Hi,
I seem recently to be going round in, hopefully, ever decreasing circles, trying to get my setup to play nicely with each other.
I have a 2012 Macbook Pro, latest is, running Live 9. A Behringer Firepower FCA1616 audio interface. Connected to this an Elektron Machinedrum, Analog Four and an Analog Heat. However, I find syncing everything right to be a bit hit and miss.
Currently I have Live as the midi clock master. This is linked to the Machinedrum through the FCA1616 and triggers the drum machine from a drum rack in Live. This requires some fiddling with the midi Prefs and audio Prefs to get the Machinedrum on the beat. However, with fiddling, I get there. Although this wanders a bit over the course of a session.
The midi through from the Machinedrum good to the A4. This ends up being a little off too. Then thereās the introduced latency getting the audio back into my Macbook and Live.
Prior to this, I used the Machinedrum as the master clock; it occurred to me that is was probably the most reliable source as it didnāt have to carry any other processing. This was connected to the FCA1616 and the midi out from the FCA1616 then onto the Analog Four. This was great for the two Elektron machines to sync perfectly but when recording in the audio was out against the rest of the Ableton stuff, which was an issue when I had other percussion etc in Ableton. I would have to pull things around inside the audio clips which I found annoying and also messed up the āgrooveā I had create through the placement of midi inside the Ableton clips previously.
So . . . Whatās the best way to do this? USB the A4 to the Mac and use acrobat the clock source then midi out to the MD?
Amongst all this is the Behringer device which seems to under perform. Iāve logged a support request but getting in touch with these guys had proven to be a real headache so far.
Or . . . Is this just how it is when you replace VSTs with hardware boxes?
I really look forward to hearing your suggestions and experiences.
Thanks,
Adam
Despite everyone can say on that subject. My experience to get everything Tight, is to invest in a Sync Solution. You can get things OK without but the problem is to keep the Sync Tight when working inside your session. Adding a compressor and EQ there, some reverb here, some filter and delay thereā¦ Then everything move and you need to reset your offset timing to get things on beat again.
I find the Sync solution more reliable, more fast to setup BUT it comes with a cost.
The one i recommend are :
-
ERM Multiclock (First choice because of the price)
-
SND ACME 4 (Expensive but amazing one)
-
Innerclock SyncGen 2 Pro (not manufactured anymore)
NB : You can try to passed Sync by Overbridge too but results depend on a lot of things. It work great for some and others have difficulties to succeed.
The DIY inexpensive method
Sidenote : Bitwig make improvements in that territory by allowing to be Slaved clock to Hardware and it seems to be nice. But you need a Midi interface.
Cheers William.
The multi clock is 500 quid! Thatās a lump of money!
I can appreciate the advantage of having something like it though.
Iām interest to know how others deal with this issue. Iām also wondering how much of my issue is being caused/complicated by my audio interface/midi interface.
Iām very curious about the multiclock but im afraid to try it - mostly because of the cost. Would love to hear some first hand experience outside of marketing videos.
I think thereās another thread here that recommends expert sleepers for not too much money.
No matter what the audio interface Jitter and Latency are always there. You can reduce it until it cracks and popsā¦
The multi clock is 500 quid!
Yes but how much cost all these equipment if you canāt get it all synced tight without to Pull out your hairā¦ thatās another good question. But i know thatās moneyā¦ Also this is not only Sync Box, it gives you the ability to use it as a midi interface and to apply groove/shuffle to each clock independently, to start/stop each clock independently. (which in Live Performance is very nice)
expert sleepers
i donāt think is that fine. (compared to ERM, ACME and Innerclock)
Minilogue using ACME 4 from SND
Shonky (Apollonia) using ERM Multiclock
Off the top of my head, Expert Sleepers USAMO is the most budget friendly option for sample accurate MIDI. Would need to do a bit of research to see if itās compatible with the interface outputs though.
Just like many others, I went down the midi sync ārabbit holeā and devoted too many hours and days to trying to get everything to sync properly. It can be such an inspiration killer
The problem is this: computer midi will never keep perfect tempo due to its inherent jitter. It may be expensive, but the time I save, and the piece of mind that everything will always being in perfect sync is worth the $500 I spent on SyncGen 2.
I think justifying the expense largely depends on how much you rely on your DAW/PC/Mac for performances or recording. Personally, I couldnāt live without mine
Best
Tight
Cheap
But you can only get two of those adjectives. 
Iāve incorporated the Expert Sleepers USAMO (< $200) into my setup. It took some fiddling, but Iāve got tight sync now with Reaper through my Focusrite Pro 40 out to my Digitakt, which sequences 3 hardware synths through MIDI. Like others have said, check the compatibility list to see if your interface is supported.
Everytime I attempt hybrid setups I just end up walking away in tears because of sync issues (MIDI + Audio latency), itās a real mood killer. I just purchased a Pronus Studio Live mixer so that I could track 16 tracks of simultaneous audio from a pure hardware setup. After that I can move over to the DAW and do all the editing.
This strict separation of hardware and software is the only thing that sits well with me, but that SND ACME-4 does look pretty tasty.
On budget, thereās also the E-RM MIDIClock+, around 200ā¬.
I used to use Live and your story is one I was far too fa,I liar with. Innshort, I never got things running tight.
I switched to Bitwig at the start of the year and all I can say is, everything now works and I sync.
Live is shockingly bad with midi imho.
Cheers for all the responses.
I can see the benefits of an external midi clock, and the multiclock seems a truly excellent piece of gear. I guess itās a matter of just how much this bloody jittering gets to me; I am already completely bald so the hair pulling is no longer of any use!
Iām intrigued by the comment about Bitwig; Iām suprised that itās possible to get tighter midi synchronisation then Ableton have implemented, especially as Live prides itself on performance and integration. Maybe Live 10 will provide better syncing.
As with most things, it really helps to first decide what setup you want and then find a solution for any issues specific to that setup.
The difference beteen jitter and latency
Itās also important to understand the difference between jitter and latency. Jitter is the variation in the time between subsequent clock signals, latency is the delay between when a signal goes in and when a signal comes out.
Both jitter and latency are inherent in any digital system and canāt be prevented completely. You can only try to reduce them to a level where theyāre no longer an issue for what youāre trying to do, or you can find a way to deal with them.
Direct sync vs. derived tempo
Another thing that confuses a lot of people when theyāre talking about MIDI clock sync is the different between devices that use the clock signal directly, and devices that derive their tempo from the clock signal.
When syncing to an external clock signal, older or simpler devices forward their internal sequencer a single step every time they receive a MIDI clock message. Subsequently, these devices canāt have a resolution of more than 24 ppqn and any internal swing will be disabled when they are synced to an external clock signal.
Modern or more complex devices derive a tempo by averaging incoming MIDI clock signal and use that BPM value to set their internal clock source when syncing to an external clock signal. This way, they can continue to offer a higher resolution than 24 ppqn and continue to offer features such as swing even when they are synced to an external clock signal.
Another advantage of deriving the tempo by averaging the incoming clock signal is that jitter is much less a concern than it is with direct sync.
Computers are often better than hardware (really)
If weāre talking about MIDI clock, it turns out that computers actually output a more stable clock signal over regular MIDI interfaces than most hardware devices. As you can read at https://forum.mutable-instruments.net/t/midigal-yet-another-midipal-inspired-project/6731/116?u=t2k, Ableton Live running on OS X with a simple USB MIDI interface can generate a clock signal thatās over 3 times less jittery than what comes out of an Analog Four or a RYTM.
Itās the latency, stupid
In most cases where people are complaining about MIDI clock, theyāre actually dealing with the latency thatās inherent in adding external hardware to a DAW setup where the audio from an external synths thatās coming back into the computer through their audio interface is delayed in comparison to the audio generated internally by the DAW or any plugins running inside it.
Most DAWs will offer a way to resolve this problem by setting a per-channel latency value for external hardware. Some DAWs even include an automated procedure to measure latency and set the compensation delay.
Another solution to this latency problem can be to mix the audio output from your computer with your hardware synths using an external mixer.
Donāt buy the snake oil
Using a āsample accurate audio clock to MIDI syncā hardware solution can help on computer setups where you have trouble getting a MIDI clock signal out of your computer thatās properly in sync with the audio thatās coming our of your computer.
However, keep in mind that this does noting to reduce the latency issue of getting the audio from external synths back into your computer through your audio interface.
Also keep in mind that reducing MIDI clock jitter wonāt make much difference for modern hardware devices, so the only thing youāre resolving with additional synch hardware would be a latency problem which you can often also fix by changing a setting inside your DAW.
Recommendations and suggestions
Ok, keeping all of the above in mind, you might want to try to go through the following list of suggestions:
- Does your external hardware use MIDI clock messages direct to advance itās sequencer or does it derive the tempo and uses its internal clock? If the latter is the case, then some jitter in the MIDI clock signal is not really an issue.
- Do you want to bring the audio from your external hardware back into your DAW or do you want to mix everything using an external mixer? In the first case you need to deal with latency of incoming audio, in the second case you donāt.
- Are there any issues with the MIDI clock signal your computer generates and can you fix these by tweaking settings in your DAW? Can you update your OS or maybe even switch to a setup thatās known for better audio and MIDI support?
- In case you are not using your DAW as the master clock, make sure youāre using one thatās actually good at syncing to an external clock signal (e.g. Bitwig really is better at this than Live for whatever reason).
- If recording latency is an issue, maybe itās time to get a new audio interface. These days you donāt even have to get a very expensive one to get low-latency audio input; even some of the recent cheap Behringer interfaces offer impressive low-latency performance.
Finally, your life will be better if you accept that thereās not a perfect solution that will make jitter and latency go away completely. Your only option is to work around it somehow. 
Very, very helpful. Sorry to hijack this thread but Iām wondering how to get my updated set up to work too. I used to have a hardware only set up that was synced with an SBX1. When travelling, I used a MacBook pro with plug ins and worked completely in the box.
Iām now looking to use a slimmed down set up at home when Iām not travelling that consists of a MacBook Pro running Logic X, a Nord A1, Digitakt and soon a Dominion Club. At some point, Iāll introduce an Acidlab 606 too. I wonāt even attempt to get hardware and plug ins working in sync due to previous issues (as you have outlined). Iām quite happy just to have the DAW driving the sync and for the Digitakt/Dominion/Acidlab sequencers to keep time. Iāll play chords in Logic and basically ājamā, recording the results directly into my interface. From there I can edit and build tracks, add FX, compression etc āin the boxā. Could this be easily achieved, potentially with something like the Midiclock +?
Unusual that itās only been mentioned once so far, but why arenāt you using Overbridge ? Say what you like about OB but when you get it working, the sync is on par with any external clocking device out there. My thoughts are that it does this in a very similar manner to the Innerclock devices. So having something like this in your setup already, you should definitely be using it. Midi clock from DAWs is crap. This has been the case for a long time. Since they stopped making motherboards that had a MIDI/Joystick port built right on to them. Unlikely to change either seeing as we are not changing the way we build computers. Setting compensation delay on each incoming track is fiddly, only kind of works, and seems to be readjusted to a slightly different value every time you start/stop the transport.
And rather than mix everything in the box via your audio interface and having to deal with latency, using the direct outputs and a small external analogue mixing desk will allow you to monitor you instruments with little or no latency at all. Then if you still need to record your mix or whatever, use the sub/aux mix on the mixer straight back in to you audio interface. You can also set up your favourite plugins as send/return FX for extra jam power. Just a thought.
The more you rely on the computer syncing or monitoring, the more you will be disappointed.
Thanks for such detailed responses; I really appreciate the level people go to to offer advice.
First off: Overbridge - I just found out introduced more audio latency and drop outs and I was forever fiddling with the bloody settings in Ableton or OB to get it to play nice. I may revisit though.
As for the other detailed suggestions - I think that the response should become a philosophy rather than midi advice.
I think that working in the box and having no experience of music making outside of that, be it a band or playing a typical instrument, Iāve become programmed to expect and believe that all the elements must/should be perfectly in time, to the nanosecond. I guess this perspective is going to have to change.
My audio interface is certainly a problem and Iām awaiting Behringerās intervention; this may well be the greatest culprit and, if fine tuned, may alleviate the extent of my problems.
Itās funny when you start adding hardware to the laptop setup; as with many things, there are so many elements that have never been a consideration that start to become apparent.
Iām really grateful to this forum for all the advice and guidance that has been forthcoming.
I got a Sync-Gen 2 Pro to get rock solid midi clock from Cubase. Money well spent, was a bit concerned that I wouldnāt hear or notice any difference, but it totally rocks.
Iām thinking of buying an E-RM Multiclock USB. It has individual shift values for each output and a lot of other useful stuff.