Ableton Forum

I want to sync my drum machine by sending MIDI clock from Live. I do this, but the returning audio is 17ms slow, so I compensate for this with a "MIDI clock sync delay" of -17ms. Sounding good so far.

Then I add an external instrument device, to play a hardware synth. I have Plugin delay compensation active, but there is an additional hardware delay of 12 ms. So I compensate for this by adjusting "Hardware Latency" on the external instrument device to 12ms. The synth is now on the money.

However, my drums are now 12ms late. This is doing my head in, Do I really have to adjust clock sync every time I add or remove an external instrument? I constantly have to record audio clips to check sync.....


The other problem I'm seeing is that adding more than a single external audio effect to any track , even with hardware latency = 0 causes the drums to lag , by whatever the latency of that device is.

These problems together make reliable clock sync a nightmare! Does anyone have any tips for getting Live to play nice with external gear?

Hello Staplesyrup
Did you contact the support to report this, or reported this on the beta platform ?
If not, you should definitely, what you describe doesn't sound right.

I contacted support - they say they are looking at it, but no answers yet. Ill try beta forum.

So you should choose one technique or the other.

Steve Glen wrote:
So you should choose one technique or the other.

Can you explain what you mean?

I'm thinking that Live evaluates all devices, then compensates to put them in time together (ext Instrument included), then mixer, then track delay.

So it seemz like, in my mind, you are correctly compensating on one measurement
and then using an independent measurement to throw the first one, off.

Steve Glen wrote:I'm thinking that Live evaluates all devices, then compensates to put them in time together (ext Instrument included), then mixer, then track delay.

So it seemz like, in my mind, you are correctly compensating on one measurement
and then using an independent measurement to throw the first one, off.

My point is that this is unavoidable as far as I can tell, for the scenario I described. I am looking confirmation either that this is a problem with Live or with the way I've set up Live.

Is the drum machine being used via either Live's External Audio Effect or External Instrument? If not, that might be the problem. I believe one of the main points of those devices is to allow your external hardware to be latency compensated. (You'll still need to make up for latencies Live can't detect.) Here, if you are not using those devices for your drum machine, then it will not be compensated, and will probably be out of sync (since the synth IS being compensated).

Try using all of your hardware with those devices. If you do that, you'll only need to tweak the hardware latency slider, and you should NOT need to do that every time you add plugins.

Syncing hardware with Live is tricky business, but I think it is doable. Required lots of research for me. I am still fine tuning my rig. Wait until you decide you want to remove jitter and get something like an Innerclock. Lol. Save that for after you get this working though. Keep working through this though. I don't think you need Ableton support at this point.

Read this too: https://www.ableton.com/en/articles/usi ... zers-live/

jbone1313 wrote:
Try using all of your hardware with those devices.

I already am. I've contacted support about this and they agreed there is a problem with MIDI clock compensation that needs addressing -

"It would indeed be useful if Live would automatically adjust MIDI Clock Sync Delay as needed when adding External Instruments or Audio EFfects. You could submit this as a feature request on our wishlist in the Centercode Forum."

Vote up my suggestion if you want to see this implemented - so people can make tight tracks with external gear!

https://ableton.centercode.com/project/ ... 2C987C380B

Interesting. I bet the reason I am not seeing that is I am not using MIDI clock sync.

Even if they add that functionality, you will almost certainly still have MIDI jitter if you are using Live as a master (possibly even as a slave).

I am using Expert Sleepers ESX-8MD for my clock. It's solid. There are other products for this as well.

staplesyrup wrote:I want to sync my drum machine by sending MIDI clock from Live. I do this, but the returning audio is 17ms slow, so I compensate for this with a "MIDI clock sync delay" of -17ms. Sounding good so far.

Then I add an external instrument device, to play a hardware synth. I have Plugin delay compensation active, but there is an additional hardware delay of 12 ms. So I compensate for this by adjusting "Hardware Latency" on the external instrument device to 12ms. The synth is now on the money.

However, my drums are now 12ms late. This is doing my head in, Do I really have to adjust clock sync every time I add or remove an external instrument? I constantly have to record audio clips to check sync.....


The other problem I'm seeing is that adding more than a single external audio effect to any track , even with hardware latency = 0 causes the drums to lag , by whatever the latency of that device is.

These problems together make reliable clock sync a nightmare! Does anyone have any tips for getting Live to play nice with external gear?

I know what you did wrong because i just discovered myself making the same mistake. The mistake is to think Live's midi sync delay offsets the clock output to the drum machine, actually the sync delay "allow you to delay Live’s internal time base against the sync signal" (yup the manual) so you should have set the midi sync clock delay to a positive rather than a negative number.

EDIT EDIT EDIT, I was wrong it should be a negative number.

Another mistake I made was using the familiar trick of recording a 4/4 beat in a new channel, measuring the ms that the beats are late and then using that for the offset. In 9.2 make sure you record the output of the external instrument devices you are using and don't set the channel you are doing this recording on to listen to whatever external input the device is running into. The external instrument device's output will have extra delay compensation which if you don't factor will cause untold confusion.

Also I reckon this needs to be done everytime big changes are made to the set. Also even if this ends up a big number like -75ms this is only an offset of the midi clock timing pulses and doesn't create extra latency

jbone1313 wrote:https://www.gearslutz.com/board/electro ... st12269273

Interesting. Convoluted, but interesting.