Measuring Latency with Ableton and Max for Live

Overview

Sometimes you need to measure latency and you also want to use Ableton Live. This “TH Latency Measurement” Max for Live patch allow you to measure the latency between 2 channels. Send audio out one channel, receive that audio into another, then run it through the M4L patch to view the delay in milliseconds and samples.

M4L_Latency0

Downloads

TH Latency Measurement (M4L Patch) – TH Latency Measure.amxd

Ableton Set with MIDI Impulse (Ableton Project) – TH_Latency_Measurement Project

Detail

Place “TH Latency Measurement”  on a Return track to measure the delay between the Left and Right Channels. Setup an Ableton Live session to output audio (preferably simple, such as a sine wave) out the left channel while also routing the audio to the return track. Receive audio from a channel, pan it right and send that to the return track.

Example #1

(One Computer – Live and Jack)

Follows is an example of audio routed out of Ableton through Jack (with a “Frames/Period”, i.e. buffer of 1024 samples). Stereo audio is routed out of Live and back into Live. The audio is also routed to the System so that we can hear it.
M4L_Latency1

Example #2

(Two Computers – Live #1-> Jack -> Jacktrip -> Jack -> Jacktrip -> Live #1)

In this example audio is output from Live on Computer #1, sent to another Computer #2 via Jacktrip, then routed directly back via Jacktrip, back into Live and into the Return track for measurement.

Computer #1

M4L_Latency4

Computer #2

M4L_Latency3

Example #3

(Two Computers – Live #1->Jack -> Jacktrip -> Live #2 -> Jack -> Jacktrip -> Jack -> Live #1)

Computer #1 (same as the above example)

M4L_Latency2

Computer #2 (Ableton Live routes audio in and directly out)

M4L_Latency5