Ableton Forum

Hey there,

I've just acquired a TB303 and a Doepfer MSY2 midi to sync converter so I can sync the 303 to my session in Ableton, however I'm getting a severe latency issue with the 303. It's starting late, between 1/2 and 3/4 of a beat late after I hit play in Ableton. Also, the degree of latency seems to change between starts and stops.

I'm using my Novation Nio for the midi out signal, into the MSY2, and then into the 303. I've then got the audio output from the 303 going back into an RCA input on the Nio.

Does anyone know what the best practice is for midi to sync with Ableton for old analogue gear? Has anyone got a 303 working in sync with Ableton? How have you done it? What settings are you using?

Cheers,
Davros

You could always run the 303 standalone at the tempo you need, record it into Live then warp the result if needed to fine tune it.

davros303 wrote:I've just acquired a TB303 and a Doepfer MSY2 midi to sync converter so I can sync the 303 to my session in Ableton, however I'm getting a severe latency issue with the 303...

Does anyone know what the best practice is for midi to sync with Ableton for old analogue gear? Has anyone got a 303 working in sync with Ableton? How have you done it? What settings are you using?

I use an old Korg KMS-30 for syncing my 303, but I think the scenario is the same. You have to determine where the latency is actually occurring since you're feeding the audio out back into your audio interface, which is where things could be bogging down. So you should "back track" the issue by testing audio sync with the out of the 303 and see if it's synced with your drums (or metronome) - if it is, then you know there's latency with your audio input and you can target that issue. My guess that's where things are getting tripped up.

You can use the standalone approach that User 102455 mentioned, but this does not help you for performing.

I have this exact same setup - Live -> Nio -> MSY2 -> TB303 -> Nio -> Live

I managed to get it pretty tight by adjusting input latency to get it as close as possible, then tweaking the track delay on the audio track which takes the input from the TB. It seems to stay pretty consistently in time.

Thanks for the advice. Where are the settings for input latency and track delay? Are these in the IO settings menu for the specific track taking the audio input?

setup an external instrument for the nio input and get latency accounted for