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Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
The Revrend
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Post by The Revrend » Thu Jul 06, 2006 9:52 pm

AMD Athlon 64 x2 4400 Toledo Core // 2 GB of Corsair XMS // WD Raptor "X" 1500 // Creative X-Fi Professional // EVGA GeForce 7900GT 256MB // G5 Laser Mouse // Viewsonic VX922 LCD Monitor // Coolermaster Ammo 533 Case

Machinesworking
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Post by Machinesworking » Sat Jul 08, 2006 3:21 pm

nebulae wrote: As for ethernet, you gotto have two gigabit cards, and then if you use a twisted pair direct ethernet cable, at least a Cat5e or Cat6, then you should get decent latency.

Having said all that, I still think using the second machine as a glorified rack mount using standard midi is the simplest way to go. If you use a kick ass host like Forte, then it's a very robust solution.
Ethernet audio solutions such as Wormhole is what I was referring to, the latency is pretty high compared to using ADAT and ethernet for MIDI only, which is what I do generally.

Great to hear that SX3 and SYstem link are a solution!

nebulae
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Post by nebulae » Sat Jul 08, 2006 5:25 pm

Systemlink and SX3 are good options. However, they also take a bit to set up. Mainly, you'll need SPDIF connections on your sound cards, and then it's a digital transfer of sync and audio between the two hosts.

When connecting, it's best to make the main host the master SPDIF clock, and the slave host the slave SPDIF clock. Also, in Systemlink you'll have to configure both hosts to be able to see and work with each other. The documentation should be able to help you do this, but I recall my tests created some interesting scenarios.

In any case, after you try all this, do try the simple solution of midi. It's sloppier, but ultimately, it's the easiest way to go. And once you have the latencies figured out, in Live you can compesate for them in the preferences with a -(latency in milliseconds) setting, so that your audio is always starting off at the right spot.

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