A4 Overbridge sync issues with Ableton Live and Logic Pro X on El Capitan

Elektron Software Overbridge
#1

Hi,
First post here. I’ve just bought a s/h A4 and been enjoying getting familiar with it.
I’ve upgrade the OS to the latest and installed Overbridge onto my El-Capitan Mac.

I got it working fine with Ableton Live 9 and after making sure the audio was only coming via the plugin it’s pretty much in sync. There are a few occasional crackles at 64 buffer size but at 128 it’s fairly solid.

However in Logic it’s really out of time and frequently crackles/distorts really badly. The sounds from the A4 are significantly behind everything else in the sequencer. It doesn’t seem to matter what buffer sizes I choose.

I presume that changing the Overbridge buffer isn’t supposed to impact the sync, only add additional overall latency to improve stability and that Logic should compensate to line things up. Is that a correct assumption?

Is this a known issue with Logic or am I doing something wrong? Is it documented somewhere the ideal settings for Logic?

Thanks, Tom

#2

After playing some more I have discovered a few more things:

  • Ableton latency is slightly off. I test by running a kick on both A4 and ableton and try to get them on top of each other. The Overbridge plugin is reporting 45ms at 64buffer size. If I put all the non-overbridge tracks into a folder and delay by 20ms its all in sync nicely. Why does the latency compensation of Ableton Live not adjust for this?

  • Logic latency is weird. For some reason today - not sure whether I changed anything but its much improved. However, it drifts in and out. When I start playing sometimes it’s off but over time it actually improves and sometimes it starts ok and gets worse. The fact that it’s changing means I can’t really compensate with track delays. Also in Logic there is more crackling when starting to play.

To clarify, I’m not running the A4 sequencer at all. Just sending midi from Ableton/Logic.

#3

If I disable the outputs and reinsert the plugin I get 0 latency in the plugin and perfect sync if I use the analog outputs into my soundcard. Seems equally fine using usb midi or external midi.

What I don’t get is why Ableton is not compensating correctly when using Overbridge plugin. It’s bad enough that it’s a high latency - 42ms. I have to add additional delay to the non-overbridge tracks. Furthermore it’s not even consistent and varies each time you press play. Maybe Overbridge latency is changing and also not reporting it correctly to Ableton?

Now I’m thinking it would have been better to get the AnalogKeys to have the individual outs since it seems the only reliable way to use multi channel.

#4

Turns out I was sending midi out to the Analog USB rather than to the plugin. Sending midi only to the plugin has improved things a lot. I already had midi sync disabled which is important for anyone else trying to solve this.
Now Ableton sync is very good and Logic is much better although in Logic, starting and stopping still causes quite a bit of glitchy distortion and some minor sync delays at the start.

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