Saturday, December 3, 2016

How to get low latency / reduce delay from your midi keyboard


By default Frinika uses the default sound drivers that comes with Java (Javasound). When using with a MIDI keyboard you may experience a small delay from pressing a key until you hear the sound. This is called latency, and we want this to be as small as possible.

From version 0.8.1 there are some startup options to use alternative sound drivers that enables lower latency to reduce the delay to a minimum. These are still experimental, and only work for audio output at the moment - but should be useful when recording using a midi keyboard.

If you want lowest latency possible you can try the following:

Windows

java -DuseASIOAudioServer=true -jar frinika.jar 

This options requires and ASIO driver installed on your system. For many standard soundcards you may use the ASIO4ALL driver.

Mac OSX

(warning: Sometimes using this option have caused a terrible noise,
so turn the volume down before launching. If it happens, try restarting.)

java -DuseOSXAudioServer=true -jar frinika.jar 

Linux users

Simply start Jack before launching Frinika. This option has been around for a while, and is based on JNAJack.