Maschine Studio as plugin inside Pro Tools - So so so much latency - What to do?

Hi Native Instruments. I bought the Maschine Studio a week ago and I'm loving it in standalone mode (looving it) but I'm hating it inside of Pro Tools. The latency is so long that I can't use it inside Pro Tools. I'm on a brand new iMac and I'm always playing my Roland TD-11 electronic drum kit triggering drum kits from Addictive Drums with the buffer at 64 samples without a problem. Nearly no latency at all. I record songs with this method all the time but it's a different story with the Maschine Studio.

I spent nearly 2 hours yesterday trying to figure the latency out but I couldn't find any solution. I'm currently recording this folk/pop song and I wanted to do a little perc/drum loop in the chorus but I can't play along with the song because when I hit the pads on the Maschine Studio the sound itself doesn't play until 0,3-0,5 sec after and it's very frustrating.

I've got a few plugins on the song (as I had started mixing it) so the latency is a around 5000 samples (according to Pro Tools Delay meters). Should that be a problem? I just want to be able to play along with the song (Maschine should note the 5000 sample delay and compensate for it while recording) and then when I'm done playing Maschine should know how much the delay is and then delay my recording when I'm done recording. How do I do this?

I've tried messing with almost everything. Low Latency on/off, Buffer size from 1024 to 32, I've tried enabling/disabling the delay compensation just on the Instrument track that holds Maschine and then I can play ''in time'' with the song but the recording it self is always off and always by the same amount. I hit the 1,2,3,4 of the bar and the latency (i can see it inside Maschine, where the notes hit) is always the same with all hits.

I've tried having the instrument tracked record armed and then not. I went into Pro Tools preferences and tried every global-midi-delay compensation setting but nothing works.

So what do I have to do to be able to record a loop inside Maschine playing the pads in time with the song AND THEN having Maschine playing the performance in sync with the song when not recording?

 

Remove the plugins and find out.

 

Remove the plugins from the master buss and (if there are any) after Maschine

 

Thanks a lot for the reply! The first thing I did was to remove any plugins from the master buss but that didn't help. I can load Battery 4 on a instrument track and play with it in sync, record and everything but it's just the Maschine plugin that giving me this problem.

Is Maschine maybe not meant to be used as a plugin inside Pro Tools? Should I just keep using it in standalone mode?

 

I dont think so.
I dont have 12 (i assume you are using PT 12) but I have used maschine inside PT 10.. Timing-latency was ok.
Latency is also ok with Ableton & Logic latest. Why would it be different in PT 12?

Do you use 3rd party plugins inside maschine?
Try opening a new Pro tools project and load 1 factory group to maschine, is there still latency?

 

You have maschine loaded on an instrument track, yes? I have noticed that if you put that track into record mode, the latency for playing live is dramatically reduced. At least on my setup, that is the single most important step to take. Note: When you close and then reopen a session, track won't be in record - so you have to remember to put it back in record.
This is off topic form your question, but, yes maschine works great as a plugin inside PT. I have a bus that routes to the Maschine instrument track so I can easily route anything to be sampled. I bring guitar/bass in through aux channels, use the power of PT to get the sound the way I like it, and then route that to maschine for sampling. I use a logidy midi foot pedal and Keyboard Maestro (I am on mac) to be able to easily trigger sample start/cancel. That way, I can leave PT looping and keep my hands on the guitar - drop in to record guitar, cancel if I don't like the take, put into record again - etc. It is incredibly fast to stitch together a composition this way. You want to set the loop length in PT to be as (or longer) than the longest loop in maschine. Then, at any point, solo a track in machine and drag the audio out of maschine back into a PT track. It's brilliant!

 

are you running 2.6.2? i think it was made to solve that specifically with pro tools

 

@fannarfreyr I dont know if this is your issue but I do notice that some kits are notorious for latency and that is usually because they have compound FX on each instrument in the kit. The takeaway from that though, is, if you remove all the fx associated with the kit on every instrument, the kit wont sound the same. When the kit becomes bland, all I can think is that you try to duplicate the FX and parameters of what the kit had but in Protools for each instrument not Maschine. It will be a tedious enterprise but it should quell the latency imo.

 

At some point Protools adopted a hybrid playback engine similar to Logic. What this means is it runs at a very high latency regardless of your buffer settings. If a track is record armed then it will obey your latency/buffer settings so just arm the track that Maschine is on. Not sure this is still the case with the latest version of Protools as last I heard users complained and they took this "feature" out.

If that is not it, you may have a 3rd party latency inducing plugin loaded inside Maschine or in Protools inserted on the same track Maschine is on. Maybe a limiter? Check what plugins are inserted and bypass them. Note that Maschine itself does not add any latency.

 

pro tools + maschine suck together.. the worse combo... its crazy and unusable.... workflow is TERRIBLE. I've tried making this work for 2+ years now, have wasted so much time and energy and have had faith again and given up many many times.. contacted support more than I can remember and theres never anything resolved... I've scoured the internet to find answers and...... nothing, it's so frustrating.. I would do anything for someone that has a great workflow to come over and show me what i'm doing wrong.

I've resorted to using Maschines sounds and bouncing them out to audio, chopping them up to create a beat. so I basically paid for Maschine so I could use the sounds inside of it.... sounds are great, but I have an unused block of pretty lights sitting on my desk.

 

Maschine AAX is not working correct and has BUGS. The Pattern Sequencer of maschine is not compensated in PT 12 Sessions with plug ins on other tracks.
You can use Maschine as a simple sound expander and trigger midi notes from PT to maschine. in this case the delay compensation works and you can trigger maschine sounds without latency.
but not in "maschine-mode" = working with patterns inside madschine.

this BUG is known by NI since Years (since PT 11). I had a support ticket.
For me this is a big problem because I mix in PT and love maschine.

I think they do nothing because there are to less people outside working with PT+Maschine and talking to NI

In PT/AAX format it is not easy to implement ADC for plug in internal sequencer . some other plug ins like BFD have the same problem.

but EZ Drummer and SD Drummer works fine and so it should be possible to fix this issue !

NI PLEASE GIVE IT A TRY TO FIX IT

 

Not just Pro Tools, I am having the same issue with Logic, the standalone Maschine works great, if I open the plugin in Logic I can import the project drum sounds (drag them in) but if I play Logic (or record) and hit a pad on my Maschine Mikro - huge latency which makes it impossible to record live drums from the Maschine plugin into Logic - I wish there was a way I could get Logic to just trigger and play the the standalone Maschine app because it works way better than the AU plugin