I've tried several times over the years to use a midi sequencer but gave up each time because latency is horrendous. I recently tried again using the Fedora Jam operating system. It includes a real time OS and several sequencers including Muse and Qtractor, but latency is as bad as ever. It seems to me that what I want to do is very simple but I'm beginning to wonder if it's actually possible. I've viewed many tutorials but they seem to concentrate on getting complicated sounds out of synthesizers. All I want is my keyboard's piano sound.
Here's my hardware setup. I have a Yamaha P-95 keyboard attached to my computer using a M-Audio Midiman Anniversary adapter. That's it. I think this setup is very common.
Here's what I want to do. I want to record myself playing on one track and then record a second track while the first track is playing. I'm not using a software synthesizer. Playback is through the Yamaha keyboard's internal sound system.
I tried several midi recorder programs but they all have the same latency problem. When I press a piano key it takes seconds for the sound to be heard, which is totally unacceptable. I can't imagine how anyone could ever get midi input from several instruments to come close to synchronizing.
I may not understand the recording process. Here's how I do it. I start a metronome in the sequencer and play a song. I expect my song's timing to correspond with the sequencer's graph, but it's not even close. The recording is sort of ok but the timing is delayed. The song's beats don't line up with the vertical lines on the graph. Am I supposed to adjust each note's timing using an editor? That would take forever and make the sequencer totally useless to me.
Technically, I'm puzzled as to why characters typed on my alphabetic keyboard reflect immediately on the computer screen but when I press a key on my piano keyboard it can take 4-5 seconds for the sound to be heard. How is that useful? Don't alphabetic and piano keyboards use a similar process?
Comments/Suggestions are appreciated.
thanks!