Really It is not THAT bad.
It can be bad only if your Daw try to communicate outside of its boundaries (controlling external hardware for example).
But there are great workarounds in that case (ex : multiclock or expert sleepers).
It is expensive but even with its added cost, the whole solution consisting of a computer + audio interface + dedicated sync box is still an insamely powerful, portable, versatile and cheap solution compared to its hardware counterparts.
Yes, well that is kind of my point. It can be really bad if you want to control external hardware, or event just send a clock from a DAW, then jitter can make it pretty hopeless. The biggest part being that if you do get a lot of problems, itâs pretty hard to grasp if youâre a hobbyist and you just want to plug and play. And if youâre a hobbyist, 2,3,4,500-euros just to make the equipment you already payed a bunch of money for to stay in sync is a lot of money. BUT! I wasnât trying to say, give up, but if you start reading about jitter, the scope of the problem might just make you 
How much latency does it introduce on top of your interface and system in general?
You mean overbridge?
I donât have an overbridge enabled box anymore but i remember it was really anoying (maybe around 20-50ms). I guess it is related to the audio interface drivers of the elektron boxes wich are not optimized (assumption).
It would be interesting to see if we can use overbridge sync without the audio interface functionality in order to see if things improve that way. I doubt that because most sync box use audio to sync the midi clock.
lot of asumptions sorry 
Well, If elektron would just release the damn thing for the DT already, we could stop making assumptions and start being mad about actual problems with the implementation
For me A4 has about 5 ms which is pretty good.you have to set buffer size in overbridge.
What i use and its stable as hell syncing boxes to live.
Only problem is when I use ableton in âLinkâ mode. It seems to introduce audio jitter that can throw the multiclocks reading of bpm out if using the audio pulse plugin from ERM.
Im currently doing some tests for ableton/ERM to see if we can solve this issue.
The OP problem just sounds like midi jitter and is under 1% out which is fine.Youll never hear it.
Nice thing about multiclock is that it also works as a 4 output MIDI interface. I have all my gear hooked up to the outputs and can play any hardware instrument from Live. I also have the Octatrack hooked up to the input on the multiclock so I can play the same instruments from the Octatrack. The multiclock has nice filtering built in so you have total control of what messages go where when. It makes moving from Live to the Octatrack seamless. This way I can noodle out some MIDI/Audio parts in Ableton Live and then record those to the Octatrack for performance/mangling.
The other great thing is that any of the 4 clocks can be started or stopped separately so that you can stop one clock while the other machines are still running. Then you can load a new project and start the clock in sync with the other machines again. You can seamlessly move through projects and sets without ever fully stopping all of the machines.
Itâs much more than a MIDI clock as you can see. Itâs not as sexy of a purchase as a new drum machine or a synth but it opens up worlds of possibilities for live performance.
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I hadnât tried using Link extensively so thatâs good to know it could be troublesome.
Yeah it really seems like a great piece of kit. The price is an issue though, especially as i mentioned earlier, for hobbyists who just wanted to have some piece of hardware and now they have to shell out 4 or is it 500 euros for a box to keep everything in order. That said, I would love to have that unit.
Edit: Didnât see that bit about live performance as I am impatient, but totally agree. If I was doing a live set with loads of hardware, the price wouldnât seem as steep.
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Is this the plugin latency measured by Ableton?
no problems syncing any of my MIDI gear including DT to top shelf DAWâs like Ableton, PT or Digital Performer. If you experience any issues itâs likely user error. A 550$ clock for midi gear is highway robbery imho.
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How did you test this? How much do you know about midi latency and jitter? Quite the assumption youâre making here Iâm guessing.
canât tell if you are talking to me or not. iâve been using MIDI since the early 90s
but sure itâs a cool looking piece of gearâŚmany creative usesâŚfor syncing your DAW to a MIDI capable box, nah crazy!
I am talking to you. Youâre making a statement about sync problems with DAWs being caused by user error. It is a known fact that syncing between hardware and computers is a major issue, so I was wondering how you have tested that the midi sync in your computer is actually tight. And MIDI in the early 90s was apparently the shit.
My problem with your statement is that you might lead people who donât know much about this issue to believe that their problems stem from them not understanding or not implementing their equipment correctly, when in fact there are loads of problems syncing the clock from a daw to hardware and vice versa.
no disrespect intended. i use MOTU MIDI interfaces, have for 20+years
i judge MIDI sync primarily by my ears, if I dont hear phase issues between two identical samples hitting at the same time then we are good.
Anyone can test timing delay pretty easily, and all DAWs worth anything in 2017 have a way to compensate for delay. Any jitter is frankly negligible if your equipment is designed to the MIDI spec correctly.
No, Iâm not trying to start something here either. I just worry that youâre spreading a bit of misinformation when it comes to jitter. OPs jitter is entirely normal, but you can experience much worse problems with inconsistent jitter, and itâs not due to user error. I also sync by ear, but you canât sync jitter 
And those clocks might cost a bunch, but they certainly are tighter than either of us can hope to achieve by using our ears. If you need them, theyâre worth it and all that. I donât need them now, but if I was playing live in any serious capacity I would consider it worth it to feel more certain that the clocks run in sync and that i wonât get any increasing timing problems as my set went on.
All in all, complicated issue that canât be reduced to user error, at least not in all cases.
Hi,
Try to sync an external box with Ableton (sending midi clock). checking whith a click, it will work fine once correctly tweaked.
Now add 8 compressors in your sesssion. you will see that you are running now out ouf sync, because live is not compensating the midi clock with the plugin delays.
This kind of trouble, with other factors (higher priority of audio vs midi @ OS level that can lead to problems) makes dedicated sync box not mandatory, but definitely worthly in some cases.
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I think itâs shown in the overbridge plugin. But you see the exact latency when you record the audio.