Fix the sync issues now !! yes or no ?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.

Should Ableton fix the sync issues now?

yes, immediately...no scratch sync before midi sync..
149
60%
yes.. before L9
50
20%
neutral.. ableton best knows what is good for me
13
5%
No.. can wait.. i dont need to sync
30
12%
No.. i like to say no because it rhimes with moo
7
3%
 
Total votes: 249

dtm
Posts: 47
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2005 2:23 pm
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Contact:

Re: Fix the sync issues now !! yes or no ?

Post by dtm » Fri Dec 10, 2010 5:06 pm

Mac's core midi / core audio seems to minimize any drifting over time, and on the whole is the reason mac users probably don't have to deal with midi glitches as often as pc users do.
If you run a pc, especially with a multicore processor, you should always disable core parking, and any other power saving functionality. If you run a tool to detect any deferred procedure calls (Like DPC Latency Checker)you will notice how much difference these things make to the stability of your audio and midi streams. I usually disable all hardware I'm not using while I'm playing music too, like network or wifi cards..
Hope any of this stuff helps, but more than anything I wish ableton would step up and make this a priority over all else. Seriously, without tight, locked sync with external hardware your music will never sound as good as it should. It's critical, and is the difference between what you hear in you favourite records, and the stuff you write yourself that always seems a little clinical, or off in some way you can't put your finger on. Rhythm and groove depend on your instruments being in perfect harmony with each other and if you are unlucky enough to be working with shifty clocks, you may never hear your music sound the same any two times you press play ;)
Lenovo W510 (touch i7 920xm 16GB 1333MHz Ram,2xSSD),RME FF800,Edirol 8x8 midi,Doepfer MAQ16/3,TLA Fat1,Korg KP2,Pioneer FX1000,Allen&Heath 14:4:2,Manifold Labs Plugzilla,Poly Evolver,Machinedrum,TB303,TR909,MPC3000.. and no free TIME to USE IT >:(

l-rs
Posts: 63
Joined: Fri Oct 06, 2006 10:19 pm
Location: Utrecht, The Netherlands

Re: Fix the sync issues now !! yes or no ?

Post by l-rs » Mon Jan 10, 2011 5:49 pm

Good to see there are others who've experienced sync problems (and that Ableton seems to be listening)

I have tried a lot of things and Ableton syncing quite nearly killed of my pleasure in making music. Curious thing is that without rewiring Live 6 (which I kept installed) seems to provide a stable bpm, even as slave. I'm on a pc (Core2 Duo 3 GHz) by the way.

I would love to have MTC out, because my Syntecno Teebee could then run my 303 again. I now use a project that takes audio and converts it to sync pulses. It works - best solution to come along in years - but it does take a bit of tweaking per track.

http://rv0.be/sudc.html

It is very soundcard specific and when I jam with friends we still run into jittery bpm when trying to sync our Ableton setups.

So I really hope that the guys at Ableton can come up with a tight sync solution, like I got with other software like Cubase and even Impulse Tracker (ffs!) in the past.
Last edited by l-rs on Mon Jan 10, 2011 9:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I've got some stuff here:
http://www.zuur.com/

Khazul
Posts: 3185
Joined: Wed Feb 23, 2005 5:19 pm
Location: Reading, UK

Re: Fix the sync issues now !! yes or no ?

Post by Khazul » Mon Jan 10, 2011 6:18 pm

The cynical side of me thinks that with lots of folks apparently wanted to get tight midi clock sync from NI tracktor running on the same machine and therefore recently running into this issue, that Ableton might see fixing sync as something they should NOT do simnply because it makes the alternative to the primitive serato + live not only viable, but actually loads better in many ways.

Some observations
- MME mode midi on a pC with Live actually drifts - so badly that I find I need to get traktor to sends its restart within 30 seconds or so.. Im guessing it is loosing a clock tick on every pass of the loop points? This sounds like a variation of a different looping midi clock out sync bug that used to be present and was particularly winged about by various MachineDrum users att the time.
- Direct music mode MIDI on a PC seems to be more stable than MME in that it doesnt seem to drift, but with higher latency (Oddly Im sure with cubase it used to be the other way around.. but was a long time ago so could be wrong).
- Resync (MMC stop+start) from traktor to Live never seems as reliable as a resync to my MPC2500 from Traktor - allmost as if ableton live is quantizing MMC start message in some way - perhaps it quantizes it to audio buffer fills? Either way - f****** annoying having to real time nudge tracktor all the time to deal with the few random ms or so offset when you want to be doing other things. TBH - in sync slave mode, the nudge buttons should change to nudging the sync offset instead instead of having to fiddle in preferences - this would immediately solve alot of DJ use problems - were used to nudging stuff anyway, but nudging live is alot easier than nudging upto 4 decks.
Nothing to see here - move along!

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