Hey guys !
I just bought a used machinedrum mk1 from ebay,but I can’t get it properly synced with Ableton.
I have connected 1 jack cabled from my Main output (Aleft) of the machinedrum into my rme fireface soundcard.
Ableton and machinedrum are on the same bpm,but they still don’t sync properly.I tried to drag the audio files around to sync them up somehow but it doesnt work
any ideas? is there something wrong with the connections?
thanks <3
Also I noticed that when i press play on ableton,the MD also starts to play but the tempo is not stable at 125.it goes up and down,from 121 to 126 randomly…any idea?
I’m not sure I read you correctly. So bare with me if I’m stating the obvious.
But you need to establish a midi connection from your midi interface (midi out) to the MD (midi in). A physical cable that can send midi clock from Live to the Machinedrum. Make sure that Live is set to sync (send midi clock) through the Live midi preferences.
Next step is to make sure that the MD receives and responds to midi clock. Don’t have a MD myself, but why don’t you have a look in the manual (Sync on page 80)? The key to look for is external sync.
All that being said - people report various stability depending on midi interface and hardware circumstances.
Cheers!
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hmmm here on the manual it says that i should connect the midi out from the machinedrum to the midi in of the soundcard 
…then you’d sync ableton as slave
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Why do I need to use midi ? Can’t I just record everything that comes out from the MD in an audio channel ?
You’re talking about sync. Then I’m just assuming tempo sync. Hence the recommendation to look into midi clock settings. On both ends.
But sure. You could sync manually, by tap tempo and/or synchronous start. Recording audio needs just what you’re mentioning, but doesn’t necessarily have to do with the sync issues you’re raising in the initial post.
I am setting both ableton & md tempo at 125 bpm but when i record from the md the sound is way off…
maybe it has something to do with sync latency or some other ableton setting that i need to adjust?
If you’re not using midi and midi clock there is no sync.
Way off in what sense? Tempo drift or a constant lag?
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If you simply start Ableton Live and the Machinedrum by pressing their start buttons manually, then any small difference in the internal clocks of the two devices and any time difference in you pressing the buttons will cause problems with synchronization.
The MIDI capabilities of both Ableton and the Machinedrum allow you to use one to control the other by transferring precise clock signals between the two.
By setting up Ableton Live appropriately, connecting a MIDI cable between the MIDI Out port on your soundcard to the MIDI In port on the MD, and making Global settings on the MD to allow it to receive MIDI clock and MIDI transport messages, you will be able simply to press start on Ableton Live and the MD will automatically synchronise its playback with Ableton Live.
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I connected a midi cable ( midi out from soundcard to midi in on the md)
here are my global settings on MD:
Tempo in : external
cntrl in : on
tempo out : on
cntrl out : off
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And even then the sync will not be 100% accurate. AFAIK Live needs to be the master. And even when syncing over MIDI you’ll always have drift and jitter in the tempo. I’ve been there. Buying SyncGen Pro II solved the SW->HW sync. It sends sample accurate signals via audio to the sync box which generates MIDI clock for HW, all is tight then. There is cheaper alternative if you don’t need so many outputs - Expert Sleepers USAMO.
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A few months ago i borrowed a TR8 from a friend to try it out and i remember that i didnt use a midi cable at all…i just connected a jack cable between the tr8 and the soundcard…and it was totally synced,i just had to move the waveform a little bit and everything worked fine
Lucky you. I’ve never ever had a piece of hardware that synced to DAW properly without aid. Sure, Live can do some magic with beat detection but I always had to snap the recorded material to tempo manually which was quite tedious work.
Overbridge seems to be a good solution too if we are talking in Elektron family.
Oh, btw, there is setting in Live to adjust the tempo offset of each MIDI interface (MIDI Clock Sync Delay in MIDI Ports setting menu). This together with adjustment of audio signal latency on External Instrument track could give you relatively good results. I don’t remember the exact details but people reported successful stories.
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I found that,should i reduce the sync delay ? its at 0 now…maybe i should try & experiment,maybe set it at -20ms and see
Yep, play around with different values.
When you start Live there is a tiny delay until MD gets the Start MIDI Realtime Message delivered. This delay depends on your MIDI interface, your OS, computer configuration etc. Try to compensate it with that setting.
I assume you are sending audio from MD back to your sound card. Your sound card may have ASIO Direct Monitoring, that means you can hear incoming signal in real-time with no latency. That’s fine for dry recordings. But if you want to monitor it through Live (i.e. with some SW effects on it or without, it doesn’t matter) you also need to set either Track Delay for the track that receives MD audio or Hardware Latency if you use External Instrument module on your track.
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still havent managed to figure it out 
any other ideas