Let's Put Sync Issues to Bed - None Of My MIDI Gear Syncs To Ableton Properly!

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
loopdokter
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Let's Put Sync Issues to Bed - None Of My MIDI Gear Syncs To Ableton Properly!

Post by loopdokter » Thu Apr 30, 2020 6:46 am

Hi All,

I have a lot of external hardware. I've followed multiple tutorials on how to get it properly in sync with Ableton. Nothing seems to work. My hardware MIDI devices always start early or late depending upon the device. This makes for recording an absolute pain in the noggin.

The most recent annoying one is my Behringer TD-3. It starts early. This makes it nearly impossible to record a sequence properly without some crafty audio editing. No amount of pulling the clock back on the TD-3 under MIDI Out/In Ports into the negative seems to change that. Delay compensation is on. I'm using a MOTU 128 as my main MIDI hub, but in this case I'm using USB MIDI - which in theory should be even tighter.

I'm aware that Behringer's MIDI on their RD-8 (which I also own) is less than desirable, but this device isn't getting the same hate.

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, please help me get this into sync with Ableton! It's doing my head in and I've yet to find a good and simple way to get all of my gear in time with my DAW - which does most of my drums. I want to be able to play the sequence in time with my arrangement so I can do filter tweaks and such according to things happening in the arrangement as I record.

Right now my TD-3 is doing dad dancing at a wedding and everyone at the wedding - including me - is cringing.

Shift Gorden
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Re: Let's Put Sync Issues to Bed - None Of My MIDI Gear Syncs To Ableton Properly!

Post by Shift Gorden » Fri May 01, 2020 6:36 pm

No-one wants to see their dad dancing around at a wedding!!!!

That is odd, USB midi should be super tight. Are you recording patterns from your external gear into Ableton? I've noticed if I record midi from my external Novation sequencer, there is definitely a delay and it's clearly shown in Ableton. It's receiving MIDI thing, not a transmit thing in my case.

You mention delay compensation is on - is that in Ableton? You may have have to adjust the timings for each midi track within Ableton - which can be a pain. You might also have to adjust the delay comp for internal Ableton tracks, too - trial and error.

Then again, delay comp in Ableton can be a pain because it interferes with live performances.

How is your gear all set up? You running a bunch of devices as External Instruments?

TLW
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Re: Let's Put Sync Issues to Bed - None Of My MIDI Gear Syncs To Ableton Properly!

Post by TLW » Sat May 02, 2020 4:34 am

How far off sync are the MIDI hardware devices?

Are you finding the sync problem is with sequencers starting or with notes being a little delayed with the delay varying depending on the synth?
Live 10 Suite, 2020 27" iMac, 3.6 GHz i9, MacOS Catalina, RME UFX, assorted synths, guitars and stuff.

loopdokter
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Re: Let's Put Sync Issues to Bed - None Of My MIDI Gear Syncs To Ableton Properly!

Post by loopdokter » Thu May 07, 2020 6:48 am

Shift Gorden wrote:
Fri May 01, 2020 6:36 pm
No-one wants to see their dad dancing around at a wedding!!!!

That is odd, USB midi should be super tight. Are you recording patterns from your external gear into Ableton? I've noticed if I record midi from my external Novation sequencer, there is definitely a delay and it's clearly shown in Ableton. It's receiving MIDI thing, not a transmit thing in my case.

You mention delay compensation is on - is that in Ableton? You may have have to adjust the timings for each midi track within Ableton - which can be a pain. You might also have to adjust the delay comp for internal Ableton tracks, too - trial and error.

Then again, delay comp in Ableton can be a pain because it interferes with live performances.

How is your gear all set up? You running a bunch of devices as External Instruments?
Most MIDI from external gear starts before the audio in Ableton.

Ableton acts as the main MIDI clock. All of my external MIDI gear is run through a MOTU 128 MIDI hub - which is one of the most commonly used hubs for MIDI out there. I trigger MIDI notes from Ableton usually, unless I'm runing a piece of gear like the TD-3 that has an internal sequencer.

Yes, delay compensation is on in Abelton. I've tried adjusting all of the timings for each MIDI track, as well as delay compensation as well. I can't get anything to lock in time to Ableton as the master MIDI clock. :(

loopdokter
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Re: Let's Put Sync Issues to Bed - None Of My MIDI Gear Syncs To Ableton Properly!

Post by loopdokter » Thu May 07, 2020 6:49 am

TLW wrote:
Sat May 02, 2020 4:34 am
How far off sync are the MIDI hardware devices?

Are you finding the sync problem is with sequencers starting or with notes being a little delayed with the delay varying depending on the synth?
I haven't measured how many milliseconds, but for the most part most synths are at least a few milliseconds out - usually early. Oddly, when recording it's late.

TLW
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Re: Let's Put Sync Issues to Bed - None Of My MIDI Gear Syncs To Ableton Properly!

Post by TLW » Thu May 07, 2020 12:25 pm

loopdokter wrote:
Thu May 07, 2020 6:49 am
I haven't measured how many milliseconds, but for the most part most synths are at least a few milliseconds out - usually early. Oddly, when recording it's late.
Measurement may be a useful thing to do. Synths take a certain amount of time to convert MIDI to audio, which varies from synth to synth. Also MIDI, like USB, is a serial protocol so only one instruction gets sent at a time leading to inevitable delays and poly synths always slightly arpeggiating chords.

That delay is hard to automatically compensate for, especially if a synth isn’t consistent about how long it takes to interpret and act on MIDI, and if more than one synth is used can’t be globally fixed with a single compensating adjustment. Unlike audio latency with a well-written driver there’s nothing to provide feedback to the DAW about how long the latency/delay is.

The delay is usually under 10ms and generally under 5ms but it is always going to be there, digital synths which include their own analogue/digital audio convertors (which have their own processing time requirements on top of the synth engine’s) often being the worst culprits. Using analogue synths and control voltages rather than MIDI generally provides tighter timing.

There’s also the problem that computers generally aren’t absolutely stable MIDI clock sources or the most consistent clock slaves either. The downside of DAWs is that these sort of problems are almost inevitable and often require human intervention to align things 100%.

Having said all of that, if the timing errors are more than around 10ms there may be something else going on. All I can say is that for me Live is no worse in this regard than any other DAW I’ve used over the last 25+ years.
Live 10 Suite, 2020 27" iMac, 3.6 GHz i9, MacOS Catalina, RME UFX, assorted synths, guitars and stuff.

n2n
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Re: Let's Put Sync Issues to Bed - None Of My MIDI Gear Syncs To Ableton Properly!

Post by n2n » Fri May 08, 2020 5:47 pm

Check Ableton's MIDI Output for the TD-3. The "MIDI Clock Type" needs to be set to "Pattern", not "Song"

aphex2000
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Re: Let's Put Sync Issues to Bed - None Of My MIDI Gear Syncs To Ableton Properly!

Post by aphex2000 » Wed May 20, 2020 11:59 am

I'd like to add my issue to this discussion as i guess it's the same issue:

Output from my external MIDI sequencing gear (NDLR, Digitone, Digitakt via USB Midi and also tested with DIN into my Audio Interface's port) arrives delayed in Ableton on my Mac. Sending MIDI to external devices works without issues, audio latency is also managed well. Playing live on my Digitone also gives me low-latency playback.

Test case (tested all kinds of other scenarios too, it's always an issue):

Digitone sequence sending MIDI into Ableton
Operator track is armed and receives MIDI
When i record, there's latency:

Track Monitoring "Auto": Midi notes (unquantized) are 1/64 late in the piano roll sequencer (same with Delay Comp on/off)
Track Monitoring "Off", Delay Compensation On: Midi notes are roughly 1/64 early
Track Monitoring "Off", Delay Compensation Off: Midi notes are roughly 1/128 late

Same result in an empty or full project, no other effects applied.

This is maddening! I found no way to compensate for this delay in a reproducible way. I'd like to sequence some gear & softsynths with my external sequencers. Btw, the same setup works fine in Bitwig and Logic without any latency.


Maybe related? In external gear that syncs to Midi clock, e.g. the Delay in Hydrasynth/Matriarch - i get a noticeable "wobble" in the beginning of playing a sequence out of ableton as if the clock is catching up. Something weird is going on with my clocking i guess!

JackTheRipper
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Re: Let's Put Sync Issues to Bed - None Of My MIDI Gear Syncs To Ableton Properly!

Post by JackTheRipper » Wed May 20, 2020 11:17 pm

To the OP: are you sure the MIDI is early or is your audio late? What Audio interface are you using? And what are the buffer sizes for Audio and MIDI? I think you'd want small output buffers for each.

aphex2000:
I had a similar issue with MIDI data being delayed going into Ableton. The buffer size was too big so I adjusted it and all is well. Select the smallest buffer size.

--jack

Kearley
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Re: Let's Put Sync Issues to Bed - None Of My MIDI Gear Syncs To Ableton Properly!

Post by Kearley » Thu May 21, 2020 4:04 am

I wanted to chime in here. I gave up trying to sync external stuff in Ableton.. I'm slowly migrating to Cubase for some projects.

The only truly solid midi sync I had was with the Elektron Analog4 using Overbridge. Otherwise, it's all over the place. Different devices had different 'sync latencies'.

Sometimes it seems like project latency (like maybe a plugin in the session adding latency)
Adjusting the midi clock sync delay would help for the moment, but the second I added a new plugin to the session or added a vsti synth, it was off again.

It seemed like any synths with USB for midi were the worst, so I started using only real midi ports.

At one point I suspected using my (RME UFX) interface's onboard midi ports caused more of this kind of sync trouble. I'm not sure I was able to verify though. I ended up buying a pair of MOTU microlites.. and I THINK they helped, but not consistently enough to rely on.

I'm sure none of this really helps, except for some extra data maybe..
D
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aphex2000
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Re: Let's Put Sync Issues to Bed - None Of My MIDI Gear Syncs To Ableton Properly!

Post by aphex2000 » Thu May 21, 2020 5:43 am

JackTheRipper wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 11:17 pm

aphex2000:
I had a similar issue with MIDI data being delayed going into Ableton. The buffer size was too big so I adjusted it and all is well. Select the smallest buffer size.
thanks, but is has nothing to do with the audio buffer, it's already at 256 and since it ONLY affects sequenced midi input and not live input it's something else

JackTheRipper
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Re: Let's Put Sync Issues to Bed - None Of My MIDI Gear Syncs To Ableton Properly!

Post by JackTheRipper » Thu May 21, 2020 2:33 pm

aphex2000 wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 5:43 am
thanks, but is has nothing to do with the audio buffer, it's already at 256 and since it ONLY affects sequenced midi input and not live input it's something else
Your MIDI driver/interface has input and output buffers too. Or at least, mine does.

--jack

aphex2000
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Re: Let's Put Sync Issues to Bed - None Of My MIDI Gear Syncs To Ableton Properly!

Post by aphex2000 » Thu May 21, 2020 3:15 pm

so how exactly do you adjust your midi buffer on a mac when all you are using is midi over usb?

again: there is no issue with this in bitwig using the same hardware / routing. ableton is doing some midi-voodoo that adds this delay and i can't figure out why / where.

JackTheRipper
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Re: Let's Put Sync Issues to Bed - None Of My MIDI Gear Syncs To Ableton Properly!

Post by JackTheRipper » Thu May 21, 2020 3:20 pm

aphex2000 wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 3:15 pm
so how exactly do you adjust your midi buffer on a mac when all you are using is midi over usb?

again: there is no issue with this in bitwig using the same hardware / routing. ableton is doing some midi-voodoo that adds this delay and i can't figure out why / where.
Dunno, I'm not a Mac user. Maybe Google or another forum member can help with that. I'm just throwing out a suggestion for something to look into that may help.

Good luck with your issue,

--jack

Tone Deft
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Re: Let's Put Sync Issues to Bed - None Of My MIDI Gear Syncs To Ableton Properly!

Post by Tone Deft » Thu May 21, 2020 6:02 pm

I have no answers.

your Behringer box isn't mentioned in the supported devices for Live
https://www.ableton.com/en/live/integrated-hardware/

a quick google search on "TD-3 Ableton" brought up a Reddit discussion
https://www.reddit.com/r/TechnoProducti ... o_ableton/

a glance at a handful of links and I mainly see posts about people having problems with the TD-3. :?

you mention having a lot of gear but don't mention having problems with them, so you know how to sync stuff to Live. you've also watched youtubes. you're not insane.
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