Fix the sync issues now !! yes or no ?

[dum]

clock sync worked fine in the 80´s.. i dont see why it has to drift now. with our mighty computers?

The computers may be mighty, but they developed far away from realtime and singletasking. Everything is multitasking now, no one computer is only doing "his thing" anymore, like the Atari, back in the days.

I guess that's why it isn't that easy to deliver audio in realtime anymore... with all that different parts that need to be in sync, then there's speedstep here, powersaving there, antivirus, firewire bus, USB, ...

sync works FINE in other modern computer audio applications, like Digital Performer / Logic and others probably.




Anyways - ya - absolutely this Sync debacle needs to be addressed once and for all.

I just simply gave up on sync/LIVE as it was literally - LITERALLY - depressing the fuck out of me. Even posting in this thread is giving me heart-burn. The only way I could feel better about LIVE was to lower my expectations and take my anal fisting like a man. That is to say...silently. The sad part is, I get the impression I'm not the only one who has come to accept this fate... the lack of attention this thread is receiving is testament to that...and the fact that most LIVE users are a combination of stupid & selfish, meaning at worst they'll argue against sensible suggestions/complaints or at best be completely indifferent.



Just kill me now please.

[dum]

oh ya, and 3phase, maybe it will be comforting to think about this.... but what makes you so sure that serato sync will be implemented any better ?

[broc]

sync works FINE in other modern computer audio applications, like Digital Performer / Logic and others probably.

Well, in my experience Logic as midi clock master doesn't work much better than Live.
There are also glitches, in particular at high cpu load and when opening windows etc.

As mentioned before, the basic problem seems to be that midi on modern computers is processed through software components of the OS running at normal priority together with other tasks. On Mac the priority of 'MIDIServer' can be increased with the Unix 'nice' command. This has been discussed and confirmed on the Logic forums. But it's a questionable hack which may have negative effects on overall system behavior.

[pulse]

can somebody explain this "nice" feature? I am on a Mac ...

to be honest I just sync my DSI Evolver with Live and I re-tested yesterday it still works ... BUT I have to set the sync master to be my audio card (ESI Quatafire), if I choose the mac to be the master, the sync goes glitchy as hell

[broc]

can somebody explain this "nice" feature? I am on a Mac ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_(Unix)

[[nis]]

Hi all,

According to our own tests, Live's MIDI clock output when running it as a MASTER is relatively accurate, probably as accurate as it can get on a multitasking computer. In our measurements it scored better than all other DAWs on Mac OS X. It was slightly worse on Windows PCs, but never worse than any other DAWs that we tested on Windows. Note that different MIDI interfaces may yield to different results. Some are good, some are bad. Live has no influence on how good or bad your interface processes your MIDI data. Combined audio/MIDI interfaces are often (but not always) a bad choice for MIDI clock.

I personally use a MOTU MicroLite MIDI interface on Mac OS X and Live clocks my drum machines without any noticeable drift.

However, when using Live as a SLAVE, you'll get fluctuations (usually around +/- 2 BPM) which are caused by MIDI jitter and the resulting tempo ramping which needs to be done to keep Live in sync. There's a way to improve the latter by recalculating Live's tempo less often than we do it right now. The downside is that (intentional) tempo changes would become less accurate, but you'd get at least a more stable sync when running the master at a steady tempo. This is something we CAN do, but I'm not sure when this could happen.

There's most likely no way to improve the accuracy when running Live as the master.

As broc already pointed out, you might get a more stable clock when using the Innerclock Systems SyncLock, which basically converts audio signals into a MIDI clock. As audio is less jittery than MIDI, this might be a solution for all users who have problems with Live's master clock. This will still not help to get a better sync when running Live as a slave, though.

Best,
Nico

[[nis]]

sync works FINE in other modern computer audio applications, like Digital Performer / Logic and others probably.

As far as MIDI clock SLAVE functionality is concerned, it's probably also worth to mention that Logic cannot be a MIDI clock slave at all anymore. They have removed this feature in Logic 7 or 8 (can't remember). Not sure why, but perhaps because it was causing too many problems.

Cubase/Nuendo cannot be a slave either.

[[nis]]

22 need sync? thats all?

If that helps: I've voted option #2 myself, because I also think that we could/should work on the MIDI clock SLAVE(!) improvements that I mentioned above.

As far as your personal MIDI clock problems are concerned: I'm wondering if you have actually read the comment which I left in your recent topic. The sync issues that you experienced during track selection were most likely caused by a high traffic of remote status update data on your MIDI ports and not by an unstable clock per se.

Also note that Transport Control via Serato and MIDI clock are two completely different pair of shoes.

Best,
Nico

[Coupe70]

Hi Nico,

thanks for sharing your thoughts on this matter.

I'll try to sum it up:

As clock master Live is the best DAW you can get
for MAC and PC. It works as it should and any
problems are not caused by Live.

Concerning Live as slave...well, I'm not sure I understood...
Does it work as it should ? If it can't be done
better (like as clock master) please say so. If it
does not work as it should...fix it, it's an
official feature, isn't it ?

Concerning the possible changes you mentioned:
Is it a bigger change or something you could offer
as option in the betas so people could try it out ?

[chapelier fou]

What kind of problems do you guys have ? I mean, concretely.

My experience :

Live as a master sync for driving an elektron MD : perfect.

Live as a slave, slaved by other live computers : kind of work. with a bug with losing one beat at bar 1024 (but that happened only when the master was provided by a live 6). And crashes if transport stops while recording a clip (don't know if it is fixed).

[luddy]

Nico,

How does Live do as an MTC slave and master? The nice thing about slaving to MTC is that there is no notion of tempo change, so that's taken out of the equation. The downside is you would have to have identical tempo maps on the two machines, but at least you would get the simple guarantee that the notion of 'time' is advancing at the same rate on master and slave(s). (Well, there's not really a simple notion of 'tempo map' in Live of course, but you would have to have the two machines agreeing on all tempo changes as time advances, whether those changes came from Tempo automation or from scene triggering / clip tempo masters etc.)

I know this would leave a bunch of problems open for folks who want to set tempos on the fly on the master and have the slave follow it, but that is something that no MIDI clock synchronization I've ever heard of accomodates. In other words, in the old days if you lashed two MPCs together using MIDI clock, or a DAW and an MPC, they had to have identical tempo maps. Seems to me that Live is getting running headlong into the problem of trying to resolve instantaneous tempo changes in the master with synchronization of master and slave, and those two things are pretty obviously incompatible. It's obvious on the surface of it that it can't be done satisfactorily with anything less than a very high bandwidth / low latency connection between master and slave, right?

rambling a bit but there it is ,

-Luddy

[broc]

Nico,

How does Live do as an MTC slave and master? The nice thing about slaving to MTC is that there is no notion of tempo change, so that's taken out of the equation. The downside is you would have to have identical tempo maps on the two machines, but at least you would get the simple guarantee that the notion of 'time' is advancing at the same rate on master and slave(s). (Well, there's not really a simple notion of 'tempo map' in Live of course, but you would have to have the two machines agreeing on all tempo changes as time advances, whether those changes came from Tempo automation or from scene triggering / clip tempo masters etc.)

I know this would leave a bunch of problems open for folks who want to set tempos on the fly on the master and have the slave follow it, but that is something that no MIDI clock synchronization I've ever heard of accomodates. In other words, in the old days if you lashed two MPCs together using MIDI clock, or a DAW and an MPC, they had to have identical tempo maps. Seems to me that Live is getting running headlong into the problem of trying to resolve instantaneous tempo changes in the master with synchronization of master and slave, and those two things are pretty obviously incompatible. It's obvious on the surface of it that it can't be done satisfactorily with anything less than a very high bandwidth / low latency connection between master and slave, right?

rambling a bit but there it is ,

-Luddy

Good points.

That's probably the reason why major DAWs like Logic and Cubase don't support MIDI clock slaving at all.

Personally I'm using MTC for syncing DAWs. But slaving Live to MTC seems a bit unreliable. Also, it would be nice to have MTC output.

[Machinesworking]

Hi all,

According to our own tests, Live's MIDI clock output when running it as a MASTER is relatively accurate, probably as accurate as it can get on a multitasking computer. In our measurements it scored better than all other DAWs on Mac OS X. It was slightly worse on Windows PCs, but never worse than any other DAWs that we tested on Windows. Note that different MIDI interfaces may yield to different results. Some are good, some are bad. Live has no influence on how good or bad your interface processes your MIDI data. Combined audio/MIDI interfaces are often (but not always) a bad choice for MIDI clock.

I personally use a MOTU MicroLite MIDI interface on Mac OS X and Live clocks my drum machines without any noticeable drift.

Not my experience at all. Syncing a Poly Evolver to Live, Live randomly syncs, and generally is only good for about 4 seconds or so, then it drifts, doubles etc.
In Logic it does OK, sometimes glitches but nothing terrible. Digital Performer syncs the Evolver as perfectly as you say Live does.
This is with an RME Fireface 800, and a MOTU MTP/AV as the interfaces into a Macbook Pro 2.4Ghz. I never found a solution to this, and gave up after a few tech support emails back and forth where I ended up getting asked the same simple questions and given the same answer. I don't know why some of us have sync issues that make Live behave differently than your internal tests, but I do know that it's obvious from the amount of people who constantly bring this up on the forum who do know what they're doing that it's a real issue, and won't be solved by getting a better MIDI or audio interface, it's either some odd problem with hardware/drivers or some internal plug in or setting issue, and/or you're setting up the cleanest environment you can and not bothering to replicate our set ups.

Either way, I'm a little ticked at your claim that it syncs better than all other DAWs on OSX, in my direct experience, that's far from the truth, I've recorded the audio from Live and DP and seen how far off Live gets, and personally I find it a little disrespectful that you say this in total disregard to my own already stated experience. Whether I have some setting wrong or Live has an issue with Korg, RME, MOTU, NI or Novation drivers on my system, it's still an issue, and it's still being addressed like it doesn't exist at all. Seriously WTF? are we all lying in your minds? are we all using Behringer MIDI and audio devices and running Kracked plug ins on pirated Live instals on bargain basement PCs? What is the reason why people at Ableton can't, or do not want to address this? Makes me wonder about Ableton's internal testing process, and if you guys even own a farm of PCs/Macs for this purpose?
or is it up to the non paid fan boys to beta configurations?

Sorry if I'm being harsh, but there's no logical reason why Live should suck at MIDI sync compared to other DAWs I own, but it does, and every time this is brought up, it gets treated like it's a ghost story we're using to scare new customers away with.... bleh!

[broc]

According to our own tests, Live's MIDI clock output when running it as a MASTER is relatively accurate, probably as accurate as it can get on a multitasking computer. In our measurements it scored better than all other DAWs on Mac OS X.

Maybe you should explain under which conditions the measurements were done, in particular CPU load and UI actions.
In my experience Live seems more sensitive to such 'real life' parameters than eg. Logic.

[luddy]

Personally I'm using MTC for syncing DAWs. But slaving Live to MTC seems a bit unreliable. Also, it would be nice to have MTC output.

+1.

MTC or SMPTE/LTC are the standards for synching DAWs and/or other transports like film or tape. If Live could just support this on both input and output side it would already give it a good capability that matches most of what other DAWs can do at this point. MIDI clock sync doesn't make sense with on-the-fly tempo changes and tempo nudging etc., they should forget about this once and for all. Some other kind of proprietary sync over a dedicated network channel or something might be able to lock the tempos together, but MIDI clock per se is never going to accomplish this.

-Luddy