synchronizing two laptops

jobot · Post by **jobot** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 5:41 am

Hi all... new here, but I did a quick search and couldn't find what I was looking for, so...

Here's the situation. A friend and I both have new-ish laptops running Ableton 4.0, and we're trying to synchronize them through MIDI. We're trying to use his eMachines laptop as the master clock, and my Asus as the slave. He's also got an Evolution UC-33 controller, which has a MIDI Out.

We first tried running MIDI Out from the UC-33 to the input on an M-Audio UNO, plugged in to the USB adapter on my laptop. Preferences appear to be set up properly -- UNO shows up on mine, set as MIDI input, etc. Tried sending/receiving both MIDI Clock and MIDI Timecode. The signal apparently gets as far as the UNO -- you can see the MIDI In light flash in time -- but Abe apparently does not receive the signal. No flashy lights when 'EXT' is selected.

We tried the same thing substituting a Midisport 2x2 for the UNO, and get basically the same results.

We also tried plugging the UNO in to his other USB port, hooking the MIDI out from there into an input on the 2x2, which is in turn plugged in to my USB port. Still nothing.

Any clues? The show is Saturday, we've got some great ideas if we can just get things synched.

THANKS!

jaffacake · Post by **jaffacake** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 5:49 pm

are u sure the midi in and out devices are enabled in both instances of live?

try MIDI-OX to see if ure computer is actually receiving the midi messages...
good luck

jobot · Post by **jobot** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 6:15 pm

good tip. actually, about ten minutes after I posted this, we figured it out. We ended up uninstalling/reinstalling the UNO driver on his laptop, and running that into the 2x2 which was in turn connected to mine.

One more question. If I stop playback on my laptop, it won't synchronize/start playback again until MIDI clock is stopped/restarted, on his laptop. It shouldn't be too hard to work around as I could just insert some empty clips, but is there another way around this?

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 10:44 pm

Check in the preferences of both Live's and check that under MIDI both machines are sending/listening to MIDI CLOCK, not MIDI TIMECODE (MTC) if one is set differently to the the other, sync will not work.

HTH

Petteri Karjalainen · Post by **Petteri Karjalainen** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 10:40 am

gnn .. why is midi sync so hard ...
people ! . get a crossover network cable, connect it to both laptops. download musiclab's midioverlan CP demo from www.musiclab.com ..

done. rock solid midisync.

thank you and good bye

jobot · Post by **jobot** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 12:30 am

Petteri Karjalainen wrote:gnn .. why is midi sync so hard ...
people ! . get a crossover network cable, connect it to both laptops. download musiclab's midioverlan CP demo from www.musiclab.com ..

done. rock solid midisync.

thank you and good bye

sweet -- that sounds much easier than going thru two devices with their own drivers, plus the USB layer to worry about. I could see it yielding better latency, too. Probably too late to implement 2 days before a big show, but I am going to give this a shot.

Thanks!