Hi, I picked up a Launchpad Pro Mk2 the other day to get into finger drumming, and I’m loving the Quest for Groove content.
But I notice a latency of about 8ms between when I strike a pad and the midi message coming into my DAW (Bitwig Studio). Which means even with a low butter of 64 samples, I get a total latency of 10 to 12ms. This is noticeable, should I expect better?
I also have an old Akai LPD8, that has less latency of about 4 to 5ms which is surprisingly better than the Launchpad.
I’m measuring this latency by recording with a mic the sound of my finger hitting a pad, and the resulting sound out the speakers.
I’ve also tested the midi out minijacks on the back of the launchpad and here also I notice an 8ms latency between pad hit and midi message.
Could my launchpad be defective? Are they known for poor latency?
Hey that is way too high. Midi latency should be about 2ms at most.
On all controllers I play latency is unnoticeable, which in my experience keeps it under 6ms.
Very strange. No plugins in the signal path?
Hey Robert, thanks for replying!
There’s no plugins in the signal path, the only thing I can think it might be is the usb hub I need to use because my MacBook only has usb-c.
Good to know that I should expect better.
I will try another computer also
A hub could cause problems but I personally also have not had problems with a hub either.
Hi, in my experience the latency is more due to the audio configuration., midi is relatively fast.
Try reducing the sample rate to 44khz and reduce the sample buffer to the lowest value possible, without any pops in the sound. I have a Macbook Air with M1 processor, and use an USB to USB-C adapter, and use the phone output connected to a Hamin Kardan Onyx 8 speaker, and very get good results without external sound card with sample rate of 44khz (CD quality), buffer size of 32mb if playing only drums, or higher 64mb (max 128mb) depending if recording more instruments.
There is an interesting article from Sweetwater here:
https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/which-buffer-size-setting-should-i-use-in-my-daw/
Hope that helps a little…
Cheers