Ableton Forum

Greetings. I'm an enthusiastic end user of the "live clip chopper" m4l patch which enables me to chop Live clips and replay the samples on my monome. The patch has grown by leaps and bounds since January. However, there has always been an intermittent timing issue between a monome button press and moving the clip playing position in Live.

The developer, nonagon, first described the problem in cycling 74's forum:

http://cycling74.com/forums/topic.php?id=23924

Specifically:

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"it appears that every call to move_playing_pos causes Live to re-trigger the clip. This isn't noticeable in the audio stream while chopping, but it does cause the first LED on the monome to flash briefly whenever the playing position is changed. We can also see this in the playing position data, for example:

If the clip is playing back on a monome with 8 buttons in a row, clip playback will normally progress sequentially, lighting the buttons on the row in sequence:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ...

If a button is pressed during playback, the playing position jumps to the associated with that button. For example, if button 2 is pressed partway through playback, the stream might look like this:

0 1 2 3 4 5 2 3 ...

What we're seeing though, is a momentary 0 in the stream:
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 2 3 ...

which corresponds to the retriggering of the clip."

"big problem here is that the observed playing position of the clip jumps to zero momentarily whenever the position is changed…you should be able to see a discontinuity in playing position (jumping to zero) every time you set the playing position to a non-zero value."

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After reading the entire thread, it sounds like this issue with the move playing position is related to Live's core development. Is there a workaround or a solution to help improve the performance of this awesome patch?

Thanks for your consideration!


---Related Threads---

http://cycling74.com/forums/topic.php?id=23924
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=144018
http://docs.monome.org/doku.php?id=app: ... ip_chopper

---Growing user base & New developments---

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/07/2 ... new-album/
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=146364

+1

also, when creating subloops, things seem to go wonky. so if i were to create a loop between 3 and 4, the playing position does jump around a bit.

It is true. It seems there is a problem on Live's end which makes much less usable what could be a revolutionary patch. When this issue is resolved, several people will immediately be very pleased, and their subsequent music-making will be a big plus for others considering purchasing Max for Live.

+1
It would be so great if LCC could trigger clips as mlr. As I said in Cycling '74 Forums, it's one of the reason I get a monome: beeing able to control clips into ableton as mlr.

more than six months on this acknowledged problem? bugfix

+1 This is the only thing holding me back for purchasing M4L

Who maintains MLR?

-A

mlr seems to have splintered into different directions from brian (tehn) crabtree's original patch. however, the 'spawn' patches are actively maintained and appear to be moving forward with new features.

andrew, was there a specific question you want answered? i have a feeling you're swamped as it is so i'll happily be the messenger and cross-post messages to the monome forums.

in the meantime, i've compiled a resource list of mlr-related patches in case you want to check under the hood at the max programming


mlr 2.27 (original patch, not actively updated)
http://docs.monome.org/doku.php?id=app:mlr
developer: tehn (brian crabtree)

mlrV (visual extension of mlr)
http://docs.monome.org/doku.php?id=mlr:mlrv
developer: enjoi (trent gill)

mlr 2.51 (aka the 'daedelus mlr patch', ACTIVELY maintained)
http://post.monome.org/comments.php?DiscussionID=4118
developer: enjoi (trent gill)

mlr 2.27 m4l (direct port to m4l, ACTIVELY updated)
http://docs.monome.org/doku.php?id=app: ... maxforlive
http://post.monome.org/comments.php?DiscussionID=6808
developer: stevieraysean (sean pierce)

+1

I really want to be able to reliably jump around within clips, rather than have to mess with a buffer. Please fix!

ok thanks Mr tchan

I emailed Sean. Let's try and get to the bottom of this

-A

awesome! thanks for looking into this andrew

cheers,
trevor

+1

In fact, more generally, we need a more time-accurate live API.

Would love to this issue fixed as well!

I am also interested in this. It could really allow the ultimate mix between MLR and Live.

Any news?

Hi Andrew,

Has anyone (ie. Sean or the Ableton crew) responded to your inquiries? Was also wondering if Troy's workaround max patch in the cycling forum could help solve the 'jumping to zero' problem with the clip move playing position?

http://cycling74.com/forums/topic.php?id=27698

Cheers,
:tc