Drum mode MIDI jitter when using multiple lanes simultaneously

Gen_finesse

Hello!

I'd like to report a timing/jitter issue in drum mode when playing patterns across multiple lanes.
I've manually input my drum pattern directly on the grid pads, so everything should be perfectly quantized. However, when playing back a pattern with more than ₅ drum lanes active simultaneously, the MIDI output shows noticeable jitter — notes are no longer perfectly on the grid.
I've attached two screenshots from Ableton Live showing the recorded MIDI alongside the audio. The offset between MIDI and audio is just latency — not the issue. The problem is that MIDI notes are randomly misaligned throughout the recording, making the drum beat feel off. This seems to happen inside Reliq before the MIDI even reaches the DAW.

Thanks!

giu_reliq

Hi @Gen_finesse,

Thanks for the detailed report! Before we dig in, could you share a bit more about your setup during this test? For example:

How many tracks were playing at the same time
Which MIDI port you were using
etc.

Gen_finesse

giu_reliq

Hello , I was using 6 or 7 drum lane .
I was using midi out 3 into my sampler .
Did some testing with other midi out trs , same results. Also I've tried to plug the midi out directly to the sampler (it's was in a daisy chain) : same results.

Hope this will help

Kyriakos-Reliq

Gen_finesse

Apologies for the late response, it took us a bit to properly look into this.

Based on your description and the screenshots, what you’re seeing is actually a limitation of standard MIDI itself, rather than something specific to Reliq.

Standard operates at a serial rate and can send roughly one message every ₁ milisecond. So when multiple notes are triggered at the exact same step (like in drum mode with several lanes), they are not sent truly simultaneously, they are sent one after another in very small time intervals.

Looking at your Ableton screenshots, the spacing between the notes aligns very closely with this ₁ ms interval, which is what we would expect from MIDI serialization.

So this isn’t related to your setup or a reliq issue, but inherent to how MIDI handles simultaneous events. The more notes you stack on the same step, the more noticeable it becomes.

A good way to improve this is to use USB MIDI, which handles bulk data much more efficiently. In your case, you could connect Reliq via USB-MIDI to your computer and route MIDI from your DAW to the sampler. You’ll still have some latency on the final MIDI hop if the sampler uses DIN MIDI, but it will generally be significantly tighter than sending everything directly over a single DIN output.

Hope this helps clarify things, and thanks again for the detailed report, very helpful as always🙏