Extreme delay from MIDI keyboard

[jtgd]

LMMS 1.1.3 on Arch Linux 4.18.5
Roland PC-200 MIDI keyboard through M-Audio MIDISPORT 4x4

Under Settings I have 3 choices: ALSA-Raw, OSS-Raw, and ALSA-Sequencer. The first 2 will always reset to Dummy and only the last one will survive a restart, so I have no choice on that.
I don't know if there is something to set up for ALSA-Sequencer.

When I press keys on the keyboard it will make sound in LMMS, but the events are delayed by about a minute and the events seems stretched out. I am new to LMMS and this is the first time I've connected the keyboard to the computer so I have no clue what could be wrong, but hopefully I am not the only one who has encountered this. Thanks for any advice.

[jtgd]

I changed the output in Settings to go direct to hw:0,0 and for some reason it reduced the lag to 4 seconds. Puzzling, since I really think it's an input problem not an output problem because the on-screen keyboard for both TripleOscillator and ZynAddSubFX have no lag.

I installed kmidimon and observe that it also shows the 4 second delay and the appearance of the event there corresponds with the sound from the synth.

[jtgd]

I ran this:

amidi -p hw:2,0,0 -d

and found that the events displayed there were also delayed (~4 seconds). When I press the keys, the lights on the MIDISPORT blink immediately, but then these events are reported with delay, and it's reading it directly from the USB port.

So I think the problem is not likely with LMMS but somewhere between the input of the MIDISPORT and the output of the Linux driver, or perhaps in ALSA.

I still hold hope someone reading this will have a clue for me.

[Gps]

First thing to try is the latest version of LMMS.

Easy to install because its an appimage. Download it, set it to be executable, and you're done.

https://lmms.io/download/#linux

If that fails it might be an idea to ask the defs on discord.

[jtgd]

I installed lmms-beta which seems to be the latest but no difference.

What does "defs on discord" mean?

[Gps]

https://discordapp.com/

https://discordapp.com/channels/2035592 ... 6917085194

There are a few channels were you can talk to the developers of LMMS, maybe they can help.

[musikbear]

I installed lmms-beta which seems to be the latest but no difference.

LMMS-beta?
This one:
https://github.com/LMMS/lmms/releases/d ... 4.AppImage

If not you should try that.
The instruction to connect midi-kb is here:
https://lmms.io/wiki/index.php?title=Using_MIDI
Have you gone through that?

Besides that, since you are new in Forum
Welcome jtgd !
Here are all important links:
http://lmms.io/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4740
-A few rules and useful forum instructions

[jtgd]

I installed lmms-beta which seems to be the latest but no difference.

LMMS-beta?
This one:
https://github.com/LMMS/lmms/releases/d ... 4.AppImage
If not you should try that.

In the Arch repository I had these choices:

• aur/lmms-beta 1.2.0_rc6-3 Beta version of the Linux MultiMedia Studio.
• aur/lmms-beta-bin 1.2.0_rc6-4 (Installed) Beta version of the Linux MultiMedia Studio.
• community/lmms 1.1.3-4 (Installed) The Linux MultiMedia Studio.

Since the lmms-beta matched the version number in your link I assume it is the same.
I preferred the Arch install over the manual install since it will be updated automatically.

The instruction to connect midi-kb is here:
https://lmms.io/wiki/index.php?title=Using_MIDI
Have you gone through that?

Yes, that's where I started.

As I said above, the delay is apparent in kmidimon so I suspect the delay precedes LMMS. I'm hoping someone familiar with LMMS has encountered a similar problem.

Besides that, since you are new in Forum
Welcome jtgd !
Here are all important links:
http://lmms.io/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4740
-A few rules and useful forum instructions

Thanks! I hope I did it right. If not let me know.

[musikbear]

I hope I did it right. If not let me know.

No, i recommend you to remove what you have now, and install the App-image. Not only is that the best option, its also the one that is being fail-checked in our tracker.
Forget about using various repository versions, often they are for specific tests, and some are not complete

[jtgd]

I hope I did it right. If not let me know.

No, i recommend you to remove what you have now, and install the App-image. Not only is that the best option, its also the one that is being fail-checked in our tracker.
Forget about using various repository versions, often they are for specific tests, and some are not complete

Thanks for the tip. I did as you suggested and downloaded that .AppImage file and it turns out it's binary identical to the one from lmms-beta.

I may have found the problem though. From another post somewhere it was suggested that I unplug-replug the USB cable to the MIDISPORT. I tried that and restarted LMMS and it did seem to cure the delay problem on first try. I need to do more prolonged testing but maybe that is indeed the fix. My guess is that somehow the USB driver/buffer gets clogged and that resets it.