I’m on Windows using Cubase version 7.5.30.
First things first, you’re using a sound card that has ASIO drivers right? On Mac it’s something else and I have no idea what that driver is called.
Set your latecy as low as you can go when recording and for mixing you can bump it up a bit if you get problems with plugins.
Here’s my settings:
Devices (menu)
Device Setup
MIDI Port Setup
- Use System Timestamp for ‘Windows MIDI’ Inputs (Yes)
- Use System Timestamp for ‘DirectMusic’ Inputs (Yes)
Vst Audio System
- Audio Priority (Boost)
- Adjust for Record Latency (Yes)
Transport (menu)
Project Syncronization Setup
Timecode Source
- ASIO Audio Device (is the one you should use)
Ok, so next step is monitoring. If you’re doing that through Cubase you’re likely to get a delay that makes listening to what you’re recording be quite a lot out of sync. However when monitoring you’re not hearing what you are actually recording and since we selected “Adjust for Record Latency” in our settings stuff sounds worse then they are.
If you have a sound card that supports ASIO direct monitoring this is the way forward to be able to just play and hear the AR in sync with plugins and other audio in Cubase. My soundcard has a built in mixer so I’m actually never monitoring through Cubase for playback or recording, but hey that’s me.
So anyways to see how bad your sync problem is you can enable the click on the AR and the metronome in Cubase and listen to the madness. Does it sound bad? Now record the click track and then disabling the monitoring and listening back to what you recorded? Is it in the ballpark? For me it’s quite noticable delay when monitoring trough Cubase (having direct monitoring off) but when listening back and looking at what I recorded it’s much better.
On my system with my soundcard (RME Audio FirefaceUCX) I get about 64 samples (in 48000kHz) delay when sending midi (notes or midi clock) to external gear and recording it in Cubase.
That means that the audio I record from my AR is 1.3ms late. This slight delay is barely heard but I usually either use the track delay of the recorded audio to bump it back or edit the audio clip start point and use quantize to get the first beat to align with the Cubase grid.
Here’s another thread on a similar topic regarding midi jitter.