Heya… I have just noticed for the first time how much the RYTM clock jitters when slaved to the OT…
is this normal? its constantly jumping between 125.9 and 126.1 … master tempo on OT is 126
is there any way to resolve this?
very normal and discussed lots … and reflecting only of an overly accurate tempo display, if it was numerically smoothed out would the sequence sound any better !
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you think an external clock would help? like a E-RM midi clock or something… ?
it reflects the overly accurate tempo display, but you can also hear the kick especially drift…
that sounds like a good thing to me, but I don’t have the solutions, I’m sure someone else has the same concerns and fixes, but I’m in awe that you notice stuff like this
maybe try hooking them up with their turbo midi engaged to see if clock fares better (or browse older threads)
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Also, this is common to all devices, regardless of manufacturer. It is unavoidable as the resolution for MIDI clock is low at only 24PPQN
A quality power conditioner may help, as midi clock, like AD/DA convertors, determines timing based on voltage. A proper sine power output will smooth out the drift but it can never be eliminated so it’s best to embrace it and move on.
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It’s completely normal.
The OT sends MIDI clock messages to the AR, the AR monitors them and averages the time intervals between the clock messages to determine the tempo. The averaging time has to be short in order for the slave unit to detect any tempo changes in the clock source instrument.
Any tiny discrepancy in one clock message will cause the average tempo display to vary slightly around the average value (126.0 bpm).
If the only indication of jitter is the visual distraction caused by the displayed value fluctuating, then there is no need to be concerned.
If there are no discernible audio problems then there is no need to be concerned and definitely no need to buy extra equipment.
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By the way: you might also expect 0.1% of „jitter“ by listening to music from vinyl. This can bother when you try to beatmatch 2 songs very precicely but I doubt that anybody is able to hear it in normal circumstances.
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I’ve never had issues with the amount of jitter the OT has clicked internally, but when I slave it to an external clock I will sometimes get clicks when a record buffer loops if I’m live-sampling with timestretch off, because the jitter is enough that it can throw the loop length off by a few samples. Clocked internally, the record buffers have always been completely seamless for me (other than the well known pickup machine issues, and those seem unrelated to clock).
If you’re having recurrent clock problems you could consider building or buying a Midisizer MidiGAL with the clock analysis/rebuilding firmware installed, it can take a pretty ragged, jittery clock signal and reconstruct it into an amazingly stable one, better than any other hardware clock source I know of other than maybe an mpc3000.
If you can DIY It’s pretty inexpensive, too.
GAH… after spending the last 4 hours pulling the entire rig apart, trying to find the source of this latency that brought me to this clock jitter… I finally found the bottom of it…
the track the stems were on that I was exporting out of Ableton had a -10ms track delay…
it was always going be out of time.
kill me now
anyway, thanks for all the feedback
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Good news ! Stay synced.
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it was just a perfect storm of events… first the RYTM stopped outputting audio… tried the studio power supply and problem resolved… then I noticed the latency and then the jittery clock…