Fucking Impossible To Sync Ableton With External Hardware

[justin]

hey guys,

I have a similar sort of problem, maybe u can help?

I use ableton to play clips n scenes, beats, synths, full tracks etc.

i also use hardware (electribe samplers), my problem is that i want to route the audio out of my hardware into ableton as a channel but the delay settings dont work with audio in for some reason, only midi...

so i cant get the audio from my hardware in time with the audio playing in ableton..

it sucks

ive tried numerous sound cards m-audio, novation, edirol but no joy..

It works fine if i dont need the audio routed back in to ableton but thats wot i want..


can anyone help!!!


im currently using ableton 5
edirool ua25
korg electribes, esx, emx
sony vaio dual core 2gb ram
all the latest drivers.

i think this is a slightly different problem to the one being discussed here, but still related. the answer is in delaying the midi track connected to your hardware in the minus range (ex. -60ms). there is no way you can use track delay on audio tracks set to live input in the minus range, because you cant bring sound forward that hasnt been recorded to the hd. so instead use the midi track to compensate for the delay you are experiencing. might also be related to the latency setup on your sound card...

THEN, let us know if this delay time seems to change of its own accord (most likely when changing dsp load of live set // change number of tracks, plugins, etc...)!

ps. (disclaimer) not too sure how much this applies to live 5, am using 6.

j

[lunabass]

hey guys. these issues have also been discussed in this thread if your interested
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=52381 i know they are aware of it

the best way to get the abes attention on this is to contact them directly with support requests at Ableton Technical Support. if you all put in support/bug tickets then they will be more aware of the problem...they dont always read this forum.

[icedsushi]

Here's an update. I think I'm going to also send ableton an email directly.

I have several drum machines to test this, and this happens with every one of them:

Playing 4/4 kicks as test, it will accept a negative clock delay until the the kicks are ALMOST on the beat. If I even go -1 ms more, or get close to them being early, Live pushes the recorded audio late by 9 ms. It won't let the audio be early. Strange isn't it!

Recording is enabled, set to AUTO. So let's say I need -27ms midi clock delay for the recorded audio clip to be just about right on. If I enter -28, now my recorded clip is 9 ms late! If I enter -100 ms, my recorded clip is still 9 ms late! If I enter -250 ms, my recorded clip is STILL 9 ms late!

Live is doing something...pushing the midi or audio late so that the HW can never speed up quickly over the course of a measure & sync being earlier that Live.

[The III Man]

Hi,

This has been driving me up the wall for a while now and I queryied the abes support about it before.

I run ableton, and an electribe as a midi slave. I can succeed in syncing up using ableton to send the midi clock to the electribe. As discussed above there are a few issues such as getting audio back into ableton, but thats an inevitable consequence of latency, particularly if like me you are using the delay compensation button.

My problem is I can sync things up but ALBETONS MIDI SYNC DOESNT WORK. Full stop. I sync my electribe and get it to sync on a four four beat however the 16ths such as hi hats are totally erratic. They develop a swing of their own and its not even constant.

When I spoke to ableton they said "it must be the audio card" well its not. Solution is, download midiox and send a midi sync tempo thing to your external hardware. Low and behold my electribe is beatifully synced up and the problem has nought to do with the mididrivers of my sound card.

So unless Ableton sort this issue I am somehow going to have to use midi ox and run albeton as a slave of that too.

It is such a shame because it means any potentially interesting live set involving hardware is entirely scuppered by Abletons unreliable midi sync. And I dont want to sync to my electribe because that entirely defeats the point of using Ableton.

toby

[BASSbüro]

*bump*

again, abes, check your midi-clock-implementation. there's something wrong. it's hardly impossible to sync external hardware with it. ableton should be a proper master. but the clock is unstable. live is doing something, pushing the midi or audio to late, especially when you change the scenes.

[musicmachine]

I've tested with RS7000 as master with live and a korg emx slaved.With this setup the mx never loses sync,it plays back perfectly.Recordings are another matter

I just tested with live as master and after a hiccup it now seems to be playing relatively ok as in it's not drifting but when i hit play there is a hiccup in the sound.I set my soundcard latency(focusrite saffire le): ASIO buffer size 4ms and FireWire buffer size 2ms.This gives me an input latency of 5.6ms and output latency of 9.5

Overall latency in lives prefs is 15.13ms and the best compensation i can get is -15.1 and i'm left with an overall latency of 0.02ms.Would that difference affect where the notes are being placed when i record them?

Here's a couple of screenshots of a 4x4 drum kick recorded from the RS7000




The first is th first note of bar 1 and the second is the first note of bar 2.Why is there such a difference?I've spent all day testing this and there is definitely an issue.Whether live is master or slave everything i record is like this

I've set the latency settings the best i can get them and i don't know what else to do(apart form quantize everything)!It's a major headache and ableton have to recognize that there is something going on here

I'll keep trying different setups but if there is something wrong with the sync(what else could it be?!)and ableton won't address i then where does that leave us?