Midi Sync issues between 2 laptops

taaloopa · Post by **taaloopa** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 2:49 pm

A friend & I have been trying to sync our laptops to work together in Live - I'm on a Macbook Pro looping live percussion, he's looping vsti's & beats using sampler on a PC.

We've been using the Mac as master to PC slave. They're perfectly synced at first but the slave progressively goes out of sync (lags behind) after a few minutes accumulating more with time.

We tried PC as master, but this introduced major and constant audio playback problems resulting in chopped up audio from the Mac output.

The Mac setup is:
MacbookPro 1.83GHz, 1GB RAM, MOTU Traveller audio interface, M-Audio Axion 25 Midi Controller.

PC Setup: Pentium Centrino Duo 1.66mhz with 512mb ram, Win XP SP2. Alesis Photon USB

Midi Sync is out from Traveller into Photon.
The Axiom 25 is used just for midi control, not for sync.

Does anyone have any ideas / suggestions of what the problem might be & how to fix it?

Any help & advice would be greatly appreciated!

cacti · Post by **cacti** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 3:59 pm

make sure EXT button is on. um sometimes when you dont have enough ram, it will lose the midi sync.

taaloopa · Post by **taaloopa** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 4:09 pm

Thanks cacti,

Yes, we had EXT button on. Both machines start together & in sync when play is pressed on the Mac, but drift out of sync over time.

Maybe ram is an issue, though both work fine independently - just trying to sync them together gives problems.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 6:51 pm

there's one setting that's kinda buried in Live that might help.

options - preferences - midi
on the port you're both using hit the right facing triangle to see the midi clock type settings, play with those. check the interface gear to see what they're set at and make sure everything is talking the same language.

you'll get it to work, I've done it with all kinds of different configurations, Mac - PC - Live 5 - Live 6 and it works, even through tempo changes. with tempo changes they'll drift out a bit but get back in sync after ~5 seconds at most.

taaloopa · Post by **taaloopa** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 7:59 pm

Thanks Tone Deft,

We did try various options there - where you get the option of selecting song or pattern on the master, and midi clock / MTC on the slave?

Will go through it again just to make sure.

willdahbe · Post by **willdahbe** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 8:14 pm

I've tried this before also and everything starts off good, but drifts out of sink.

Tried all the settings in the midi prefrences, sample rates, audio/midi latencey.
I hooked up with midi interfaces and ipMidi with the same results as taaloopa.

This just boggles my mind. If you figure something out taaloopa drop some knowlege. Or if anyone else can that would be sweet.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 8:18 pm

taaloopa wrote:Thanks Tone Deft,

We did try various options there - where you get the option of selecting song or pattern on the master, and midi clock / MTC on the slave?

Will go through it again just to make sure.

also check your hardware interfaces, they might not be sending what they're receiving. IOW they can receive one type of clock but send another. that's probably where the problem is. LOTS of people sync Live to Live, that part is simple, the real unknown, the variable is the hardware between the Live applications.

or just get them started and turn SYNC off and don't change BPM.

taaloopa · Post by **taaloopa** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 8:51 pm

Both were set to midi clock. We did try MTC just to see if it worked better, but no difference. Midi clock is what we need for bpm sync.

I guess it may well be some setting in the hardware & will look into that further.
We're aiming to put together a live set to peform, and have several pieces at different tempos, so staying in one bpm won't work for us.

Thanks for the input. As you say, I'm sure lots of people do sync live successfully - we'll get there in the end I'm sure.

willdahbe - when we do figure it out I'll post here with how we did it.

in the meantime, any more suggestions very welcome!

taaloopa · Post by **taaloopa** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 8:10 pm

update on this:

We had a few hours session on this again today & are still getting the same problems.

Again they begin in sync ( usually, but not every time ) but then every so often ( and unpredictably ) they drift out of sync & the midi clicks are clearly out with each other.

This can suddenly happen in the space of 1 bar, even though they've been ok for 100 bars.

Still hoping that someone here may have experienced similar problems & figured out how to sort it.

any more ideas / suggestions?