Hi All,
Just picked up my DT last weekend. I’m currently running it as a slave to Ableton Live 9.5. It is working, but is it normal for the Global BPM on the Digitakt to change during synchronised playback?
To explain further, and with an example, Live is playing at 117 BPM and the DT is playing along at the same time, but the Global BPM (seen on screen of DT) on the DT bounces randomly between 114.7 and 120.1 BPM during each beat, like the DT is constantly correcting itself. Is this normal? I would have thought that the MIDI clock from Ableton would supply a steady 117BPM and the DT would just stick to that, at least until the BPM on Ableton changed.
I’ve attached a screenshot of my Live MIDI settings, which I think are OK (?)
Has anyone else had this, and can anyone set me straight? As I say it’s in time, but when listening against the click track in Ableton the DT seems to fluctuate. I feel like it should be in sync tighter.
Thanks in advance.
J
This seems to be a common issue when clocking from a DAW. I get the same MIDI jitter with my Rytm.
Maybe there’s a smarter way I could do things, using serial MIDI. Current setup is as shown, excluding the audio which is direct from DT, NL, and Laptop in to a cheap mixer. The Nord and Ableton are tight as I’d expect. DT…I’m not as convinced.
Don’t write “Digitakt-2” during namm time…please use “to” instead. Some people are very on nerve right now 
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Good point! Yeah i see what you mean. Done…
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Have the same with midi clocking from pc, but if i record a click back from the machines, its actually pretty tight. its less than 1ms fluctuation. thats cool for me 
The inability of modern computers to produce a tight MIDI clock is really disappointing… I slave my Rytm Mk1 to Ableton over USB also. At 130 bpm I get the Rytm regularly fluctuating between 129.9 and 130.1 which is probably OK. I added a 20ms delay in Ableton’s preferences for the clock out to the Rytm (after testing by ear) and it’s synced pretty well.
If your DT’s metronome does not audibly sync tightly to Live’s metronome you have an issue.
Make sure you switch wi-fi and bluetooth OFF and quit any apps that are not needed. Restart the Mac before starting a music session. Also, go into System Preferences>Users>Login Items and remove anything you don’t really need from there.
I have seen quite a few people having issues with Novation’s Automap, so that’s something else you can try disabling to see if it improves timing.
One more thing, not sure if it makes a difference but if you go into Live’s MIDI prefs and click on the arrow next to Output: Elektron DT, you can set the clock type to “Pattern” instead of “Song”.
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Thanks for the feedback folks. Nagualizer, I’ll run through those suggestion over the next couple of days and let you know the outcome.
Cheers,
J
