Audio Desyncing after a few minutes of playing

CorOS Version: 1.4
I have been using my quad cortex as the audio interface in Logic Pro to record guitar tracks. I have recently been running into a few issues with the unit. Sometimes when I pick quietly or turn down the volume knob on the guitar the unit will not pick up the notes that are being picked. Another issue I have faced is after playing for a few minutes I will hear a small pop in my monitors and then all of a sudden I go from no input delay to a full second of delay. The only ways I’ve found to solve these issues are to make sure that my volume knob is on full and that I pick relatively hard to make sure all notes come through. For the second issue, I’ve found that I have to delete the guitar track in logic or unplug the unit from my MacBook. If anyone knows how to solve this for good that would be great because I bought the quad cortex for this very purpose.

My guitar is a Suhr Modern and I’m using a MacBook Pro 2021 with an m1 Pro chip and 16gb of ram. I do not believe either of these are an issue.

Are you maybe using a gate in your preset or even in Logic?

What do you mean by input delay?
And are you using USB IN/OUT to run your signal from QC to Logic and back before it gets to QC’s outputs? I’m using my QC as an audio interface, too but never experienced your mentioned issue, at least when using the headphone out.

There is a noise gate in the preset that I was using, no noise gate in logic. The weird thing is it works sometimes and then other times it won’t. I will try to record a video when I get off work today. Input delay would be as seen in this video. Not my video, but this person was experiencing the same thing that I am experiencing April 12, 2021 - YouTube

I’m using usb, the usb cable to my MacBook Pro, my monitors are plugged into another audio interface since I have a piano I use as well. So input is quad cortex–>MacBook–> output to other interface studio monitors. I’m going to plug the monitors directly into the quad cortex later tonight and see if I experience this issue as well, but I would be really disappointed if I have to remove my piano from my setup just to be able to use the quad cortex.

Send an email to support@neuraldsp.com , the can hopefully work out your issue.

Thanks Jack, I will shoot them an email

Depending on your audio interface and your setup you could also run the QC via analog cables into your audio interface and keep the monitors connected as they are. You can still record the QC digitally via USB while monitoring via analog inputs on your audio interface.

So usb from quad cortex to MacBook, simultaneously have headphone out to audio interface input? Then just not use the other interface for recording? I will have to try this as well.

I originally had it set up where I had the quad cortex headphone out into one of the inputs of the audio interface, but I didn’t like this as the quad cortex came out really quiet and I needed to increase the gain on the interface which caused a lot of noise in the background.

Usually you would want to use OUT 1/2 or 3/4 into two separate inputs of your audio interface rather than the headphone out. BTW, I’ve never been a fan of monitoring modelers via USB and then sending the signal again over USB to an audio interface where it gets converted to the analog monitor signal. I would expect a lower monitoring latency when going analog to the audio interface and direct monitoring this signal.

what other audio interface are you using? Can you connect it to your Mac via USB and create an aggregate device? This could possibly simplify connection issues between the 2 units

Okay I will give this a try tonight as well. I didn’t think to go from those 2 outs to the inputs. I may need a bigger interface to have my keyboards and quad cortex connected then haha.

I’m using a Steinberg ur22c right now along with the quad cortex. I forgot to give this a try, thanks for the suggestion. I will let you know how it goes tonight

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Okay I forgot to post an update to this but the quad cortex does not yet fully support aggregate devices due to the potential synchronization issues that can come from the differing devices so this could be the issue I’m experiencing. I have to do more testing either later tonight or later in the week, but thank you for the idea and hopefully they add this feature in in the future!

I’m aggregating mine just fine with several other interfaces, just need to have them all set at the same sample rate. I’ve seen several other Mac users aggregating as well

Do you have any plugins running in Logic? Have you tried low-latency mode?

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In regards to the audio popping and being delayed when you play … I had the exact same thing happen to me when I used to use my HX stomp. That was using a 2015 MacBook Pro and logic… perhaps a logic issue ?

Sorry for not getting back for awhile I got busy with work and everything. I aggregated my devices and made sure to clock them all the same and haven’t had any issues since doing this. both are operating at 48k and there is no latency issues anymore. Thanks for the suggestion and the help!

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I don’t think it was an issue with logic more so just an issue with trying to use the two devices separately, when I put them together as an aggregate device (properly) all the issues I was experiencing went away!

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great to hear this, was wondering if it helped