B-Keeper (not Beatseeker) installation problem. Help needed!

[Tekhed66]

Firstly - apologies... I accidentally posted this in the Live forum instead of the M4L forum... moderators - please delete the other post if necessary

OK...

I've tried using M4L Beatseeker and it just didn't work... it couldnt follow our drummer at all so I'm now
trying the older B-Keeper in the hope that it may work. Unfortunately I'm off to a not-so-great start and I'm
hoping someone who has used/is using it can help me.In a nutshell, B-Keeper wont change tempo when
listening to an external source... It starts OK when listening to an external signal (eg. 4 claps or
drumstick clicks) but once it starts, it stays at that initial tempo. I'm not sure if I've installed it
incorrectly or I'm just doing something wrong.

So far:
I am running Max 7.0.5 and Live 9.2 on a Mac Air OS 10.10.2
I installed the files BKeeper.mxo, BKstarter.mxo and bonk-.mxo into the following folder path MAX\Contents\Resources\C74\externals\max
When I open the supplied B-KeeperAudio.als file I get a session view set opening up containing 4 sound clips, a BKeeper audio track and a extClick audio track. The version of B-Keeper is B-Keeper4Live_vers15.

I have loaded the supplied audio snare and kick test tracks into BK and I can hear them play a 4 count intro before the test sound clip starts to play.I've set the count-in to 4 and by using the inbuilt mic on my laptop, I can clap 4 times and this automatically
starts BK playing (the orange circles next to Snare and Kick light up when I clap so it's reading my signal).

The tempo box is set to 'Sticks' (the other being 'Fixed'). Latency is 0.

If BK is set to INTERNAL (click), the BPM readout will vary slightly as it plays if the volume is way up but it doesnt move if the volume is very low (it's probably picking up an audio signal from the laptop speakers at high vol). The round click light also blinks in time
with the tempo. If I switch the setting to EXTERNAL, then BK starts after 4 claps but the tempo doesn't change at all... It will start playing at the tempo I clap my hands to so it starts OK but if I clap my hands while it's playing, I see that BK hears my signal
(orange circles light up) but the tempo doesn't change.

I have looked for help on this forum but only found one vague answer from about 6 years ago and which wasn't very helpful anyway... I'm stuck stuck stuck... I think I've installed everything correctly but it still wont work.

I know this device is really old now and has been updated but if anyone can please help, that would be fantastic.

Apologies again for the double post!!!

[RadioOnMars]

The lights flashing suggests that Bonk works correctly.

External means the click is externally routed. You're unlikely to be using this method (needs an extra track and extra device but designed to eliminate latency, not that there is much). The idea is you send a click out on a channel and route it back into the soundcard into the special click device.

I suggest you tesdt both B-Keeper and BeatSeeker with a drum machine into an audio card. They should both work. BeatSeeker has better synchronisation accuracy, is more responsive and can work off a single mic. At least, it can when I try it.

[Tekhed66]

The lights flashing suggests that Bonk works correctly.

External means the click is externally routed. You're unlikely to be using this method (needs an extra track and extra device but designed to eliminate latency, not that there is much). The idea is you send a click out on a channel and route it back into the soundcard into the special click device.

I suggest you tesdt both B-Keeper and BeatSeeker with a drum machine into an audio card. They should both work. BeatSeeker has better synchronisation accuracy, is more responsive and can work off a single mic. At least, it can when I try it.

Hi Radio

Thanks for your reply.

I'm at a loss to explain why my band can't get Beatseeker to work ... you've obviously had more success and have probably set it up to find its 'sweet-spot' ... we would start the Live session manually on the laptop while sending the metronome click to our drummer on a separate channel ... Our drummer would keep time to the click track and Beatseeker would be in listening mode ... a few bars into the track, we would switch on Beatseeker but it would just go haywire with the tempo - sometimes as soon as Beatseeker was activated.

I spent a few hours today playing with B-Keeper and using my drum machine as a drum source... I found that the BK count in worked perfectly with a snare trigger (4 beats) but that there was a slight delay in starting the Live clip so that the drum beat and Live clip were in time but out of register. I think this may have been due to latency so I dropped the buffer size to 128 and this improved the response but didnt 100% cure it. I found a work around but this is still a laboratory experiment ... by that I mean, I'm using a highly controlled environment... a nice clean drum machine signal and can tweak levels as needed ... it's not the chaos we usually have with our live drummer

I worked out the difference between the BK 'external' and 'internal' click setting by using my drum machine... for such a clever piece of software, both B-Keeper and Beatseeker is woefully devoid of any decent instruction manuals or help files ... there are parameters on B-Keeper that have no explanation as to how they work so i just scribble settings down on paper before I blindly fiddle with them to see what happens ... very frustrating.

If I have time tomorrow, I'll set up my gear again and re-try Beatseeker ... maybe it's being thrown by the way we suddenly switch it on ... how are you using it? Do you use it in a live band setting? If so, how do you get your trigger signal? We have used a mic and also piezo triggers on the snare (above and below) but despite a strong signal, it just doesnt work.... any info on your setup would be really helpful.

anyway - back to it... thanks again for your input.

[RadioOnMars]

I spent a few hours today playing with B-Keeper and using my drum machine as a drum source... I found that the BK count in worked perfectly with a snare trigger (4 beats) but that there was a slight delay in starting the Live clip so that the drum beat and Live clip were in time but out of register. I think this may have been due to latency so I dropped the buffer size to 128 and this improved the response but didnt 100% cure it. I found a work around but this is still a laboratory experiment ... by that I mean, I'm using a highly controlled environment... a nice clean drum machine signal and can tweak levels as needed ... it's not the chaos we usually have with our live drummer

Yes, this is actually "learned" in BK. It observes the time difference (due to Max For Live starting Live and the 50msec delay in that happening). It should schedule the message ahead of time once this has occurred. If you do use BK, then check that in "expert" the response value is reasonable (0.6+). The reset of the settings you can pretty much ignore. So that leaves only the main page (are kick snare being received and do you use count-in to start).

I'm not sure why you have a problem on the rest. for BeatSeeker, I have recommended a dynamic mic (SM57) placed to both the kick and snare (between them). Can you test this with the drum machine or plugging a music player in first? If the tempo varies quickly, it suggests that the beat on the audio signal in is quite different to what Live is playing. there's no "latency/driver compensation/track compensation" is there?

[Tekhed66]

Yes, this is actually "learned" in BK. It observes the time difference (due to Max For Live starting Live and the 50msec delay in that happening). It should schedule the message ahead of time once this has occurred. If you do use BK, then check that in "expert" the response value is reasonable (0.6+). The reset of the settings you can pretty much ignore. So that leaves only the main page (are kick snare being received and do you use count-in to start).

I'm not sure why you have a problem on the rest. for BeatSeeker, I have recommended a dynamic mic (SM57) placed to both the kick and snare (between them). Can you test this with the drum machine or plugging a music player in first? If the tempo varies quickly, it suggests that the beat on the audio signal in is quite different to what Live is playing. there's no "latency/driver compensation/track compensation" is there?[/quote]

Hi Radio

I have installed Beatseeker as per the M4L instructions ... there's not much to it other than dragging it onto a new sessions and it does the rest by itself.... there's no latency/driver compensation... just a raw audio track. We used only one mic (an SM57) quite close to the snare and tried minimal gain on the mic so as to only pick up the snare crack and ignore the rest of the room ... since that didnt work, we also tried increasing the mic gain and also placing the mic on the top. We havent tried using the same mic to pick up both snare and kick.

It's possible that Live/Beatseeker is getting confused by a lack of snare/kick input ... maybe relying on just the snare isnt enough though it seems to work judging by the various U-tube videos I've seen.

I'm going to set up my drum machine and repeat the setup I tried out for B-Keeper ... maybe a dual trigger (snare + kick) will do the trick.

B-Keeper appears to be working well... I was thrown by the 'learn' mode when I first started testing but it soon settled down and locked onto the drum machine really well ... I could incrementally increase or decrease the drum machine tempo and B-Keeper stayed locked on. Every now and then, I would start a new track and B-Keeper would throw a wobbly when it first started and usually recovered but not always so there's still one or two setup bugs left.

I've heard that Beatseeker is the better of the two but the lack of controls on this device doesn't really leave many options to tweak when things go wrong.

I'll keep trying... next band prac isn't until Friday week as a few of us are away for work so I've got a little bit of time to try and sort it.

thanks again for your help and advice.

[RadioOnMars]

I have installed Beatseeker as per the M4L instructions ... there's not much to it other than dragging it onto a new sessions and it does the rest by itself.... there's no latency/driver compensation... just a raw audio track. We used only one mic (an SM57) quite close to the snare and tried minimal gain on the mic so as to only pick up the snare crack and ignore the rest of the room ... since that didnt work, we also tried increasing the mic gain and also placing the mic on the top. We havent tried using the same mic to pick up both snare and kick.

It's possible that Live/Beatseeker is getting confused by a lack of snare/kick input ... maybe relying on just the snare isnt enough though it seems to work judging by the various U-tube videos I've seen.

I think I'd have to hear an example of the signal you're giving it, but yes, if it's just a snare drum every couple of beats, that might not be enough of a pulse to drive BeatSeeker. It filters the signal out above 1-2 kHz, so it;s the lower kick/snare type drum hits that are expected. If you can record the drum audio from the room and send, that could be useful to check out for you.
BK specifically uses kick and snare mics. You could feed the same setup to BeatSeeker (stereo channel one left and one right).

I would definitely have a look at a simple Live set, playing just a pulse bass line or something, and drum machine/ipod input to test how these are working first. Then you will isolate this from other problems to do with the band/song arrangement.

[Tekhed66]

Hmmmm... the plot definitely thickens...

Beatseeker is definitely not adjusting tempo despite it being able to 'hear' a signal from a drum machine.

I sent Beatseeker a kick+snare combo (4 beats to the bar) as opposed to just sending a snare by itself as i did previously. Beatseeker showed that it could hear a signal (the speaker icon changed from listening to active) but when I let Beakseeker control things, it did didn't lock onto the incoming drum machine signal ... the tempo that the drum machine was playing at was different to the tempo Live was playing.

B-Keeper on the other hand worked like a charm ... it easily locked onto the drum machine signal and held tempo 100% ... i can set an into tempo on b-Keeper and then introduce the drum machine tempo as much as 10bpm faster or slower and B-Keeper will quickly adjust itself to match the incoming signal.

I have no idea why Beatseeker is behaving like it is... I'm going to stick to B-Keeper... i like the fact that you can adjust various parameters and it listens to both the kick and snare (and apart from that, it works!!)

Band prac is next week ... it works with a nice and tidy drum machine signal but it might be a different story once we mic up the drums but so far, so good.

[barstu]

Hey I'm getting the same thing with Beatseeker, I'm using a pre recorded wav of my drummer to 'simulate' a live situation by playing it from an app outside of ableton and bringing it in via soundflower. When in listening mode, it seems spot on, then pressing the 'button' (I'm assuming the button the instructions refer to is the device UI?), it plays Ableton at the right detected tempo but then nothing, it's locked on the initial tempo and I eventually get drift.

It's like they've done the hard bit of detecting tempo but forgotten to keep it in detecting mode when you most need it ie when the live set it playing!

[Tekhed66]

Hey I'm getting the same thing with Beatseeker, I'm using a pre recorded wav of my drummer to 'simulate' a live situation by playing it from an app outside of ableton and bringing it in via soundflower. When in listening mode, it seems spot on, then pressing the 'button' (I'm assuming the button the instructions refer to is the device UI?), it plays Ableton at the right detected tempo but then nothing, it's locked on the initial tempo and I eventually get drift.

It's like they've done the hard bit of detecting tempo but forgotten to keep it in detecting mode when you most need it ie when the live set it playing!

Hi Barstu

Yep - you've described the problem perfectly... everything suggests that Ableton/Beatseeker has detected the tempo but when you press the button to activate the device, nothing happens.

I'm not sure if there are multiple problems ... when we last tried it with a real live drummer, the tempo shot all over the place (+/- 10bpm or more) in the space of a couple of bars ... completely unusable.

I used the same equipment setup to test B-Keeper and Beatseeker and loaded both devices into the same Live project... one worked and the other didnt.

I'd suggest you give B-Keeper a try and see if you can get it to work with your drum machine... I'm hoping to test it out on our drummer at the end of the week and then put it through its paces.

good luck

[barstu]

Hi I gave B-keeper a try, there are a lot of settings that are unlabelled, if it had more documentation I'd have more confidence in using it on stage. I had a go with the demo samples that speed up and slow down, and it kind of worked but a drum loop I had in another track just didn't sound right, maybe all the different settings can overcome this but I wouldn't know where to start. I'm sticking with a click track for now.

I might see if I can send this thread to the Beatseeker authors.

[RadioOnMars]

I might see if I can send this thread to the Beatseeker authors.

yes, I'm on this thread.

[barstu]

Oh that's great to hear so is it meant to keep on changing tempo after it starts playing the Ableton set and is in the blue mode? I'm currently just seeing it locked into the initial tempo. Monitor mode however seems to keep tracking the subtle tempo changes.

[RadioOnMars]

Yes. Essentially, if you start using the button, it is blue (listening) and the tempo would be fluctuating. If you start by pressing space-bar, the tempo is fixed at the same as the Live set (fixed tempo/not listening).

[Tekhed66]

I gave B-keeper a try, there are a lot of settings that are unlabelled, if it had more documentation I'd have more confidence in using it on stage.

Yep ... that's my main gripe with B-Keeper... there are lots of parameters to adjust but no instructions or documentation ... who knows what each knob is meant to do? I just fiddled blindly until things started to work but as a backup, I was writing all the parameter numbers down on paper in case I had to backtrack.

I found that B-Keeper and Beatseeker were both poor with regards to instructions and help files and I emailed the B-Keeper developer weeks ago with some setup questions and have yet to receive a reply.

Oh well ... just hoping that B-Keeper works at our next rehearsal...

[barstu]

I've tried again with Beatseeker and am having much more success now, I'm going into blue mode and it is reacting to the incoming audio's tempo. I have no idea why I wasn't seeing this the 1st time.