I bought a KNA NG2 just to try this out! The delay in cubase is quite unusable, it shows 3ms (144 samples) delay at 48k. I wonder if this is normal? My audio interface refuse to go smaller buffer size. Also the standalone version won’t detect my input signal but that’s ok because I only record in DAW.
i’ve been playing for like 10 minutes and i have to say, it won’t properly detect 3 or 4-string chords when playing notes together, it usually finds 2 notes and rarely 3, never 4. Maybe it’s the restriction of nylon guitar
Hi @fgfgfgfgt
Welcome here, to begin with!
The delay you are talking about is probably what we most often refer to as latency here (if you want to do any addition searches in the forum). And 3ms is just a very little part of any actual full audio to MIDI conversion cycle.You would have to take into consideration all that goes into what happens between the picking of the note on your guitar, to the A/D conversion happening in your audio interface, the (now digital) audio being converted to MIDI in the MIDI Guitar 2 software, any synth or virtual instrument sounds being triggered by that MIDI, and then of course the D/A conversion back to any medium for you to monitor that audio, plus actual physical distance to speakers and stuff like this.
All of this is part and parcel of the “experienced latency” with is way more than 3ms. Latency is one of those things we, as MIDI guitar users, all are trying to find ways to mitigate. There are some things we can do setting wise, and there are some other strategies to consider when it comes to how we play. But there will be latency, and there is also a problem with bigger chords as you have noticed. I made this video some time ago, with my solution to these questions in focus. Maybe it could be of help to you as well?
if you have access to an electric with steel strings, i think it would be worth your time to compare it to your nylon.
aside from the strings, most nylon guitars have piezo pickups and these are probably not optimal for mg2. i have a steel string acoustic with a piezo and it works pretty well, but it’s still not near the electric in terms of playability.
if nylon/piezo is the only option, it may be worth using a fishman type preamp and bringing the treble down.
on the latency in cubase, 3ms is about as good as you can get with a usb interface. seems like something else must be adding to your latency or maybe you have a cubase configuration issue? or some add’l vst’s on the mg2 track?
Lots of people mix up buffersize latency (“delay”) with the actual latency of pitch to midiconverters ( in short here; p2m ).
MG, as well as other p2m converters, need at least 1 or 2 cycles of the source wavelength to detect a musical note good enough.
The low E on a guitar is 82.4hz, this results in a wavelength of about 12 milliseconds.
MG needs multiple periods of this…
So the 3 ms latency from a buffer is peanuts against this.
No, not necessarily so. You want as low latency as your system can handle for practical reasons. The things to judge by is crackling and drop-outs in the sound (when you are asking for too much from your system = too small buffer size (generally))!
Using as low latency (small buffer size) as your setup/system can allow for is really more of a convenience issue. Think of it in terms of the output more closely syncing what you put in (less of that delay you were talking about). The part of note detection that we as users can do anything about depend more on stuff like a clean signal chain - no electrical interference hum, bad cables, strong ond bright enough signal from your pickups, and stuff like this. And as stated in other places on this forum, a steel stringed solid body electric guitar bridge pickup is a safe bet. Any deviation in terms of; which pickup you use, chambered or hollow body, nylon strings and stuff like this could all still work. But it is also things that actually can play into the performance negatively. I tried as an experiment to use and old electro acoustic in a video, just to see what results I could get off it, and I was pleasantly surprised. But do keep in mind that even though this gutar has a transducer pickup system, like yours, it also has a battery powered preamp and since it is steel stringed it will have a “brighter” output.
