I use my Octatrack and A4 slaved to my DAW (Ableton) while writing. The clock stays in time, but as far as syncing up to the beginning of a phrase, quite often the Elektrons will end up not on the same downbeat as my DAW if I start and stop in different places.
Is there a MIDI message (CC or program change or what-have-you) that will start the A4 & Octa sequencers at the beginning of their current pattern?
I looked through the A4 manual’s MIDI implementation and nothing about the clock or sequencer was listed.
They respond to a MIDI Start command, but you have to enable it- there’s a setting for receive transport message.
That’s assuming Live is sending Start in the first place…
I’m not sure how much I can help you because I don’t have Ableton Live.
It’s true that Appendix D of the AF manual only includes the CC and NRPN assignments, but the transport and sync settings are described in the section about the MIDI CONFIG menu.
The following thread seems to indicate that Elektron’s MIDI sync implementation is generally sound:
The official MIDI system real-time messages are Start, Stop, and Continue.
What does Live do when you are stopping and starting it? Are you stopping it, or are you pausing it?
I use an old MOTU TimePiece AV as my MIDI interface but it seems to have clock issues where if MTC is sent to more than one port simultaneously, all the ports get double clock sent to them, effectively doubling the tempo.
I’d forgotten that because of this old crappy interface, I had disabled the Sync send to the A4’s port in Ableton Live, so it wasn’t getting position start messages. Weird thing is, Ableton would still send tempo and start and stop transport messages, but not the time position. Bizarre.
