Cutting down latency between pro tools and the mpc 4000

hey anyone found a good way of cutting latency down to the absolute minimum. I can't get under about .53 of a second. Maybe I'm doing well but I hope that using a count in or some such someone is getting there first kick to fall exactly on the one. I've tried using both midi clock and midi time code with much the same results.

The reason that this drives me absolutely crazy is that you put in mad effort getting to get all your drums to hit just so in timing and having to go back in protools and move them around and re-edit the f++kers totry and emulate the mpc feel is lame. plus dosen't sound as tight and fat as the mpc.

Okay so I could trigger the mpc in a simple song structure and go through as protools is recording and solo all the individual parts and them slip them back on the timeline to the one before cutting them and giving them their own channel in the mix ( hope this makes senses to you) . Basically I want to record all the snares, hats, kicks, samples in seperately to take advantage of the protools eqs and plug ins editing capabilities etc. but I want them to stay exactly locked in the groove that I've programmed on the MPC.

Has anyone else put some time in to getting this sorted?
Big ups!

From my experiences, I try to stay current with my audio drivers if necessary. I don't use PT but I noticed that finding the best drivers and lowering your s/c's buffers seems to deal with that problem.

Then of course your system gets taxed a bit unless you've got a fairly new daw w/ plenty of memory & horsepower.

Now I'm taking assumption when you elaborated on tracking seperately to multiple audio tracks in PT.

Do you have access to 8 inputs on your soundcard, be it analog or adat? And does your mpc have the 8 output card or the adat I/O card installed? If so, you should have no problems recording 8 tracks of drums into your daw.

Hi, thanks for your response. I'm using an Imac intel duo at the moment but would love to get the extra power of a quad core tower to help cut down the latency. How fast is your response time? Ie when you record in how long does is take before a drum hit on the one appears on the time line of your audio program? How far back down the time line do you have to slip the drums? Unfortunately I don't have the 8 outs installed just the spdif card. I fantisise about have the 8 outs and recording through a desk running all out board compression, delays and eqs etc - doing some live dub effects etc while doing a stereo recording of the drums. However this is gonna give the mix engineer way fewer options ( then again I like to mix my own stuff so hopefully one day this will happen).

I'm not sure but i think you can put latency compensation in as a function of protools? anyone doing this?

Hey dabmeister - just reread your post. I think your right the adat is prob the way to go as my 003 has that as an imput option.

Okay have found a good work around for keeping everything in sync. this will only work for single sequence loops. basically I you deactivate all your existing tracks in protools -( to help the computer perform better) then record all your mpc tracks in one go into a stereo audio input in the computer. But this kicker- is you only start the mpc once using the sync start then you use your track mutes to solo each of the mpc tracks one at a time overlapping them so you always get a clean start and finish for each of the mpc track.
When you have gone through and recorded all your mpc tracks into protools using slip mode you then trim of the latency at the beginning of the audio file in protools so that your first kick starts bang on the one. Then using grid mode you cut all of the sections of your drum beat and move them into their own mono or stereo audio track. Then pull them all back so that they are all starting at 00.00.00 in protools. Boom all your shit is synced up just as it was in your mpc.

I realise that this means you can't use other effects on your mpc on the way in but shit you've got your pro toools plug in to work with and your mpc effects will still be workin for you to.

I did this using the spdif output with ex results.

Let me know if this helps.
Shot!

I have my late pass on this but I put my buffer size to 2048 in PT and it seemed to solve the problem. For the a while, I would always have to line up my stems because there would be a little gap in between. I'm no audio expert but it worked for me