A software synthesizer is a MIDI device driver that produces sound using the computing powers of your computer, as opposed to using specialized sound-creation circuitry in a soundcard or external device. Soundcards that are pre-installed on computers, and soundcards that you can purchase and install yourself, usually include multiple MIDI device drivers. Some of these MIDI device drivers are for the soundcard's internal sound-creation circuitry. One or more software synthesizers, provided as additional MIDI device drivers, might be included with the soundcard.

Software synthesizers are also available as software products that can be purchased, or in some cases freely downloaded from the Internet, independently of what soundcard you have.

An important aspect of many MIDI software synthesizers is that they have a fixed built-in delay between the time a software program (such as Composer) requests a note to be played, and the time that the sound is actually produced. This delay is necessary because of the many calculations that a software synthesizer makes to simulate instrument sounds.

Some acoustic pianos, such as the Yamaha Disklavier, and pianos retrofitted with a PianoDisc system, have a MIDI playback mechanism. Such acoustic MIDI pianos also have a built-in delay between the time that the software program requests a note to be played, and the time that the note actually hits the key. The reason for this is that it takes several milliseconds for the hammer to travel from its resting position to the time it hits the string; and that travel time varies according to how soft or loud the note is. (Pianists subconsciously account for this in their playing.) In order to produce accurate timing of note attacks, independently of the softness or loudness of the notes, an acoustic MIDI piano must employ a minimum delay that is at least as long as that for the most softly played note. Some acoustic MIDI pianos offer you at least two choices for the delay it uses: (1) the minimum necessary delay, or (2) some much larger but "round number" delay, such as 500 milliseconds (one half second).

If you play a MIDI file that has tracks assigned to different MIDI output devices with different delays, it is necessary for the MIDI player, such as MidiNotate, to synchronize the tracks, accounting for the respective delays of the MIDI output devices. MidiNotate is capable of performing this synchronization. But it needs your help to determine the millisecond delay of your MIDI output device.

You can specify the millisecond delay of MIDI output device using the MIDI Device Configuration command in the Setup menu. In the MIDI Device Configuration window, select the device, and choose the Properties command in the Device menu. In the Device Properties dialog box, set the Anticipate Playback Delay value, in milliseconds.

The table in this web page shows you the millisecond delay for various MIDI software synthesizers. The values in this table have been reported to us by MidiNotate users. If you do not find your MIDI software synthesizer listed in this table, it will be necessary for you to experiment with millisecond delay values until you find a value that works. Common delay values are 100 msec and 500 msec.

If you determine a delay value for a synthesizer not reported below, or if you discover that the value reported below is incorrect, please send an email to support@notation.com with "millisecond delay for ..." as the subject line, where "..." is the name of the software synthesizer. We, and other MidiNotate customers, will much appreciate your contribution.

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