Clock jitter when chained to analog 4

cpaxton · 2014-07-17T23:50:18.000Z

Does anybody else experience this? My clock jumps around by ±. 3 bpm when it receives transport from the analog four and vice versa… Could it be my midi cables? I have tried a few different ones and always get the same result… I’m starting to really notice it now when using delays… It’s becoming a bit of a nightmare. I will post a video tomorrow of it occurring

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Cheers
Conor

L4rs3rik · 2014-07-19T10:18:25.000Z

Don’t look at the tempo display, measure the jitter by tracking both machines to a daw and zoom in.

Here’s a thread on the same topic: http://www.elektronauts.com/t/octatrack-sequencing-vst-daw-not-synced/6292

cpaxton · 2014-07-19T12:51:25.000Z

hey there LarsErik, thanks a lot for the reply. i have read the thread, thank you. but it does not address my problem. because my two machines are going out of sync with each other - there is noticable audio problems with the delays…for instance when you hit play the delay jumps to try find its tempo, creating an undesired effect.
its not about using them with a daw.

I am not looking for sample accurate midi timing (although that would be amazing!!!) i just want the two bastids to play better together better.

i guess my workaround will be to slave my AR to the A4, but call me old fashioned… i just feel weird not having the drums dictating the tempo and the rest

L4rs3rik · 2014-07-19T15:42:42.000Z

Ok, that is a bit strange. For me using my AR or A4 as midi clock master works equally good.

From the top of my mind stuff you can check:

latest os on both machines.
apart from having the midi clock send and recieve correctly setup make sure you have transport receive and send enabled as well
check the advanced settings in the sequncer so you dont have like a 15 step pattern on one machine and 16 on the other and the master len and chng are equal or matching (like 32 on one and 64 on the other.)
are you sending midi program changes my misstake to the A4?
do you have a multi map on the A4 that responds to notes the pads of the AR sends?
does the A4 go out of sync being a midi slave with other gear/software?

amiga303 · 2014-07-19T22:55:38.000Z

did some clock testing. used cirklon as master.
the way I do it is

300 bpm
send a 4/4 kick via midi
AR plays the same pattern via internal sequencer

that way u get a “flanger” kick drum sound.
good thing about this method is that u hear drifts very easily. fractions of milliseconds get audible instantly.

when I go mad with pattern juggling (jump mode) its possible to create drifts. its hard to reproduce consistently. my impression is that it happens with changing “busy” patterns and if I do rather fast pattern jumps, after about 15 pattern changes. even managed to freeze AR once when doing that (high BPM, fast pattern jumping).

when doing this with two patterns that only have the 4/4 kick, I did not notice a drift.
in chain mode (normal pattern change mode), the same patterns did run about 10 min and I could not hear any drift.

I am confident AR slaves ok.

@conor:
some ideas:

do u do fast pattern jumps with busy patterns?
try it with test patterns, that dont do much
make sure u dont have a midi loop: master receives the slave clock.

amiga303 · 2014-07-20T12:02:54.000Z

btw found that link via the other thread
http://www.innerclocksystems.com/New%20ICS%20Litmus.html
great source, A4 is there, gets decent values. i expect AR to use the same software. interesting OT got better values slightly.
interesting too, AR din sync seems to be bit tighter
MD does not look good.
big surprise for me: Tr909!

ZenPunkHippy · 2014-07-20T13:29:11.000Z

Have you accidentally created a MIDI feedback loop? If the clock signal is being transmitted in a loop it can cause problems with sync because the first machine receives the clock again and tries to sync (depending on sync settings).

L4rs3rik · 2014-07-21T21:16:54.000Z

[quote=“” amiga303""]
btw found that link via the other thread
http://www.innerclocksystems.com/New%20ICS%20Litmus.html
great source, A4 is there, gets decent values. i expect AR to use the same software. interesting OT got better values slightly.
interesting too, AR din sync seems to be bit tighter
MD does not look good.
big surprise for me: Tr909!
[/quote]

Interesting reading, some big surprises in that list for sure. I’m gonna do that test with my setup when I get the time.
One problem I’ve had with getting a good tight drums using samples (this is a bit of topic but anyways) was that the samples weren’t trimmed correctly at the start. For public domain stuff floating around the internets this is pretty common but I’ve also found this with commercial samples. Doh!