Sloppy MIDI timing w/ external hardware

mike holiday · Post by **mike holiday** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 6:43 am

havn't tried it in 5 yet as i'v seen the results in 2, 3, &4

I have a midi syncable effect unit

and it has a bpm display to the tenth

when i try and sync it to live

I can watch the numbers go up and down in a 2 bpm spread

but live works great as a slave

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 8:33 am

imo that's the strange thing about it: If Live slaves so well, why on earth doesn't the same stability work the other way?

djastroboy · Post by **djastroboy** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 12:41 pm

mike holiday wrote:
I have a midi syncable effect unit

and it has a bpm display to the tenth

when i try and sync it to live

I can watch the numbers go up and down in a 2 bpm spread

but live works great as a slave

How does it look when you sync the efx unit from a drum machine or something else that generates MIDI clocks?

mike holiday · Post by **mike holiday** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 12:21 am

bpm stays rock sold and follows changes if i change it with the master unit

also rock sold synced to protools..

tomorrow i'll try it with five

mike holiday · Post by **mike holiday** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 8:49 pm

whoops the midi unit isn't the one that displays tenths
(lexicon mpx 550)
but here are the results..

project tempo = 133

unit displays 133 approxamatly every 6 beats, the unit drops to 127 and bounces back.
i can hear the delay loose sync and swing back..but less fluctuation then live 4

eamoon · Post by **eamoon** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 9:59 pm

what's your CPU load, mike? do you get the same slop if you hit 'play' on an empty live set?

filarion · Post by **filarion** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 10:41 pm

I posted a thread about my pain trying to get Live to slave to my Machinedrum a couple of weeks ago. When I set loops or try to do jumps within the MD's sequencer, live will not re-sync properly. there's at least 4 ways I can get the midi timing to go to hell.

1) Machinedrum MIDI Master and in Songmode, Live EXT on: fine as long as I don't try to do any jumps in the MD's sequencer. unfortunately that's what makes it interesting as MIDI master in the first place. Live will immediatedly stop playback when the jump is dialed and drop back in at the wrong timing at the beginning of the new bar.

2) Machinedrum MIDI Master and in Songmode, Live EXT on: after switching a looppoint off in Live's sequencer the song position jumps forward the amount of bars that I just looped.

3) Machinedrum MIDI Slave in Songmode, Live Sync Master, Song Mode: using cuepoints to move around in the arrangement frequently makes the MD (and other midi gear) loose sync and also jumps to the incorrect song positions in the MD

4) Machinedrum MIDI Slave in Songmode, Live Sync Master, Pattern Mode: The only usable option for me in my "gig" environment. Basically the timing is accurate (bpm fluctuating a little on the external gear, but within limits) and I only rarely loose sync.. but it also happened today for some reason. will investigate further but I hope it was an isolated coincidence.

anyway, I've been working on a musical program I'd like to perform with Live and right now Live is making it hard to sync my external gear.. and it's not allowing my external gear to be in control either. fwiw, I have absolutely tight timing with Logic, at least when it comes to moving forward in the timeline via the Machinedrum sequencer (which is the big issue I'd like to see addressed).

pfff. sorry for the rant, I've been fighting these problems the past weeks and I was kinda surprised that other people do not have timing problems as severe.. anyone else using external gear as Midi Clock master?

icedsushi · Post by **icedsushi** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 2:23 am

Funny you say that Logic timing is better. Poor midi clock was one of the several reasons I stopped using Logic. The midi clock to my xbase was always about 400-500 samples early! Weird! Several other people complained on the Logic forum, no response from Apple to bug reports and no bug fix. And no workaround in prefs...you just had to listen to the flamming and constantly be shifting the audio files.

While not perfect, my experience with Live's basic midi has been much better than Logic 7.1.

filarion · Post by **filarion** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 8:35 am

I never upgraded to 7, I'm still on 6.4.3, which I incidentally also used with the Xbase for a while - didn't have any troubles. I figure that before Logic 7 is fully fixed they'll do a payable upgrade to 8 anyway, which is what I'll buy. =p

icedsushi · Post by **icedsushi** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 2:28 pm

Ahah, well I think that bug in 7 has something to do with PDC when they put it in. Something weird happened, like they tried to overcompensate the midi or something and there was no workaround. I don't know if they fixed it or not because I'm not using Logic now. I waited almost a year for a fix. That was long enough.

If I were in your shoes, I would probably go with the latest 7.x with the most bugfixes rather than a fresh 8.0 which along with new features would have some fresh bugs to be ironed out. Going from 6-8 will more than likely cost more than going 6-7 too.

filarion · Post by **filarion** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 4:05 pm

not sure about the costs (though I agree about the stability). afterall you could upgrade from 5 Gold to 7 Pro for the same price as someone from 6 Pro to 7 Pro.. I doubt they'll ditch that approach since it allows them to offer the last few PC users nice incentives to do the switch.