M1 Mac Latency in GarageBand

[AF_APPLETALK]

I am curious if any of you have run into this issue.

I'm recording a small piece in GarageBand on my M1 Pro MBP. I'm playing on my digital piano which is connected through USB to my Mac and I do a nearly flawless take. When I play it back, several areas sound just out of place or latent or drunken. But I know I didn't play it like that.

I re-did the recording on an i5 Intel Mac mini and again eventually got a nearly flawless take. Everything lines up and sounds exactly as I played it.

I'm not using the quantizer in either case.

It seems like the Intel Mac is able to keep up and record things as they're being played, but the M1 Mac is dropping audio frames or something. I have noticed this in past projects too, and was able to fix the few spots in the piano roll editor, but have never had it mess a recording up so badly until just now. My M1 Mac absolutely whomps the Intel machine in every way, except this.

I have no reason to not keep an Intel machine around, but this seems ridiculous to have to switch over to my old Intel machine to record audio. I haven't tried a PPC Mac yet, but I think even that would result in a better recording than what I got off of this M1 MBP.

Have any of you also had problems like this when recording on an AS Mac?

 

[BrianBaughn]

To be clear about what you're describing please verify:

1. On your M1 Pro MBP in GarageBand, you've got a virtual instrument track and you're recording the MIDI input for that track using your digital piano via USB.
2. While you're playing the timing is fine.
3. When you play it back you're not getting exactly what you played (note timing seems off).
4. No quantizing is ON.
5. Doing the same thing on your Intel Mac Mini the playback is fine.

If this is correct…I don't know. I don't even know of any settings in GB that can affect MIDI when recording. Logic Pro definitely has settings that can do that.

I tested in GB on my Mac Studio with my Nektar keyboard and don't have any MIDI showing up in the wrong place.

A couple of things I'd probably try are:

• Test in a new User Account.
• Delete and re-add the keyboard in Audio MIDI Setup.

 

[Wando64]

I am not sure what is happening with your setup, but what you are describing is not latency, nor it has anything to do with it.

I am using an M1 mini with Logic for professional projects (albeit not huge ones) and I am having zero problems. A lot of people I know are using M1 architecture also professionally without any issue.

I would start debugging the issue from the very basics.
Are you using a driver (on either of the two Macs)?
Is it the same Driver? Is the OS the same? Is the GB version the same?

Do you have any plug-ins or are you using VST instruments while you are recording, or you are just using GB on its own?
Are you running GB in native mode or under Rosetta (Although this should not make any difference unless you are running plug-ins that are incompatible with M1, and there are many that have not been updated).

Better to understand what is happening by playing steady notes in time with a metronome, rather than being your own judge as to whether you have done a good or bad take.

Good luck in debugging the problem.

 

[MajorFubar]

Ok a few things we can infer from the information you have given us is:
- You are recording midi, not audio
- it's unlikely you are connecting your (unspecified) digital piano directly to the M1 MBP because modern MBPs only have USB-C, so likely you are connecting through some kind of convertor, dongle or interface, which could be culprit.

If you are recording midi, I don't understand how you say the latency only occurs on playback. Unless you're playing at a completely different tempo to the metronome and you have quantisation selected, GarageBand will replay the midi notes exactly how it received them.

Like you say, even an old PPC will have no problem recording basic midi notes from a midi controller. Heck, my 30 year old Amiga can do it. An M1 MacBook will make mincemeat of it. So the problem has to be elsewhere.

Or...you have something installed on your Mac, running in the background, consuming nearly all the resources. Sometimes we can get three pages into threads like this before the OP drops the mic on us with something they 'didn't think was worth mentioning' but turns out to be the key to the whole dilemma.

 

[AF_APPLETALK]

What I'll start by saying is that I also has this problem on my old M1 Air. I gave that away when I upgraded to this M1 MBP.

1. Doing the same thing on your Intel Mac Mini the playback is fine.

Yep!

Are you using a driver (on either of the two Macs)?

Nope. This is stock GarageBand and using the default/plugnplay midi driver in MacOS.

Is it the same Driver? Is the OS the same? Is the GB version the same?

GB on M1 Mac: 10.4.7
GB on Intel Mac: 10.4.6

Do you have any plug-ins or are you using VST instruments while you are recording, or you are just using GB on its own?
Are you running GB in native mode or under Rosetta (Although this should not make any difference unless you are running plug-ins that are incompatible with M1, and there are many that have not been updated).

Nope - just stock GarageBand. GB on M1 Mac is running under Apple arch. GB on Intel Mac is running under Intel arch.

- You are recording midi, not audio

Yep.

- it's unlikely you are connecting your (unspecified) digital piano directly to the M1 MBP because modern MBPs only have USB-C, so likely you are connecting through some kind of convertor, dongle or interface, which could be culprit.

That's correct. I'm using Apple's USB-C to USB-A adapter.

If you are recording midi, I don't understand how you say the latency only occurs on playback. Unless you're playing at a completely different tempo to the metronome and you have quantisation selected, GarageBand will replay the midi notes exactly how it received them.

When I played it, it seemed aligned. I was listening to myself play both through the actual speakers on the keyboard itself, plus the monitor from GB through headphones.

Or...you have something installed on your Mac, running in the background, consuming nearly all the resources.

Could be I suppose, but I definitely wasn't doing anything like rendering video or such. If anything it would have been something like photoanalysisd.

I tested in GB on my Mac Studio with my Nektar keyboard and don't have any MIDI showing up in the wrong place.

Must just be me then... not sure. But Intel seems to perform insanely better at this than either my M1 MBP or old M1 MBA./

For fun, attaching samples of both versions of what I recorded.

Intel Recording:

M1 Pro Recording:

EDIT - Somehow quantizing DID get turned on, but only on that region/segment of the track! It was on 1/16. I definitely didn't do this. How did that get turned on? Did I turn it on? I must have. Or it must have stuck over from another track? This file has kind of turned into a scratchpad, maybe I did turn it on a long time ago?

My M1 Air did have this kind of latency, but that was also obviously not as powerful and didn't have as much RAM.

Anyway, I appreciate hearing all of your experiences. I will do another take on my M1 Pro machine in a completely new file and see how it does.

 

[Wando64]

EDIT - Somehow quantizing DID get turned on, but only on that region/segment of the track! It was on 1/16. I definitely didn't do this. How did that get turned on? Did I turn it on? I must have. Or it must have stuck over from another track? This file has kind of turned into a scratchpad, maybe I did turn it on a long time ago?

My M1 Air did have this kind of latency, but that was also obviously not as powerful and didn't have as much RAM.

This definitely sounds like some sort of quantizing going on.

Nothing to do with Latency, in the traditional meaning of the term, usually caused by the input buffer being too high.
This is experienced as a constant delay between the the pressing of the key and the recording of the note on the DAW.
There is nothing constant in your second take.

 

[BrianBaughn]

EDIT - Somehow quantizing DID get turned on, but only on that region/segment of the track! It was on 1/16. I definitely didn't do this. How did that get turned on? Did I turn it on? I must have. Or it must have stuck over from another track? This file has kind of turned into a scratchpad, maybe I did turn it on a long time ago?

All you have to do is select the region and push the "Q" key.

 

[MajorFubar]

100% user error. Case closed, IMO, or have I missed something?

 

[AF_APPLETALK]

100% user error. Case closed, IMO, or have I missed something?

Yes that was already discovered. Why leave a comment to rephrase what was already posted?

 

[MajorFubar]

Err, to make sure we haven't missed something seeing you didn't mark the thread as [SOLVED]?