User Manual

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Chapter 31
MIDI Fact Sheet
In conjunction with our work on the audio engine, Ableton has spent additional effort an-
alyzing Live's MIDI timing and making improvements where necessary. We wrote this fact
sheet to help users understand the problems involved in creating a reliable and accurate
computer-based MIDI environment, and to explain Live's approach to solving these prob-
lems.
Note: the MIDI timing issues discussed in this paper are generally not applicable to users
with high-quality audio and MIDI hardware. If you have already invested time and money
into optimizing these factors in your studio, and are not experiencing problems with MIDI
timing, you probably do not need this information.
31.1 Ideal MIDI Behavior
To understand how MIDI works within a digital audio workstation (DAW), it is helpful to
introduce some common terms and concepts. A DAW must be able to accommodate three
distinct MIDI-related scenarios:
1) Recording refers to sending MIDI note and controller information from a hard-
ware device (such as a MIDI keyboard) into a DAW for storage. An ideal recording