Ableton Forum

A little about the bug before I go on:
Many of us PC users have found that Ableton Live is a little less than ideal when sending MIDI clock to external gear. This is especially noticeable when using external sequencers, drum machines, arps, and tempo synced delays and LFO's.
I managed to finagle a work around.
It involves software known as MIDI OX. MIDIOX is powerful stuff, but I only use it in this single application.
You can get MIDIOX at :
http://www.midiox.com/
Here is what I do.
I use my ESX as the master clock. In MIDI OX, I route clock from the ESX to the other outputs on my USB-MIDI interface, in this case my MIDISPORT 4x4.
I then disable all sync settings in Ableton except for taking sync in from my ESX.
In this picture, the ESX is coming in on input C. I route it to the outputs A, B and D.

Each of those blocks in the paths is a MIDI filter. In there, I deselect everything except for the clock:


While this doesn't mean I've fixed Ableton's clock (or cleaned their clocks for that matter), this method means I can get good clock to all my synths while still sending and receiving notes and other MIDI info in Ableton Live.
In fact, this has the added benefit of sending the reset that Live doesn't transmit, allowing my mod sequencer in the MS2000R to go back to the beginning. It also lets me have clock when Ableton Live isn't playing, something I didn't have before.

Nice work EddieJ. I am on a mac so I can't benefit from your solution but here's a thread I found on the electro-music / Nord G2 forum. It explains in simple terms why OSX and Windows can't have accurate MIDI while Linux can.
http://www.electro-music.com/forum/topic-13623.html

I am curious to hear from the Ableton team or is this something we as users are not supposed to be aware of?

When I emailed support about the clock issue, they insisted it was my MIDI interface causing the problem. Either the clock was getting screwed up on the way in from the ESX or it was getting screwed up on the way out. Never mind that the notes from Live are always in time whether Live is the main clock or not.

I think my using MIDIOX proves that it is not my USB MIDI interface causing the drift. It also shows my PC is capable of passing good clock if it receives good clock.

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