• Software MIDI synth delay

    From Nightfox to All on Tue Jan 12 09:36:53 2010
    I have a question about software MIDI synthesizers that maybe someone with more experience than me will be able to answer.

    I've tried a few different software programs for multi-track music recording, including Apple's Garage Band (on Mac OS), Sony ACID Studio (on Windows), and M-Audio Session (on Windows). Each of these programs includes or is able to use a software MIDI synthesizer to render MIDI tracks to audio so that you can save your work as audio files (WAV, AIFF, etc.). However, I've found that on Windows, the software MIDI synthesizers exhibit a small but noticeable delay between the time you press a key on your keyboard and when you hear the note/sound. This is distracting and doesn't seem conducive to recording music. With Garage Band on Mac OS, however, there is no delay. What I'm wondering is, is this due to software? Is there a better software MIDI synthesizer available for Windows that has no delay?

    I suppose one option would be to record a song using a hardware MIDI synthesizer (which doesn't have a delay) and then switch it to a software synthesizer for rendering to an audio file, but I don't particularly like that option, because it will sound different.

    Nightfox