Ableton Forum

Machinate wrote:

Pitch Black wrote:Have you guys tried using a common MIDI clock-master, and both instances of Live working as slaves? Such as a hardware drum mach, groovebox, master-keyboard clock, etc

That always worked well enough for me. Hows it been in your experience?

herp derp - clearly you're just not professional enough to bitch about problems, Paddy!

:bighug,bighug:

Thanks for the update, Ableton. I've got students on a locked image, lamenting the absence of amp models in Live, and then you go and do this shit. Lovely.

That is great for you guys that you can live with it ...
And that the students have a teacher that dont even gets that there are some glitches regarding the syncing..ok...too in depth stuff would be irritating and might make ableton live look bad.. We dont want that...

And maybe the times are over where live as clock slave jumps to the offbeat after 20 minutes.. So we had some little improovements in the past..But they never did it wright sofar, fixed it once and for all...
You still have tempo fluctuations as clock slave.. when you do goa trance like pitchblack that might be ok.. for breakbeat stuff it matters even less..
And pitchblack gets it done with an external hardware clock master. So no ableton internal solution..
No propper syncing between to ableton Live laptops without the aid of extra hard or software...
That is the problem.. When there wouldnt be workarounds Ableton would have got much more noise about the issue allready.
But are work arounds acceptable in a situation where they can sync to timecode records now but still not just with another ableton live instance?
Sorry.. the serato bridge release defently marks the point where users should act a bit more pissed off regarding the sync issues.
!

So live as clock slave is not very good working.. natives instrument reaktor in stand alone is much better for example...
Other daw´s dont care about beeing clocksynced.. but other daw´s dont try to replace our old stagehardware..
So it´s a special demand for propper clock slaving for a program like ableton live. You need it to hold the tempo and not fluctuate around the tempo.. when i want swing i program it. The wobbeling is unecessary and when doing recordings a source of brown henke dither.
When you have longer sections of string stuff in repitch mode you dont like the pitch modulation or when you do doublings on the bassdrum on house related stuff you dont like it..or when you just try to do the main beat with ableton live you might not like it when your 808 set sounds like beeing drunk.
Some very early versions of live behaved better than L8 now. And L8 behaves a bit better than some previous versions.. but no real fix.. the tempo is still fluctuating too much..should be at least the factor 10 better.. or in ideal 100% stable as we have it with native instruments reaktor...

and thats only the clock slave aspect of the sync misery...

As clock master we have the violation of the midi standard problem that causes glitches when you dont give live an exclusiv clockport... so you need external mergers and over complicated midi wiring on stage to overcome that..

in case you want to sync via timecode you need again another soft or hardware daw as timecode master .,because ableton choosed to be the only daw on the market that cant produce a midi timecode...

as timcode slave we have certain glitches.. so as timecode slave you better dont work in session mode..
and there are funny phenomens with certain offsets.. i reported that, but again it dont looks like that ableton has realized that as buggy behaviour...
And of cause we miss the function to lock events in arrange to the timecode position, what makes a lot of standard tc slave operations difficult or impossible.

Thats a bunch of little problems that stay there since years... and since years users wish improovements..

Thanks god, at one point came the dj nudge function..since than we can run in free sync ..so you just pitch in like a dj, and let it run..
The only convinient way to deal with the situation... Too bad that lives reaktion to start comands is buggy..so you allways need to nudge even when you have pressed start in the wright moment..Only working with user remote scripts gives slightly better results here.. In any case on stages with bad monitoring problematic and extra twiddeling that takes time and concentration from your main tasks like playing keyboard for example...

Its pretty funny that in a time where dj´s stop to beatmatch you start doing that as live act...
Sorry..thats rather weard considering that this all worked fine with hardware back in the late 80´s allready..
There is not much excuse to dont get that fixed except ignorance towards the problem.
The problem is that we have errors in all parts of the syncing mechanisms of Ableton Live.

Ableton is shifting this kind of detail problems allways to a later point in favor of sale argument features...

amp simulation.. pfff.. when i want a amp simulation on stage i use a little line 6 device or a boss fx board or have a varity of 3rd party plugs...

when i want to dj with timecode records i do that with serato or traktor alone... the ability to hook on with ableton live is a
"Ritchie Hawtin needs it" luxury function.. he is to lazy to do the beat matching with the nudge buttons.. so we have comfi time code record beat matching now.. whhooo.. thats the improovment the live act world needs..

Sorry.. i could be positive about this kind of news when the old dirt would have been cleaned out before that...

And the syncing department is not the only one where Ableton is missing the sense for important details..
APC support is another issue here..

f-ing classic.

I think the Bible is shorter than that post. cheers to your story ending better.

Tone Deft wrote:f-ing classic.

I think the Bible is shorter than that post. cheers to your story ending better.

it seems to be necessary to go more into detail here because its easy and short to oppose with a " no problems here "
But there are in fact some technical problems in all areas regarding syncing.. And that sums up in a pretty unconvinient situation for a good part of the user base. I discussed the issue with many collegs in berlin during the last month..and they are all not overly happy with the syncing.. but just go along without ever even thinking about visiting the forum regarding the matter..
But...
Ableton needs to be convinced that its more than time to adress this complex and clean it out.
Some ableton sruffs allready stated that they are aware of the problems and would like to get it done.. but they cant as long the management dont orders them to do that.

The prioritys are wrong.. In the moment they are probably working on shiny new L9 features instead clearing the basics first

L8.2 speaks pretty loud for that assumption.

anybody human wrote:I'd like to know more about this sync issue. Don't have a need for it now but I might like to do this at some point and have heard that it's problematic. Live is the shit, people don't want to use another program and should be able to sync 2 laptops both running, that just seems basic for performance oriented software. How do people do it? Don't Daft Punk and Glitch Mob sync laptops? Does Pitch Black or do they run off one? Just curious about this issue. Would an external clock help?

yeah, how does daft punk do it? surely there is a way!

theque wrote:

anybody human wrote:I'd like to know more about this sync issue. Don't have a need for it now but I might like to do this at some point and have heard that it's problematic. Live is the shit, people don't want to use another program and should be able to sync 2 laptops both running, that just seems basic for performance oriented software. How do people do it? Don't Daft Punk and Glitch Mob sync laptops? Does Pitch Black or do they run off one? Just curious about this issue. Would an external clock help?

yeah, how does daft punk do it? surely there is a way!

There are work arounds and as more roadys you have as easier it is to work around..daft punk could afford own server racks on stage like depeche mode if they want to. Maybe they even work inside one ableton instance with 2 laptops or just sync ableton with another master daw via timecode or engage programers to write them some external osc syncing devices or whatever..
I doubt that they like wobbeling tempos on the slave device..at least when they have beats on booth instances..
Theire housy disco music is defently a style that could suffer from wobbely syncing.

A convinient situation would be plug and play without the aid of external gear or software

Thanks Ableton. This update was a pleasant surprise! The new amp sims are going to come in very handy!

so far so good. have had 8.2 running about 6h straight working on a pretty heavy track (~35-40 tracks in arrangement with automation/fx/etc).

and got some nice fuzz on my bassline from fiddling with AMP.. been a good night.

Re: syncing

Just a thought but maybe the work on The Bridge could translate into better MIDI sync down the line.

Optimal job, thanks to all the staff of live ableton

hi

Gennaro

anybody human wrote: sync issue... Does Pitch Black or do they run off one?

We used to run two G4's and then two MBP's both chasing MIDI clock from a Roland A-37 MIDI controller keyboard.

They would have different "ramp" times from a standing start, but they would lock up and stay locked within 1.5 beats in a 4/4 bar from a standing start. No biggie, we just learned to only have one laptop playing at the very top of the tune.

Now we run off just one MBP at a time... but we didn't change because of any sync issues... Like I say it worked well enough for us with that hardware and that showload and that methodology. 2 x RME MIDI interfaces probably did no harm, either... [/quote]

Thats the beauty of software - everyone uses it differently.
Thats that maddening thing about software - everyone uses it differently.

Pitch Black wrote:
Thats the beauty of software - everyone uses it differently.
Thats that maddening thing about software - everyone uses it differently.

so your bpm is not fluctuating on the synced computers? a 120 bpm just stays a 120 bpm ?

3phase wrote:

Pitch Black wrote:
Thats the beauty of software - everyone uses it differently.
Thats that maddening thing about software - everyone uses it differently.

so your bpm is not fluctuating on the synced computers? a 120 bpm just stays a 120 bpm ?

I can't say. I never looked at the display. But it sounded and felt tight enough for live performance.

We make dense washy dub. Perhaps if you are making super-tight dry and minimal techno, you need tighter.

We used to have one machine doing all beats and one machine doing all instruments, and it all sounded and worked fine.

without reading everything about your sync-problem... i just wanted to throw in that thread 4 u...
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... t=motu+mtp
that one fixed our sync issues...

+ satisfiyng results
+ no extra costs
- another programm running...
- no control on tempo/start&stop... and such

i really hope this works 4 u too... and saves u the headaches that we had 4 along time...
good luck
blablub

3phase, you should do another poll, about how many actually use some sort of sync (and what constellation they use). i know quite some professionals, none of them uses sync, even when using more than one laptop (which most don't). so i guess (just a guess) that, indeed, you are a very minor minority with your situation. still, would be nice to have it fixed, of course. it's just that, besides for you, it seems that it isn't much of a problem for most. crashes are bigger problems, esp. on stage. i guess you can agree on that part, at least.

davepermen wrote:3phase, you should do another poll, about how many actually use some sort of sync (and what constellation they use). i know quite some professionals, none of them uses sync, even when using more than one laptop (which most don't). so i guess (just a guess) that, indeed, you are a very minor minority with your situation. still, would be nice to have it fixed, of course. it's just that, besides for you, it seems that it isn't much of a problem for most. crashes are bigger problems, esp. on stage. i guess you can agree on that part, at least.

bullshit.. i am no minority there.. and especially not a tiny minority..

the pros you know dont use it because it dont works propperly..


When the ableton userbase has a majority in non pro users its probably because the total unpro behaviour regarding sound, midi and syncing of the past..

while sound and midi issues had a huge renovation and improovment the syncing still is inferior..


ups..depperman.. soryy..havent realized that this came from you..wouldnt have bothers to answer than because you have prooved to draw total unrealistic conclusions of needed functionality..

you was the guy that said.. "live8 is totally stable for me..it only crashes some times "