Hey folks,

I am experiencing a problem on my iMac Pro (2017), but I am not sure if it is Big Sur-related:

When using BIAB with playback over the iMac speakers, the chord display is quite delayed. I can hear the chord properly in time, but the window maybe takes 250ms until the current bar is visually selected (black background).

Is there a setting to fix this? (Like in some video player apps, where you can change the delay for the audio track to make it sync up with the video)

Since I am using BIAB as a backing track while practising , this is essential for me! Depending on song tempo, this issue gets really problematic.

Thanks in advance and best regards!

bolandross,

Welcome to the forum and to Band-in-a-Box. I use Windows so I'm likely not much help. Have you looked at your computer's Apple Audio Core settings? Select Options > CoreMIDI Audio MIDISetup then select the Output button.

Also, it may prove helpful to other forum Mac users if you provide some details about your iMac hardware and software configuration. I'm sure someone will be along shortly.

Hey Jim,

thank you very much for your response!

I checked the Audio-MIDI-Setup but there is only one setting that I can change there, which is the sample rate. Currently it is set to 48 kHz, so I tried lower and higher alternatives. Unfortunately, it didn't change the problem.

As for my system, these are the specs:

3,2 GHz 8-Core Intel Xeon W
32 GB 2666 MHz DDR4
Radeon Pro Vega 64 16 GB

macOS Big Sur (11.1)

Best regards
Boland

Hi Boland, can you check if you have anything like SoundFlower, Audio Hijack, or Loopback installed on your Mac? Programs like that can cause latency issues like this.

@bolandross

I've had the situation you describe since I first installed BIAB, two years ago so... not Big Sur related (at least not on my case).

At the time I searched the forums but couldn't find any reference to it so I've assumed it was either something to do with my setup or some eventual UI laziness bug that would be corrected in a future patch.

Despite all the struggling with my setup I couldn't find a fix for it (and I don't have SoundFlower, Audio Hijack, Loopback or any other similar software installed on my Mac).

Meanwhile, two years have passed and I've just learned to live with it but... it would still be nice to have it fixed.


Mac mini (Late 2014)
CPU: 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7
GPU: Intel Iris 1536 MB
RAM: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Hello Simon,

thanks for your message.

I am indeed using Audio Hijack, but not in conjunction with BIAB.

For troubleshooting, I uninstalled the ACE driver and the Audio Hijack App, but it didn't make any difference.

Is there anything else I can do?

@PLS
Thanks for posting your experiences and I am sorry to read about your problem. Is it the same issue when using headphones connected to the rear jack?

I noticed that in other audio applications, connecting a wired headphone reduced the minimum buffer size of the iMac internal audio device. Using the speaker somehow increases it.

But, BIAB should in both cases be able to calculate the total resulting audio latency and then delay the display by that amount, so audio and video are in sync.

@bolandross

I can confirm that, in my case, connecting a wired microphone doesn't reduce the delay (at least not in a noticeable way).

I don't really feel it as a problem (not anymore). When using BIAB as a play along companion I just focus on the audio queues (rhythmics) instead of relying on the visual ones.

Still it would be nice to have them matching as they're supposed to.

It's really frustrating.

The whole user interface reacts very delayed to user inputs. If I click somewhere, it takes half a second to register. It might be the same delay that I am encountering when waiting for the correct bar to be selected visually. Things shouldn't be this way on a machine with these specs.

I could live with the pink visual artefacts that people (including me) are getting on Big Sur, but this sluggish UI is a real deal breaker for me. Using the software currently is not a joy anymore and it feels like a relief to close the program and use something else instead.

PG Support once told me the Big Sur update would be there by the end of December 2020. Nothing has happened since then.

I don't want to buy an old Mac just to be able to use BIAB properly again.

I'm not sure that this is the same problem that the OP is experiencing.

- When you play a song, is the chord highlighting EARLY or LATE?
- What Band-in-a-Box version and build are you running?
- What OS do you have?
- How do you have you speakers connected to your Mac?

Hi Andrew,

Thank you for stepping in. Maybe it's not the same problem since I don't have the input lag described in bolandross' last post.

As for your questions:

- When you play a song, is the chord highlighting EARLY or LATE?
Late

- What Band-in-a-Box version and build are you running?
Version 2019. Build 324

- What OS do you have?
MacOS Big Sur 11.1

- How do you have you speakers connected to your Mac?
Mac to Onkyo AV Receiver TX-RZ1100 via HDMI 2.1

Regarding the last question it may be relevant to note that the delay also occurs if using headphones connected directly to the Mac's output.

Maybe it is the same problem then. You had this problem on an earlier OS as well though, correct?
Could you test this at factory settings by putting the file safemode.txt in the Band-in-a-Box | Preferences folder and rebooting the program? Also, does it make a difference if you are viewing full-screen chordsheet mode (ctrl+T)?

If you click the Plugins button | Default synth, what is selected in the top slot of this dialog? Apple DLS Music Device?

I really can't tell if it is the same situation bolandross is having. From my many issues with BIAB's UI, it being sluggish is not one of them.

I confirm that I've been having this situation since I first installed BIAB (2018) and through out all MacOS releases since then.

Alternating to full-screen chordsheet mode doesn't make a difference.

Default synth is indeed Apple DLS Music Device.

In order to test it at factory settings I need further help. I couldn't find a file named safemode.txt.

You create safemode.txt. Open a program or app that can create text files. Create a file and name it safemode.txt.

@Jim Thank you.

@Andrew Running BIAB in safe mode didn't eliminate the delay.

Okay, after further testing I found out an interesting correlation:

The sluggish feel of the program increases when raising screen resolution.

I noticed that the slow UI was much worse on my 5K iMac Pro than on my 12" Retina MacBook (both running macOS Big Sur, with the MacBook having a much slower Intel Core m5 CPU).

To test this theory, I went to macOS System Preferences and increased the (virtual) screen resolution (to 3200x1800):


This made the sluggishness even worse and the bar display delay went up from half a second to a whole second!

So I reduced the resolution (to 1600x900):

This improved things fundamentally.

Next step: I went to Applications, selected Band-in-a-Box.app and pressed Cmd+i to show the inspector. There I checked »Open in low resolution«


When starting BIAB with this checkbox marked, the UI looks quite blurry, but it improves UI performance very very much!

Clicking somewhere into the program results in an almost instant reaction of the user interface and when playing back songs, the bar/chord display is much closer to real time than before.

@Andrew:

I hope this helps to locate the problem.

Additionally:

It seems like the sluggish UI and the delayed chord display are two independent issues:

In my tests, I connected my Airpods to my iMac and selected them as playback device for BIAB. Even in the highest resolution (and the most 'sluggishness' of the UI), the chord display had NO delay! I don't know if this has to do with CoreAudio, but it seems like when using the AirPods, the audio driver reports its buffer size correctly unlike when using the internal iMac speakers.

With the correct buffer size, the display gets compensated properly (and is in sync with the audio).

Thanks. You have some interesting findings.

We would normally see the problem where the chords are displayed late when using a bluetooth speaker. It seems that something is compensating for the audio latency whether or not your AirPods are currently connected.

Does unpairing them fix the problem completely? (And rebooting Band-in-a-Box without them being paired / connected).

I am so new to Mac issue I am not sure how core audio affects things. I nominate my pc laptop I usually get a small amount to delay if I am not using my ASIO interface.

With my Mac I have always used the same interface and never had delay. So my question is what are you using an interface or just straight out of the computer

Unfortunately, unpairing all my Bluetooth devices and rebooting didn't change anything.

I even tried disabling Bluetooth completely, which resulted in no noticeable changes, either.

One more thing: With the highest resolution I mentioned in my previous post, I managed to get a small visual delay even with Bluetooth audio.

This is straight out of the computer.

I am not getting any problems when using DAW apps. I can easily achieve realtime audio with a combined latency (input + output) of 3 ms.

So for example, playing a bass guitar into a DAW, using VST plugins for amplifier and cabinet simulation and monitoring the output via headphones with the built-in audio device of the iMac is possible without perceived latency.

This is what surprises my so much regarding my problem: In my case, BIAB doesn't have to react to real time input. I am not sending MIDI notes to the program or playing anything live. The program just plays back a sheet of chords. It can use an output buffer even as long as 5 seconds, since the audio and visual data is completely predictable. I would even be willing to wait 10 seconds to pre-render the whole song! This is not a high performance use case.

Exact same situation here!

From my own tests (on my 2012 Macbook Pro 15" Retina with Catalina) setting the resolution to the highest possible 3840 x 2400 , BIAB is out of sync by probably 300 milliseconds. That said, everything in the OS is sluggish on this machine in that resolution, although playing a fullscreen Youtube video was fine because that uses GPU acceleration.

Changing the GPU from integrated to discrete didn't help, but changing back to the "Default for display" resolution (which is a scaled 1440 x 900 resolution, actual screen resolution is 2880 x 1800) eliminated the delay.

I can't run Big Sur on this Macbook, and the only Big Sur compatible computer available to me doesn't have a retina screen and doesn't lag on it's own, so I can't say whether this is any better or worse with Big Sur.

Also tried this with the AirPods Pro and... no delay Puzzling that the delay occurs over a wired connection (headphones) but not over bluetooth!

It must be that the bluetooth connection correctly reports the latency time to Mac OS where the wired connection doesn't, interesting. I'll add notes to the bug report on that.

In case it matters, just moved from a Mac Mini 2014 to the M1 2020 and the delay is now (almost) gone. It's still there but you have to be really focused to notice it.

Thanks for this suggestion. I was having the same issue, and was looking for some sort of latency parameter in Preferences (I'm sure there was one fifteen years ago!). I did the same fix to start in low resolution mode and saw huge improvement in synchronization of sound with display. I have a 2019 27" iMac with Retina 5K display, and I'm listening through external speakers connected to the headphone output port.