I am experiencing some little but not acceptable time shifting on my sh01A when I send the MIDI sequence from Ableton through my MOTU Xpress 128 into the MIDI in of the sh01a. I cannot accept it because I have to record 3 minutes of sequence, do you guys have any workarounds that would solve that issue?
I am using an SH01A and doing a 16th sequence.
I swear at one point I thought there was some shuffle going on.
Do you suggest buying any external machines that solve all these tightness issues?..I am going crazy and don’t want to use soft synths
Why are you using a MIDI interface when the SH01a supports MIDI (and audio) via USB? You don’t need the Motu at all here. So remove that from the equation then see if it fixes the jitter issues.
I don’t use Live, I run Cubase on a dedicated windows computer that is stripped down of any antiviruses, wifi, bluetooth or any other program running in the background not related to music or windows core services. Never had a single MIDI jitter issue.
Some external sequencers might not MIDI sync properly depending on the brand but that’s unrelated to MIDI jitter.
In most DAWs, MIDI output jitter is linked to the audio buffer size.
Try running your recordings of the sh01A on the shortest buffer possible, disable some plugins or freeze some tracks if necessary.
It’s the same on almost any DAW, although Ableton and Cubase should be a bit better than most.
On Mac there is MIDI timestamping, which will eliminate MIDI jitter if you have a DAW and MIDI interface that support it(most of them don’t).
An ERM sync solution won’t help with MIDI jitter, only MIDI Clock jitter.
MIDI notes will be just as jittery as before.
If you want no MIDI jitter at all, the only real solution is an Expert Sleepers Usamo or one of their eurorack solutions.
The options are ES-40 + ESX-8MD or ES-3 + ES-5 + ESX-8MD.
Both of those solutions can be expanded to at least 40 MIDI output ports.
It’s not cheap but it’s worth it.
Best easy method would be to use SH-01A’s sequencer and trigger it from an audio track in Ableton. There will still be some audio latency to compensate but will remove the midi jitter issue.
I’m lazy and midi sequence hardware from Ableton all the time, and just accept the potential timing issues and was actually thinking earlier how maybe it adds to the vibe… not a humanized but a computerized groove. Someday the timing issues will be included as a feature when computers have solved those problems
Anyway, I record the audio from the midi sequenced hardware and zoom in to change the start point to begin on the first downbeat. If there’s silence at the beginning of the recording I’ll find the first transient and zoom in so it’s a whole number of ticks between the audio and where it should be in the grid. Then I move to the beginning of the recording and set the start point accordingly (the mini waveform view on the bottom right in session view makes this easy).
It might help I only have 2ms input latency from my audio interface, but this is how I deal with recording hardware without doing stuff with latency compensation
I am actually gonna buy the Expert sleepers USAMO. Sounds like a machine that will just eliminate me some strong headaches and will deal with everything I need to deal with.
Thank you very much for your suggestions, I like to record long takes of stuff and no jittering is TOO MUCH important for what I have to do. I hope I’ll be fine!
USAMO is a bit of a pain to calibrate. If I move the box or bump into it by accident, I usually have to recalibrate, and it’s a pain. But works great.
Multiclock is more expensive, but you get more outputs, and no calibration.
Nowadays, I use the multiclock for sync, and USAMO for traditional midi, note send.
Also just picked up Expert Sleepers ES-3 + ES-5 + ESX-8MD for 8 additional channels of sample accurate midi note out. Does the same thing as USAMO, without the calibration.
Hallo, I have just recognized this thread by searching for MIDI jitter.
I have a Behringer Edge which I wanted to control with MIDI.
I’m on a Mac Pro with Logic Pro X.
And I have a ERM Multiclock.
I have connected the Multiclock with USB and connected the Edge MIDI in with the Multiclock MIDI Out.
When playing short 16th MIDI notes I have this awfully jittery MIDI, too.
Even with the Multiclock in between.
But I recognized that the audio buffer was set very high (1024 samples) because I had a large project running before.
Now I read what the user @DreamXcape wrote and then I set the audio buffer to 32 and 64 in LPX.
And I can confirm that this user is absolutely correct.
The jitter is (to my attention at least) completely eliminated and getting worse when I raise the buffer.
I can’t believe that we’re in 2023 and this is still an issue with a daw like LPX.
BTW my sound card is an RME ADI-2 Pro FS.
Wow, and shortly after typing this I have played a bit with the settings in LPX.
And I have recognized something incredible.
After setting the buffer to 1024 the MIDI jitter was again very high.
BUT there is a setting to activate MIDI 2.0 which was activated.
Guess what, I deactivated MIDI 2.0 and the problems have disappeared!! mind=blown
But it makes sense. Maybe Apple have improved this in a later version of LPX.
I’m currently in 10.7.4 because of compatibility issues.
Anyway, the moral of the story is it always pays out to play with the settings…
