Ableton Forum

OMG IT WORKED!!!!11!!!

IT WORKS!!!!

Now, admittedly, this was a very short test. I'll have to leave it go for hours and see if it stays in time.

Gear: 20" iMac C2D, Alesis IO26, Korg Electribe ESX.

maybe you could change the title of the thread so that people like me don't read to page 4 before finding out it's already been fixed.

i don' t mean to boast but my access virus and nord micro modular can sync to live 7.0.10 to probs.
my soundcard is an RME FF400 however, so maybe its the quality of the soundcard not the the software thats the issue?

finally

I sold my electribe 6 months ago after not being able to sync it with live for 2 years.

as Crash/Timur has pointed out, theres a massive variation in the latency given by different combinations of interfaces, midi interfaces, hardware and the amount of midi info being sent.

Silverfish, try sending lots of midi info, as well as clock to your 'tribe and see if it stays in time.

My conclusions regarding Live as a Midi Sync Master are only based on Windows though. Live on Windows can be a perfect Midi Sync Master keeping external gear (both hardware and software) in Sync for hours (I tried that).

The worst problem on Windows with Midi Sync are not originating from Live, but from Midi interface drivers. Even worse, if one single driver starts choking on Midi data then the whole MME system of Windows is affected! In consequence Midi Sync becomes unstable to unuseable, partly depending on how "tollerant" the Midi Slave is. This happens with other software as well, not only with Live (I tried Reaper, Sonar and MidiOX)!

I have six different Midi interfaces (PCI, USB and FW), all of which behave differently. The worst drags down MME when only 240 bytes/s are send (5 Midi Note On/Off per 1/16th at 120 BPM), the best can be stressed without any problem upto 2400 bytes/s. But considering that the maximum Midi bandwidth is 3125 bytes/s per Midi port they all kind of fail (Midi Sync needs bandwidth by itself though). DirectMusic works differently and independent of these MME problems, but it brings other issue which might be Live specific or not (even light Midi load can lead to audio dropouts with small latency buffers).

Question is how OS X' Core Midi performs? I wont have access to a Mac before next week and don't know if I've got enough time to test that then (it will be critical to our project soon, but not like tomorrow).

I was on OSX and XP... same things.

Just to mention it, I don't know anymore if I did my runs on 7.0.9 or 7.0.11b. If that is important to anyone, let me know.

Crash wrote: I have six different Midi interfaces (PCI, USB and FW), all of which behave differently.

you are quite clearly insane! Crash can you list the midi interfaces you tested in order of performance? it would be interesting to know which manufacturers/chipsets do better than others.

Crash wrote:7.0.11b.

That might explain why i'm not having any love...

adventurepants_ wrote:

Crash wrote: I have six different Midi interfaces (PCI, USB and FW), all of which behave differently.

you are quite clearly insane! Crash can you list the midi interfaces you tested in order of performance? it would be interesting to know which manufacturers/chipsets do better than others.

Nah, just preparing our live setup where we need to slave a second laptop plus maybe some hardware to a laptop running Live as Master. I read about all the supposed Sync problems on the forum and experienced my own share.

I'm not finished with my runs yet (too busy working atm), but as far as I remember the Remote SL37 (USB) performed worst so far, closely followed by the Korg PadKontrol (USB), while the clear winner is the NI Kore 1 (USB), closely followed by the RME Fireface 400 (FW).

The Fireface is an oddity though. Like the NI Kore 1 it remains useable upto around 2400 bytes/s, but unlike the NI Kore 1 it does not keep up a steady stream of Midi Sync when Midi data troughput increases over 1200 bytes/s. That means that it will start putting out Sync events in pakets with several events showing the same timestamp. The jury is still out on the PCI based onboard MPU-401 and M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (the new drivers changed its Midi behavior, I fear for the worse). The Fireface, Audiophile and MPU-401 come with native DirectMusic drivers. Good news is that you can use DirectMusic for sending out Midi Sync even when the MME system is overload.

The pakets of Midi Sync events with same timestamps should not be much of a problem for well implemented Midi Slaves (the number of Sync events per second remains the same), but some might get into troubles depending on how they calculate Sync out of that. My test-slaves worked fine with this. By the way, Live as a Midi Sync Slave is a piece of junk!

Crash wrote:

adventurepants_ wrote:

Crash wrote: I have six different Midi interfaces (PCI, USB and FW), all of which behave differently.

I'm not finished with my runs yet (too busy working atm), but as far as I remember the Remote SL37 (USB) performed worst so far, closely followed by the Korg PadKontrol (USB), while the clear winner is the NI Kore 1 (USB), closely followed by the RME Fireface 400 (FW).

very interestink! i can verify the padkontrol, i had all sorts of midi slop trying to chain any device through it.

Everyone still interested in this issue might find this interesting:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... light=sync