Syncing PC to Mac via ethernet?

8O · Post by 8O » Wed Oct 08, 2008 9:33 pm

Hi folks,

Am trying to sync two machines running Live here, but having some problems.

Here's our set up:

1. MBP + ultralite + other stuff
2. Dell laptop + BCD3000

So we don't have a traditional midi port available on the Dell, so we're looking to connect the two machines together via ethernet cable (or, worst case, wlan). As I'm just used to using the mac, I've been using the OSX Audio Midi Setup in the past to pipe midi over ethernet. But I've no idea how to do the same on the PC side...? And if I do, will the PC side app be able to talk to OSX Audio Midi Setup ok?

Any tips greatly appreciated...!

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 10:17 pm

some of the 'sync' threads here
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27120
have links to tools to do that

8O · Post by 8O » Wed Oct 08, 2008 10:39 pm

Cheers but I already read that useful post and this associated one - http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=42090 - and most of the discussions are either pc-pc, mac-mac or mac/pc (but via traditional midi cable, not ethernet). Maybe I missed something buried away there...

Though, I'm pretty sure you're right and folks have done it before and the info's on here, I just can't find it...

8O · Post by 8O » Thu Oct 09, 2008 6:55 am

Some hours later the best summary I could find was in this thread:

Michael-SW wrote:If you have two Macs, the feature is already built in to synch over lan or wireless.

With PC or PC to Mac you need to buy some pretty expensive software to do lan-synch.

...and I haven't found anything to say otherwise

But, I'm sure someone must've done it already here...? Maybe I just have to go out and buy a cheap usb-midi interface for the PC...?

ollyb303 · Post by **ollyb303** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 7:43 am

Good luck, if you get this working, let us know.

8O · Post by 8O » Thu Oct 09, 2008 3:36 pm

Cheers. A friend and I got mac<->mac synched via airport and that works fine. But mac<->pc is still elusive... The only thing so far which looks hopeful is the plasq wormhole, but I think that's not maintained any longer...

bosonHavoc · Post by **bosonHavoc** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 4:37 pm

this may be what your looking for.

http://www.musiclab.com/products/rpl_info.htm

8O · Post by 8O » Thu Oct 09, 2008 5:52 pm

bosonHavoc wrote:this may be what your looking for.

http://www.musiclab.com/products/rpl_info.htm

Thanks for the suggestion, those are indeed the droids I'm looking for, but... $129! I was thinking midi over lan/ethernet would save us buying a midi-usb cable, but now 15Eur or so for such a cable from Thomann is starting to look like a bargain...

Ah well, maybe that's really the cheapest solution...

Crash · Post by **Crash** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 6:52 pm

http://www.nerds.de/en/ipmidi.html

8O · Post by 8O » Thu Oct 09, 2008 11:32 pm

Crash wrote:http://www.nerds.de/en/ipmidi.html

Cheers Timo, but 69Eur is also a bit steep for what I reckon should be possible with just a little utility and some tweaking somewhere, though it still eludes me. Still, at this point buying a usb-midi cable is actually the cheapest option. Hmmm... strange that there's no straight-forward (and cheaper than buying extra hardware) solution...

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 11:47 pm

MIDI clock over ethernet? Stable? Seriously?

Crash · Post by **Crash** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 6:26 am

Maybe you could turn the Midi Clock into OSC, transfer it over the network and turn it back into Midi Clock? Using Reaktor for turning Midi into OSC and back into Midi could work. I didn't dig into OSC though, so I don't know.

Clearscreen · Post by **Clearscreen** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 6:55 am

Crash wrote:Maybe you could turn the Midi Clock into OSC, transfer it over the network and turn it back into Midi Clock? Using Reaktor for turning Midi into OSC and back into Midi could work. I didn't dig into OSC though, so I don't know.

i have to admit that i haven't actually done it, but you could use Usine free (http://www.sensomusic.com)on the pc to send Lives tempo via OSC over a network, then use quartz (or whatever) on the mac to take the tempo and convert it to midiclock or whatever you need it to be...

8O · Post by 8O » Fri Oct 10, 2008 10:27 pm

Bump... surely there must be plenty of people who've got this working already...?

Crash · Post by **Crash** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 7:56 am

Wikipedia wrote:RTP-MIDI is included in Apple's Mac OS X, as standard MIDI ports (the RTP-MIDI ports appear in Macintosh applications as any other USB or FireWire port. Thus, any MIDI application running on Mac OS X is able to use the RTP-MIDI capabilities in a transparent way). However, Apple's developers considered the session control protocol described in IETF's specification to be too complex, and they created their own session control protocol. Since the session protocol uses a UDP port different from the main RTP-MIDI stream port, the two protocols do not interfere (so the RTP-MIDI implementation in Mac OS X fully complies to the IETF specification).

Apple's implementation has been used as reference by other MIDI manufacturers. A Windows XP RTP-MIDI driver[2] for their own products only has been released by the Dutch company Kiss-Box and a Linux implementation is currently under development by the Grame association.[3] So it seems probable that the Apple's implementation will become the "de-facto" standard (and could even become the MMA reference implementation).