I have an issue where my flex machines seem to be recording slightly later by a few samples when using record trigs which is forcing me to manually punch in. Could it be unstable midi clock causing this? My octa is slaved to Beatstep pro which is itself slaved to ERM midiclock.
Could be. Can you try using the Octatrack as the master, to experiment?
If you require your recording to be literally sample-accurate, MIDI slaving your OT probably isn’t going to cut it!
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(And: Do I understand you correctly, than you can manually hit record with less than a few samples of accuracy?? You’re an actual wizard 
)
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Rethinking my midi set up is a headache which I’ve been trying to avoid but i think im gonna have to start pulling and rerouting cables!
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Lol my timing is not great and takes a few attempts 
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Try it in a new project before rewiring your whole setup.
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Also.
A few samples? Say 10 just to be on the high side.
10 samples divided by the sample rate of 44.1 is less than .23 milliseconds (yeah - nought point twenty three).
For most of us - there are more relevant aspects of music making to focus on. Imagine any musician who could even accurately adjust their playing (intentionally) in such small increments.
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Haven’t counted how many but it’s enough to sound out of sync on playback.
is it possible to set the Octatrack as master bpm and transport?
if that doesn’t work for your setup, at least do try it this way just to check if that fixes things.
also you could try setting E-RM as master tempo, OT slaved to that, and then OT Midi Thru to the Beatstep for dual sync to the Multiclock.
two other things to check:
is the playback Track “Rate” inadvertently set to 62 perhaps?
is the playback Track’s “Retrig” unintentionally set to something above zero?
also try setting the playcback track’s Timestretch to Normal or Beat, rather than Off. This may help if the Pitch is slightly nudged off midday.
also to note: if a previous sample was captured, and the Trim Start time was adjusted, then another sample is captured to that Flex Recording Slot, the adjust Trim Start time might still be slightly away from the exact default Start time.
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Master is a DAW ?
I’d use OT as master too, especially for recordings.
IIRC, OT’s recording latency is around 64 samples (1.5ms). Not out of sync.
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When I slave the OT to a DAW the clock is unstable enough that if I have a seamless loop in a flex machine (timestretch off) being triggered every cycle (i.e. I’m recording from an input and playing the record buffer back in a flex machine at the same time) that works perfectly with the OT as master, when the DAW is master there will be audible gaps and clicks at the loop point because by the time the pattern has completed a cycle the clock form the DAW will have jittered enough that the loop point is off by a few samples. Brighter source material usually masks it but if stuff is mostly lows then it’s REALLY obvious.
You can hear it very clearly (those LOUD clicks every 16 steps)in this clip from the beginning of this hardware jam I recorded a while back. All of the audio in this part is being recorded in a track recorded and played back a few milliseconds later by a flex machine, completely standard OT technique. These clicks showed up when I recorded with the OT slaved to a DAW but not when I was practicing with the OT as master. Once the filters open up on all the tracks it’s almost inaudible amid all the other stuff, but any point in the recording where I bring the filters down it sticks out like in this clip.
Different symptom, but sounds like the same issue.
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Thanks for the input here folks. ERM clock is tight enough for midi but for tight timimg will have to go OT as master which makes the ERM redundant if OT sync out is tighter.