Where did the "Clock Source" preference go?

page · Post by **page** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 3:57 am

Hi, I'm trying to start working in Live 6 after using Live 5 for some time. In my studio, I need to sync my audio card to my external D/A convertors. In Live 5, there was a preference in the Audio section called "Clock Source". This allowed folks like me to set the Clock Source on their sound card, e.g. I set it to "Digital" .

Well, in Live 6, this preference seems to have disappeared! I can't find it anywhere. It would be fine if this could still be set in the control panel for the audio card, but at least with my sound card, Lynx L22, this isn't possible. Live 6 always overrides and forces the Clock Source to Internal!

Well this causes syncing problems for me and makes Live 6 basically unusable here.

If this option is truly gone, why? Some of us need it back! Please help!

ps, If you're not sure, none of this is related to MIDI sync, I'm talking about the audio card clock.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:21 am

they're there.

click the little triangle by midi port to open the menu for each port. they hid from me too.

Clearscreen · Post by **Clearscreen** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:55 am

ps, If you're not sure, none of this is related to MIDI sync, I'm talking about the audio card clock.

i think you missed this part of his post deft.
it's a good question page, where did this setting go?

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 5:02 am

sample rate is in the audio tab, dunno, do you know what he's getting at?

what other clock is there?

this kind of stuff only makes me drink more...

IT'S YOUR FAULT!!!!

jhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

wha... sorry passed out for a second.

<edited to remove looooong line>

page · Post by **page** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 7:05 pm

Digital audio signals have a clock embedded to lock the convertor rate (e.g. to 44100 KHz) If you have external D/A convertors or some other more complex setup, something has to be set as the master clock with the other devices syncing to it.

It sure would be odd that as Ableton is adding more pro sequencer features to Live that they might take away this crucial one in Live 6!
Am I just overlooking something??

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 8:19 pm

page wrote:Digital audio signals have a clock embedded to lock the convertor rate (e.g. to 44100 KHz) If you have external D/A convertors or some other more complex setup, something has to be set as the master clock with the other devices syncing to it.

It sure would be odd that as Ableton is adding more pro sequencer features to Live that they might take away this crucial one in Live 6!
Am I just overlooking something??

Not true. AES/EBU/SPDIF has a clock built into the data stream, pure PCM does not. This has nothing to do with Live, rather it has to do with your sound card. You're looking for the WORD CLOCK setting for your sound card. Open that application associated with your sound card.

Live produces PCM that goes to your sound card. The sound card puts that info into whatever format it's designed for or asked to produce.

And it does not lock the converter rate. Digital audio receivers have detection schemes built into the chips that tell the rest of the system (DSP, FPGA, uProcessor etc.) what the detected sample rate is.

page · Post by **page** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 8:51 pm

That's right, sorry for not being specific, I don't mean PCM, I mean AES/EBU/SPDIF signals specifically.

I tried that, believe me. There is a setting for my sound card to define the clock source, in my case I'm not using word clock, I'm using AES, "Digital" in the Lynx control panel. However, Live 6 overrides this setting and always resets the clock source to "Internal"! (This occurs as soon as Live is opened and ASIO is initialized. Trying to change the setting after Live is already open also does not work, the change is ignored.)

I've tried this with a second sound card, Echo Layla24, and the same thing happens. Live is only allowing the "Internal" clock source to be used.

Since Live apparently controls this setting, the absence of this preference is a problem!
I imagine the majority of users don't need this feature but I wouldn't understand why it would be removed.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 8:57 pm

Just for stability purposes I can understand why Live would want to be the clock source. Clock drift would cause pops and clicks and all the internal math for the DSPs would have to change according to the detected rate. It might say 48kHz on the D/A but it's more like 48,001 Hz, at best.

You have D/A converters that cannot be slaved? Are you connected to channel pair 1/2, often those are used on D/A boxes to determine clock rate, if no rate is detected then it defaults to some default internal rate in the D/A.

I'm not a studio pro but I design this stuff for a living, that's my take on it, I can't say what all studio gear does or what you can or should expect from a DAW by comparing studio gear.

sans soleil · Post by **sans soleil** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 3:47 am

could it be that the clock source needs to be turned on before ableton can find and recognize it...?

...i know it's probably obvious, but i know i've overlooked a few retardedly basic things before.

(then again, it could be something completely different)

page · Post by **page** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 6:38 am

Tone Deft wrote:Just for stability purposes I can understand why Live would want to be the clock source. Clock drift would cause pops and clicks and all the internal math for the DSPs would have to change according to the detected rate. It might say 48kHz on the D/A but it's more like 48,001 Hz, at best.

You have D/A converters that cannot be slaved? Are you connected to channel pair 1/2, often those are used on D/A boxes to determine clock rate, if no rate is detected then it defaults to some default internal rate in the D/A.

I'm not a studio pro but I design this stuff for a living, that's my take on it, I can't say what all studio gear does or what you can or should expect from a DAW by comparing studio gear.

I don't think this has bearing on Live's DSP. I think DAWs do computations in non-realtime and pass audio data in buffers to the ASIO driver. Plus almost all other sequencers allow you to choose external clock sources, like Cubase, Logic, even FLStudio.

My normal setup is with the D/A on and set to master with the audio card syncing to it, everything is solid until I open Live 6 and it switches the audio card clock source without any way of switching it back. This isn't a problem with Live 5 with the clock source option.

Maybe like some other users, I need my D/A to be the master, I have a second D/A also slaving to it, so making the audio card master has limitations.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 6:51 am

what's the D/A converter?

if it works in Live 5 please file a bug report, that's BULLSHIT.

rbmonosylabik · Post by **rbmonosylabik** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 7:17 am

I've downloaded the manual for the L22. Have you tried changing the clock source both before and after opening live from the L22 Mixer?

Are you using it with the manufacturer's ASIO drivers or with something 3rd party (asio4all or similar)?

page · Post by **page** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 8:22 am

rbmonosylabik wrote:I've downloaded the manual for the L22. Have you tried changing the clock source both before and after opening live from the L22 Mixer?

Are you using it with the manufacturer's ASIO drivers or with something 3rd party (asio4all or similar)?

Yep, definitely tried that. Yeah, latest drivers from the mfr. Happens with my Layla24 too. Can anyone make this work with their sound card? (ie, change to external clock?)

Feature must truly be gone, will post bug.

what's the D/A converter?

UA 2192, sounds amazing btw! And the clock is rock solid

rbmonosylabik · Post by **rbmonosylabik** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 8:40 am

A quick search through Live's manual and I found nothing about audio clock source, so I think it's been removed. Weird how no one noticed before.

Also, I'm thinking somehow Live has a conflict with the drivers, because even when it doesn't let you change the clock source from it's preferences, it shouldn't lock it to internal when changed from the soundcard's software. Can you test it with an older version of the drivers to see if it works?

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 10:35 am

i set the clock in the audio/midi app. works like a charm.