Jitter + delay from OT MIDI OUT

Elektron Gear Octatrack
1

Here’s the issue.

I am getting 1-3 milliseconds of jitter (inconsistent timing), when sending midi notes from the OT to external gear. And I don’t mean jitter between gear, I’m getting this shift in timing on each single piece of gear.

Not only that, but as i increase the amount of midi note data i send to the OT MIDI OUT port I get increased jitter and begin to get a significant delay (1-5 milliseconds) from between the OT audio and the midi notes.

The more note data i send, the worse it gets.

I know this amount of shift in audio is generally hard for the ear to detect but when making tight techno drum patterns using multiple pieces of gear, it definitely makes a difference. I’ve measured the delay and jitter precisely by zooming in on Ableton’s grid.

My Midi Clock setup is:

ABLETON CLOCK (with E-RM Multiclock Plugin sent out audio interface output) > E-RM MULTICLOCK (1/4" CLOCK INPUT) > E-RM MIDI OUT PORT to OCTATRACK MIDI IN PORT

So I have an incredibly stable clock going into the MIDI IN on the OT. This is confirmed by the OT’s audio being super tight when recording the OT L/R audio output into ABLETON, no jitter at all. There is a couple of milliseconds delay, but that’s fine because i can shift it with the E-RM Multiclock.

Then I am sending MIDI note data from the OT to my JOMOX AIRBASE 99 via the MIDI OUT port.

Here’s an example of my problem…

I mute all midi tracks except for track 1, and send F#1 (Closed HH) on all 16 trigs. There is no delay from the JOMOX with basically NO jitter. So this works great!

However if I enable midi track 2, which also has some trigs on it, sending midi note data (it doesn’t matter what channel it’s sending on), i get 2-3 milliseconds of delay and 1-2 milliseconds of jitter. As i add the rest of the midi tracks it just gets worse. Again, it doesn’t matter what midi channel each track is set to, i can set 7 tracks to send out midi channel 13 and only one to send out channel 14 (which my drum machine is on), and i still get increased jitter and delay on channel 14.

Is this amount of delay and jitter just to be expected when sending multiple midi messages out one MIDI OUTPUT? It seems extreme.

2

Hi there,

you could try to do your midi note messages directly from ableton and instead of sending from the midi out of the octatrack, just try to send to your jomox from the midi thru.

good luck!

3

Standard DIN MIDI connections have a transfer rate of 3125 bytes per second. A single note on or cc message consists of 3 bytes. So its transmission takes already around 1 millisecond.

Since the messages of all channels needs to be send over a single connection one behind the other jitter and delay in the one digit millisecond range is expected.

To minimize the delay of jitter/delay make sure that only what’s really necessary gets sent. For example configure AUDIO NOTE OUT and AUDIO CC OUT to INT and not INT+EXT when appropriate.

4 Likes
4

Thanks @tnussb

This is exactly the answer i was expecting, which i was also dreading lol

Makes sense, but still blows my mind.

I think i’ll have to upgrade to a Cirklon or something for my midi sequencing… something that has multiple midi outputs.