Latency or lag between when you play your instrument and when you actually hear it through Ableton's processing can be very frustrating. Some folks who attempt to play instruments through Ableton's effects will claim that it simply cant be done or that there is too much latency to ever be able to play live. Well Im here to tell you thats simply not true. If you follow some simple guidelines that I'm about to lay out for you, you can play through Ableton Live in exactly the same way as you would play through any effect processor or guitar pedal, with immediate sound and very minimal latency so low that you would never notice it.

Now instead of trying to break down why latency happens or the myriad ways that latency can show up in your system, instead I want to give you a simple guide on how to avoid it in the first place.