the FP10. Given you use a silicon Mac which is a computing beast, you should be able to reduce the latency to the bare minimum latency by (1) increasing sample rate & (2) decreasing buffer size . (latency = buff size/sample rate). The fact that you don't hear the delay with the cheap controller means that its own audio is not as optimised as the FP10's one. You also may want to optimise Reaper for low latency , even though it hasn't got a low latency monitoring option like logic pro. Make sire that FX multi processing options are enabled.

kawafanboi

It might not be delay, the board might not output reading until further into the key travel vs that other board.

AdrianLesher

Wouldn't it be possible to route the piano through the mixer of the DAW, and listen to the onboard sounds without recording in order to avoid latency while playing? Once the MIDI recording is done, it should then be possible touse the recorded MIDI on a software plugin.

Hloma

JimZ how do you turn off the internal sound of the FP 10?

HZPiano

Hloma

Hello,

I'm not @JimZ , however:

The simple (and only) way to do that is to set the volume to zero. There is no "local control" setting on the FP-10. It simply doesn't need that.

Cheers,

Florian75

HZPiano

Even a simpler way is to plug a jack 6.35 to 3.5 adapter in the jack input of the FP10. This way, no sound anymore. And if you accidentally increase your FP10 volume, you won't hear anything.

Florian75

Florian75 Sorry I wanted to say plug the adapter in the headphone output 🙂

QuasiUnaFantasia

Florian75 I actually once tried to attach headphones to the microphone input on a PC; it worked fine as a microphone. 🙂

HZPiano

QuasiUnaFantasia

😄

In the past, I remember doing all sorts of experiments, like using speakers as microphones in random experimental setups. Which worked of course. Fun!

In creating NI Noire, a huge speaker was used below the Nils Frahm-prepped CFX to record the (rather succulent ☺️) sub-bass effect.

Cheers and happy messing,