RYTM and Logic - someone please help?

[dergit]

Okay, so I’m trying not to make this a rant. When I work with just the RYTM alone, I love this machine and how it sounds. However, whenever I try to record it into Logic, I fail, get frustrated and eventually give up and use something else.

My backround: I’m a guitar player and have been dabbling in synths and sound design for a decade now. I produced and mixed my band’s album and this live session among many other things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSTA5Jy8zHg

I’d say I’m fairly competent at computers, MIDI and Logic (at least I’m the guy everyone else usually calls when their gear is acting up) but I’m at a loss at how to set up the RYTM to properly sync in an existing Logic project that consists of more than just the RYTM. We’re a 5-piece band with drums, guitars and many other synths and everything finds its way together, just the RYTM runs off time and time again.

It works reasonably well on stage slaved to Ableton but in the studio, with Logic, it’s been a nightmare. I’ve tried the following:

a) Sync the RYTM via a MIDI interface (ESI M8U XL): This is how we do it on stage and it works okay-ish in the studio. Just not tight enough to ever record something I’d release without a LOT of editing. The RYTMs internal sequencer works better than sending notes to the RYTM which I’ve seen people do… but the delay (compensation) between the DAW and the RYTM is pure guesswork and I can only ever record short parts with multiple attempts. Complete songs will drift in and out of sync very audibly.

b) Sync the RYTM via MIDI via USB: This just results in different delay compensation starting points but is not more or less stable than a) for me.

c) Disable MIDI and sync (and monitor audio) via Overbridge: This has been hell up until the most recent releases. Now it’s improved a lot and almost as useless as a) and b) for me. Syncing „Tempo“ with the buffer at 128 and the Logic’s buffer at 128 as well works best but still, I get so much drift even with very simple patterns, I wouldn’t dare upload what I’ve recorded today to my band’s Dropbox. Plus, recording live by hitting the pads is absolutely impossible with this setup. The delay must easily be somewhere around half a second.

d) Don’t sync and just send MIDI notes from the lowest octave to build beats (yes, I’m that desperate): Aside from the fact that this immediately costs me all the good stuff such as different sounding trigs, LFO sync, Delay sync etc. and turns the RYTM into a boring drum machine, it doesn’t really work that well either. There’s random drift back and forth between MIDI notes and the audio recorded from the RYTM no matter what I do with the delay compensation.

The RYTM is connected to the Macbook via USB without any hubs or anything in between.

Sorry if this turned into a rant after all, I’m just completely lost here. Is anyone successfully recording their RYTM into songs via Logic and if so, can you please explain how you set everything up? I’m sure Logic is to blame for a lot of this as many people seem content with sync in Ableton but we’ve managed to record synths by Nord, Dave Smith, Alesis, KORG and many others with this setup… the RYTM is the only one I can’t seem to bolt down.

Setup:
2015 Macbook Pro running 10.11.3
Metric Halo MIO 2882 FW Audio Interface
Logic Pro X 10.2.2
Overbridge 1.10
Rytm OS 1.22B

[insect]

I can feel your pain! I´m working in a track right now. Most of the audio I recorded during a live jam into ableton, made first arrangement, exported audio per track in 96khz and now finalizing the mixdown in logic.

i wanted to add another ride and hihat. So I tryed to sync the rytm to logic … not so well. Even switched to “clock” doens´t give me good results for tight techno beats.

But maybe try this: switch off sync receive on the Rytm, switch on transport receive on the Rytm. I never tried this, but the Rytm should start now by hitting play in Logic and run on its own bpm (wich should be the same as in Logic). And I remember you can set an time offset for the midiclock send out via logic. … so never tried it this way … but maybe give it a go.

For me … I ended up recording samples from the Rytm into Logic -> Battery and used the Logic sequencer to create the patterns. But hopefully that´s not the way we can use OB on Logic for ever…

[insect]

Did you tried Low Latency Mode in Logic? This should switch off all Plugins wich increases the latancy, especially plung ins on the busses. Good for recording audio into logic.

[rex_mundii]

My solution was to use an Expert Sleepers USAMO.
Rock solid timing even at 170bpm.

[dergit]

Okay, so after four more hours of doing nothing but trying to get RYTM’s click closer to Logic’s click with all methods you could imagine, I cooked up the following recipe for anyone else in this situation:

• Switch on the Logic click and the RYTMS click to see where you’re at. Try pressing stop and play a few times to see if the drift changes.
• Disable Overbridge Sync in the plugin. It just doesn’t work in any of the sync modes. And when it does, it’s just dumb luck and it doesn’t the next time you press play or record.
• Also disable the Audio output of your Overbridge Software instrument track (more on this in the next bullet point) – the OB panel won’t let you not stream Audio to the DAW, unfortunately, thus wasting bandwidth, but okay. I turned everything off but the Main 1/2 tracks in the OB Panel and then routed that Software Instrument track to No Output in Logic.
• Monitor through your Audio interface (I prefer this because I do a lot of finger drumming when coming up with patterns) or through Core Audio and Logic’s software monitoring for workable latency when live recording with the pads.
• You can use Overbridge for automation though. This seems to work well enough and makes Overbridge a great tool still.
• Sync to MIDI via USB, be sure to connect the RYTM straight to your computer, not to an USB hub (Overhub might work, I don’t know, I don’t have one) – even the USB ports on the Thunderbolt display don’t work reliably for me.
• DISABLE Low Latency Mode in Logic (when it works, it works well but it adds to the random drift when it fails, ymmv)
• ENABLE automatic latency compensation for Plug-Ins in Logic’s project sync settings. It works for me with everything “auto” else out of the way, if it doesn’t, you’ll have to manually adjust the latency compensation right next to the checkbox. The drift is (hopefully) always going to be the same from here on out so you can find a setting that works on your system now.
• Never touch anything again and pray it keeps working.

Hope this helps someone. I’ve now invested a fair amount of time in fixing this. It is working fairly well (as well as most other synths) for me now. Of course, drums are more sync-sensitive than say synth pads so I’d still prefer the rock-solid OB sync I’ve heard so much about but as of now, good old MIDI is a workable solution.

Off to make some music with this little black wonder… finally.

[insect]

thank you for your research!!! Will test it over the weekend and report how it works with the overhub.

But still all my fingers are mega crossed that Elektron will find a solution soon (or logic will allow to use vst … )

[Crash_Toniatti]

Hey
Im having problems with it either!

The “click” of the recorded loop if killing my workflow.

[intra0]

I have recently discovered a small work around:

Record your sounds from AR but do it for longer than necessary. In my case, the latter sounds tend to me more in sync than the first few triggers. Cut out the first half the audio event, and use the second half as part of your overall project. This worked for me in LPX.
(this is recording audio via the project template found in this forum)

[kaktakovoi]

Thank you, i will try. Guys, what do you think about overbridge sound quality?