Help me sync Digitakt and A4 with Ableton!

Elektron Gear Digitakt
#1

Hi everyone!

I am in my final steps of setting up my little amateur studio and would like to hear possible suggestions for the issue I’m running into. First of all, here’s what I’m working with:

  • iMac 2017 connected to Focusrite Clarett 4Pre with Thunderbolt
  • Analog Four
  • Digitakt

Right now, my A4 is connected directly to iMac with the power of Overbridge, which I would like to remain using due to the awesomeness that is the software and the multitrack possibilities. The digitakt is slaved to Clarett with MIDI.

The problem is that Digitakt doesn’t run in sync with Ableton, yet alone with A4 and I’m dreadful of having to quantize every single recorded clip and timing them together. I’ve tried compensating with latency but honestly it feels like Digitakt’s weird MIDI jitter at the beginning of playing is inconsistent and I always have to keep messing around with the latency, which kills productivity.

I’ve tried slaving the Digitakt to A4 with MIDI and have run into the same issue.

I’ve also tried slaving the A4 to Clarett (disabling the overbridge sync) and slaving the Digitakt to it with MIDI Out and MIDI Thru, but the problem persists - the sync is all over the place.

Now, without investing into an external MIDI box, what other (or current option with slight modification) can I try out? Does anything come to mind?

Please help an Elektronaut out :smiley:

#2

A4 as master.
Ableton via OB as slave.
DT via MIDI slaved to A4

And never expect perfect sync on first bar. Set a prerecording of 4 bars for the system to fiddle in and give that a try.

1 Like
#3

Wow, didn’t even consider that option! Yeah I imagine that would work, however I’m having a little trouble following your suggestion. I’ve slaved Ableton to A4, but can’t get it to begin playing when I hit play on the A4.

I’m outputting both MIDI and USB on A4, have Track and Sync enabled in A4 input in Ableton (tried both MIDI Timecode and MIDI Clock settings), and have the EXT button in the Arrangement view turned on. Am I missing something?

Thanks again :slight_smile:

1 Like
#4

Check this.

This applies to your issue, I gues…