Well,
i redid your test and “surprise surprise” i came pretty much to the same test results. but i worked in 44.1 khz with a rountrip latency of 96.8 ms @ 2048 samples
The red shows your test with ALC turned off.
The orange shows your test with ALC turned on.
So what did we learn from this test?
-
Cubase dosn’t compensate for live monitored audio that is physically loop back recorded on a second track.
Dosn’t have to as this serves no purpose at all anyways -
Also live monitored Audio from VST Instruments is not compensated when physically looped back on an audiotrack.
See 1 -
Midi Asio Latency compensation delayes Midi on VST Instruments by the reported output latency of the Asiodriver
(wich is the sole purpose of this function!!) -
Midi Asio Latency compensation doesn’t delay midi on midi tracks that are not connected to VST Instruments
Wich is correct as its only meant for VST Instruments you have to monitor through your software
I still think you don’t understand the nature of this function entirely.
The Asio latency compensation on Midi is unlike the Plugin delay compensation inside Cubase a manual function that you have to decide wether it is applied or not. If activated on an Instrument or midi track that is connected to a VSTi it will delay the midi recording by the output latency of your driver. no matter it is appropriate or not. cubase doesn’t care. Why it isn’t applied to midi that is routed to an external Synth? Because everyone would use the pretty much latency free hardware monitoring of your Audiointerface instead the software Monitoring. And even if your use softwaremonitoring for that you wouldn’t work with such a high latency anyways as it is less than optimal. When i record midi i work with a latency of 4.2 ms at 44.1khz or evern less at higher Sample rates. It dosn’t really make a difference anymore if i turn on ALC or not with such low latencies.
All further scenarios are made with the same settings with 2048 samples @ 44.1 k and roundtrip of 96.8ms
So here is a scenario where you wouldn’t need ALC
What did i do here? On track 3 i placed a midi part with midi notes on the grid
i played the midi part back while physically looped back the midi through my midi interface from Track 3 to the Instrument Track (Track 5) and recorded it without ALC applied.
the result is a midi part that is pretty much identical with the source except a small jitter with up to 1 ms
The same scenario with ALC applied on the intrument track
As you can see ALC made exactly what it supposed to do but it was my own poor judgement to turn it on because ALC is not needed for incoming midi that is right on time.
to be continued…