How to Calibrate Lag in Guitar Hero

But before you do anything with it, let's take a minute to think about what’s really going on.

If you're having to hit the strum bar before the beat, or seeing the notes hit the strike bar after you've played them, then you need to calibrate lag.  As I hope you realize by now, this doesn’t mean that your equipment is crap.  (Really – I've seen this comment on the web!)  In fact, it means that your equipment is modern digital high-tech stuff.  If you don’t have to calibrate lag, then you’re probably playing with that old analog TV in your basement (or some really expensive gear with ultra-high-speed digital signal processing).

Calibrating lag basically means figuring out what the actual audio and video processing delays in your equipment are, and then telling the Wii about them so it can compensate for them.  These delays are unique to your own setup, since they depend on what the Wii is connected to.  You can’t see or hear the delays all by yourself.  You have to use the Wii to help you.  But the Wii can’t do it all by itself, either – it needs your help.  That’s how the lag calibration options work.  You and the Wii together measure the audio and video time delays in your equipment and record them in the Wii’s memory.

There are two ways to calibrate the lag.  One is sort of automatic, which makes it easier, but it doesn’t necessarily give you the best results.  The other way requires a little more interaction, but it ends up calibrating just like you play, so you’re pretty sure to end up with something that works well for you. I'll discuss both of these methods in turn.

In the Options menu on the main GH screen, select “Calibrate Lag.”  You will get a submenu that shows the audio and video delay times, along with two other menu items: “Calibrate” and “Reset.”  These numbers start out at zero, and they return to zero when you select “Reset.”  The audio and video delay times are measured in milliseconds (ms).  There are one thousand milliseconds in a second.  Pop quiz:  100 milliseconds is what fraction of a second? (The answer is further down the page.)
You could try guessing the numbers for the delay times, but GH attempts to remove the guesswork:  it will figure out the numbers for you if you select “Calibrate.”  It will first calibrate the audio lag.  It will give you a series of beats, and you will be asked to strum along exactly on the beat.  If you mess up, don’t worry – just try it again.  After the audio, it will calibrate the video lag.  This time, you will be asked to strum when the two circles match up exactly on the screen.  At the end, the Wii will fill in the correct audio and video delay times based on your responses.

My complaint about this process is that both of the tests are too fast, with not enough repetitions.  What the Wii is doing is timing how long it takes you to hit the strum bar after it sent the tone (or matched the circles), and then averaging your response times over the ten repetitions.  It’s hard to get it right with so few tries, and the video especially is almost a guessing game because it’s so fast.


Try out your new calibration on a song.  Chances are, if you’ve done it right, it plays a lot better than it did before.  You’re strumming in time, now. You can nail those fast repeated notes, because they’re right on the beat.  But if you hate it, don’t despair.  Just go back to the calibration menu and select “Reset” (or manually set the audio and video numbers to zero).  Then read on, and try the other calibration method I'm going to tell you about.

Calibrating Lag – The Better Way

There is another way to go about lag time calibration, and that's to do it as you play.  You probably know something is wrong (or you wouldn't be reading this), and the idea is to adjust the timing while you play, until it starts to feel right.  From the main screen, select “Quickplay” and then “Single.”  Pick an easy song with a strong beat.  I use Nirvana’s “About a Girl” (which has the extra advantage that it is the first song in the playlist), but you can use any song you like.  Select beginner mode.  (Yes, I said “beginner.”  This exercise is all about strumming.  You can show off your boss chops later on.) 

Notice that I'm not recommending going into practice mode.  As a commenter pointed out, the lag calibrations in practice mode do not seem to work right, at least in the GH World Tour edition.  This is unfortunate, and makes it hard to use practice mode the way it's intended, since once you do get the lag calibrations right, they no longer work when you enter practice mode!  Maybe this is something that Activision will fix in a future version of the game.  Anyway, for now, you're stuck with full speed in Quickplay for calibrating lag.

Play the song for a while, until you get the rhythm into your head.  Then hit the “+” key (on either side of the “star power” bar on the regular guitar controller).  This pauses the play and gives you a list of menu items.  Choose “Options” and then “Calibrate lag.”  You will get the same submenu as I described above, but what you are going to do here is set the audio and video timings manually.

Start with the audio and video delay times both at zero.  We’ll do the audio timing first.  (Resist the temptation to adjust both audio and video together.  You’ll just end up getting confused.)  Increase the audio delay by 20 ms.  Then, exit calibration mode (red button) and play the song again.  When you get the rhythm, close your eyes and keep strumming with the beat.  By the way, did you answer the pop quiz above?  The answer is: 100 ms equals a tenth of a second.  This much delay may be present in surround-sound audio, and a tenth of a second delay is clearly audible.  It makes a big difference in your playing.  Strangely enough, it doesn't bother you when you're watching a DVD movie.  Our brains have a remarkable ability to synthesize the information streams from different senses.

Try to mimic playing a guitar exactly in time with the music.  Listen for the drum beat, and try to make the click of your strum button happen at exactly the same time as the beat. Use up and down motions.  Get into the groove.  Don’t worry about the bridge and solo passages, wait for the main theme to return, and pick it up again.  Close your eyes and strum.  If you’re still missing notes, then your audio timing is off.  Hit the pause button, go back to “Calibrate” and increase the audio timing by another 20 ms.  Repeat this process 20 ms at a time until you can strum with your eyes closed and hit the beat every time.  It should really start to feel right.  Now you have it.

Next, it’s time to set the video timing.  You’ll have to open your eyes for this (duh!).  Turn down the volume and try to play the song just by looking at the purple strum lines.  Hit the strum exactly when the strum line crosses the strike line.  Your guitar will tell you when you’re missing notes.  If you’re missing notes, hit the pause button, increase the video timing by 10 ms, and try again.  You should be able to tell when you’ve gone too far.  The flames should be coming on exactly in time with your strumming (which will be exactly in time with the beat because you’ve already nailed the audio timing).

When you have the video timing right, choose a song, and play it at your normal difficulty.  Hey, looking good!  You rock!  Right?  Maybe not.  Maybe you were happier before you went through all this calibration stuff.  No problem – just go to the calibration menu and reset your timings to what they were before you started fooling with them (you did keep a record of them, didn’t you?).  On the other hand, maybe you think you’re onto something and all you need is a little more adjustment.  OK, try to figure out whether it’s the audio or video that’s the problem.  Go back to an easy song and an easy level. Try to play it with your eyes closed.  If you’re nailing the notes, then open your eyes and play along with the video.  One or the other will be the one that gets you.  Tweak the appropriate timing and try it again.
 

Final Thoughts

If you’re with me this far, then you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the audio and video delays in Guitar Hero work.  Too little, and you’re anticipating the beat.  Too much, and you’re strumming after the beat, and probably missing the next note too.  In the case of the audio timing, it’s your ears that are feeding you the wrong information, and in the case of the video, it’s your eyes.

Let’s say you have gone through the steps I outlined, and you have established perfectly calibrated lags. But when you try to play a gig, it just doesn’t feel right.   It’s possible that you have gotten used to playing the game with the built-in audio and video delays that were in your equipment from the beginning.  You’ve learned to anticipate the beat, and now it’s become ingrained – that’s the way you like to play.  You may like it, but I think you’re going to have trouble advancing.  You’ll have trouble playing in a band, too, because you’ll be getting the wrong cues from your bandmates.  So here’s one last suggestion.  Write down what you figured was the perfect timing using my instructions above.  Then, go back to the calibrate menu and set the audio and video timings to half of those numbers.  Play for a while.  Maybe a few days.  Get your band together and try it out.  When it’s comfortable, increase the timings by half of the remainder.  Practice for a while at these new timings (three-quarters of the optimal timings, if you’re paying attention).  Then, when you can handle that, put the numbers all the way up and go through your repertoire.  I guarantee, you’ll be nailing that solo on Crazy Train in no time.