Best And Tightest Midi Sync Setup - With Laptop

Elektron Gear
#41

I would not use your software DAW as the clock source. Software has to share resources (CPU, memory, etc.) with all the other software that is running on your system and performance can be degraded because of this.

Ideally you would want a dedicated hardware clock source like your audio card except you have the Behringer FCA1616. I wasn’t familiar with this device so I looked it up. It looks really cool but at the price of $250 USD you kind of get what you pay for. I own exactly one piece of Behringer equipment and there is a reason why I only own one piece and at this point in my life that one piece is sitting on a shelf doing nothing.

If you don’t want to spend any more money I would see about using the A4 connected via USB to your laptop as the clock source.

#42

My setup is based on focusrites and they are super solid.
Besides OT I never had sync/clock/jitter issues with any synth the way I put things together.
Try killing any CPU intensive resources when you work on music.
If I downclock from my standard 4.7GHz to anything under 3.8Ghz (I was trying to figure out min threshold for stable operation) I get a lot of stutters and crashes and only way to fix that was to introduce higher latency.

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#43

If you start testing properly, you’ll quickly find out that with a decent setup, a DAW often generates a more stable MIDI clock signal than most hardware devices, including Elektron boxes. Again, see https://forum.mutable-instruments.net/t/midigal-yet-another-midipal-inspired-project/6731/116?u=t2k and related messages in that thread.

Also, as you can read in my message above under “direct sync vs. derived tempo”, MIDI clock jitter is a non-issue for hardware devices that derive their tempo by averaging the MIDI clock, such as Elektron boxes do.

Finally, almost all DAWs have trouble syncing to external MIDI clock, so using an external clock source often ends up making things worse instead of better in a mixed setup.

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#44

This. Setting reasonable buffer sizes in your DAW and accepting that some latency is unavoidable in a digital audio system is excellent advice.

#45

Except the OP is using a 5 year old laptop and who knows what other software (VSTs, FX, bittorrent, web browsers, etc.) is installed/running and when the OS was previously wiped and reinstalled or if it has a dedicated GPU or not. Lots of variables are involved.

I’ll admit I am deeply skeptical about the link you shared. Not saying you are incorrect but there is absolutely nothing about the test pc other than OS, DAW and soundcard.

#48

Thanks for returning to consider my initial points.

I try to have my Mac running Ableton only. I’ve followed some pretty comprehensive instructions for tuning my Macbook to work smoothly for music production.
VST wise, I can encounter issues with a clean Ableton set with only the inputs for the hardware as the channels that exist. Nothing on the master.

I’ve, since posting, connected the A4 to the Mac using the USB and set it as the master clock. There’s still issues but I still think the audio interface is the cause of perhaps 90% of them. Behringer emailed me today with some ideas that I need to try when I get some time this week.

Oh and Macbook had a fresh reinstall about 3 months ago.

And the Macbook - Quad-Core i7 2.3 GHz with 8gb team - admittedly 5 years old though. Hopefully not time to bin it though.

#49

FWIW: I run a complicated setup with lots of midi sources, daw, hardware, etc, and audio routed back through the daw for mixing. Lots of stuff to line up. I struggled for years to get 4+ hardware machines in sync, while recording in perfect sync in multiple places (daw, octatrack), with all midi recorded tight to the grid. It can be done (painfully) without an external sync solution but what I don’t see more discussion of is that at least with Live, the second you start using latency inducing plugins, all of your carefully dialed midi sync and track latencies just go to shit. The setup is inflexible and ultimately a fail.

Buying an external sync solution is absolutely the way to go. I know its expensive, but it’s so, so worth it. I still needed to set up a complicated group of track latencies to account for all the routing in my setup, but once done, everything is on time, all the time. Plus, I can use any number of plugins without breaking the sync. I use the E-RM multiclock, BTW. As it’s been said, some amount of latency or jitter may still exist despite your best intentions. For example, I’ve noticed that on my system, there is absolutely nothing I can do to eliminate ±0.5 ms of jitter using the AR in overbridge mode. My Prophet 12 also takes a couple milliseconds to respond to any midi note received. However, some experimentation with Live’s external instrument plugin and/or track latencies will take care of most, if not all issues, as long as you use the external sync solution. I’m a happy camper since I got mine, and I’m not pulling my hair out anymore.

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#50

I’m not quite sure what latency you’re talking about. If you mean that the elektrons direct output monitoring is not in sync with Overbridge audio then yes, it isn’t. However, If you stream the audio over USB then it will be perfectly in sync. And although the audio from the direct outs may not be in sync with the USB audio, the MIDI and transport outputs are perfectly in sync with Overbridge. This means that if you can get reliable sync going between your DAW and your elektron, whatever you chain the elektrons DIN/MIDI outs will also be as in sync as it possibly can be. As for audio glitches, it can glitch from time to time. But if it’s a matter of jamming and recording with badly synced gear or jamming with well synced gear and the odd glitch? Either way you’ll be editing the audio afterwards anyways. Either to edit out latency or to edit out glitches. I’d rather the latter.

Honestly Overbridge can be a bit of a dick sometimes but it’s well worth putting in the effort to get on it’s better side. It has very obvious advantages.

#51

Yes a sound card is not a mixer. You see this in a lot of setups. Not a great idea. Especially for live jamming type flow

#52

Actually, my sound card is a mixer… :wink:

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Seriously, I love this box because of the way it allows me to seamlessly switch between mixing external gear with the audio output of my computer for zero-latency live jamming and recording stuff back into my DAW.

#53

Tests I performed myself were on whatever was the top-end Retina MBP available at the time the results were posted in that thread. I don’t think computer specs or software setup details have such a bit impact on the results, tbh.

The point of these tests was not to argue that all computer setups deliver better MIDI clock. The point is showing that 1. in contrast to what most people believe, computers aren’t any worse than most external hardware in terms of MIDI clock stability, and 2. that you can cheaply and easily build your own MIDIGal (or get someone to do if for you) so that you can do your own test, see for yourself, and allow you to take the guesswork out of optimizing your setup.

I don’t want to get into a Mac-vs.-PC debate, but I hope we can agree that in general it’s harder to get to a point where the hardware and software is a limiting factor for smooth audio performance in a Mac setup than it is with a PC setup.

Sure, but it’s still a perfectly fine setup to run a DAW on even though I would probably see if there’s a way to update the RAM to 16GB and replace any HDD with an SSD.

#54

Yeah those are great. But the roundtrip latency is still the same as any audio interface if you decide to directly monitor your external gear via daw through this. There is no cure for that.

#55

if you record while ableton is slaved to an external clock, then make the same recording while ableton is not slaved, you might find the the recording quality is much better the second time.

from my experience, ableton does not record properly while synced to a hardware device.

#56

I’ve found it messes up the first bar 2 when slaved - with consistency. While Bitwig does not. Strange!

#57

Bitwig doesn’t timestretch whilst recording, whereas Ableton does, and is trying to create a warp file at the same time, hence the issue.

also have a look at an entire 8 bar clip recording made whilst ableton is slaved, and the warp file too… all over the place.

try the recording again just manually setting same bpm and the recording with accompanying warp file and markers will be much cleaner

#58

I see… I wasnt recording though, if that makes a difference. just straight playback.

1 Like
#59

With Live as slave, I’ve found it’s essential to configure the following :

Otherwise, Live is all over the place.

2 Likes
#60

very cool whoa :slight_smile:

"Please check the Preferences Audio tab in Live and make sure you do not have the buffer size of the audio device set high.

With Live 8.2.5 the behavior of Live as MIDI sync slave has been improved. Furthermore, the new algorithm can now be adjusted by the options entry:

-MidiClockSlave=x

This option has different possible settings: ‘x’ can be n, g, b or a. This basically stands for the “quality” of the master clock signal:

n = normal: variable jump threshold optimized for not-so-bad clock signals
g = good: for very good signals (detecting small changes quickly)
b = bad: optimized for bad signals (very high jump detection threshold)
a = adaptive: using an adaptive jitter filter, no jump detection
Default is a.

Refer to the following article for further informations about Live’s Options.txt file.
"

fascinating … i didn’t know about the Options.txt file …
found the descriptive info here…

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#61

Me either, but it’s the only way I can have Live slaved to the DT or OT. Works great now, to capture live performances in the DAW with no hassle.

1 Like
#62

Obviously. No way around that.