Digitone hunting for MIDI sync BPM?

Hi! My Digitone Keys isn’t locking onto the BPM being fed it.

Either directly Octatrack -> Digitone or Octatrack -> Rytm thru -> Digitone

BPM is 178, but the 'tone seems to hunt between 177.7 and 178.2.

Rytm is having no issues consistently sticking at 178. Any thoughts? Changed cables to no avail, latest Digitone and Octa OS revision.

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Well, I recognized this too, but actually I have no issues with it. :sweat_smile:

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I need to play with it a bit more, it’s possible that the others average it out without surfacing their hunt… but it should be an easy lock, I’m consistently at 178 the entire time from the start, no variance.

I can check whether it clocks accurately from Pamela’s New Workout DIN, but for digital there shouldn’t be anything to interpolate between. It should start and stay at 178 in the UI. The weirdness is that it never ends up displaying 178.

Looks like I’m not the only one here at least! At best it’s annoying and confusing, so if no obvious settings to check I’ll file a bug.

Which… Elektron’s new tracker integration is no bueno. I solved one other problem (swapped psus between Rytm and Octa led to failing calibration) and I’d like to preemptively close it out, but my ticket basically doesn’t exist in any way to access and tack anything onto until they give an official response and I’m presented with a link to do so.

It almost makes me pine for Zendesk…

Are there actually any inconsistencies in the timing you can hear or see when you zoom into the waveform of your recording or is it just the display?

I‘d say it‘s not uncommon for a midi slaved sequencer to show fluctuations in the display, if there are no perceivable timing fluctuations though, no problem, the sequencer averages out the tempo internally and thus you get a steady tempo.

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Schnork is right. It’s not uncommon for a midi-slaved sequencer to show fluctuations in the display.

You are seeing Midi clock jitter around +/- 0.02 ms.

Academic studies have indicated that jitter becomes noticeable between 1 and 5ms, with a weighting around 2-3ms (Van Noorden 1975, Michon 1964, and Lunney 1974).

Your jitter is 100 times lower than that.

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I was noticing something, but it may have just been not quantized enough or the business of the patch itself.

I try to not worry about things unless they actively become a problem, it’s just weird that I’m only seeing this on the Digitone and not the Rytm (perhaps more firmware available for accuracy in the UI of clock polling?). I don’t have the Digitakt at the moment to verify on the UI, but I’m interested to see if the Heat does the same.

Press the tempo button on the Rytm and you’ll probably see it there, it doesn’t show up on the main window. This fluctuation has been reported a lot and someone will always chime in saying that modern midi machines take an average of the incoming midi clock and set their internal clock with that average, so it’s basically a non-issue…

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Practically it’s likely that non-issue.

Usabilitywise, I prefer the Rytm’s method in that the hunting shouldn’t be visible on the main window, but perhaps there’s more UI space reserved for the Digi series?

It’s distracting, none of my other non-Elektron kit would appear to surface the small jitter that I have observed.

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4 YEARS LATER

my DN is not currently locking onto the clock from my digitakt, I’m getting fluctuation on the main screen and the tempo screen, it’s minute in the grand scheme but you’re right, it’s distracting. Digitakt clock is solid. Did this just continue to be an issue with your keys and you never looked back or was there ultimately a resolution?

I’m sync’ed with 5 pin din so it’s not a usb issue. I guess this is just first world problems…

…some little midi jitter shown on display on synced up external devices is normal…
usually those are not audible in any relevant way…and if so, most of the time, that’s just u foolin’ ursef while watching the count hunt and havin’ concerns…

so stop watcing it in realtime and forget about it until u actually really hear timing struggles…

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I’ll train my eyes not to see that part of my screen, thanks for setting my mind at ease

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Hiya! Considering I’ve been using it and I don’t recall any change in “stability” I think I just acclimated as @reeloy suggested :smiley:

It’s been solid, so I just had to get past the fixation of “something is wrong?” to shrug off and happily make music.

Honestly most of my questions can be answered with “it doesn’t matter, here’s a simple explanation to set your methodical brain at ease, shoo and be unblocked.”

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