Octatrack and MD 1UW significant MIDI Jitter

Elektron Gear
#1

Hello,

I’ve been jamming on my OT MK1 for a long while now and never really had issues with it’s midi timing, or it’s midi clock (it used to send clock to all my synths and to an MFB Tanzbar).

Recently I’ve acquired an MD SPS 1UW+ and have had some MIDI jitter issues when having these both machines playing at the same time.

I noticed that if the MD is slaved to OT’s clock the BP values have a jitter of approximately ± 0.2/0.3 on the MD. I’ve tried syncing the OT to the MD and the result is slightly less jittery but still there.

To bypass this I’m currently setting manually the BPM on the MD to the same as the OT without slaving it, and controling it’s start/stop and transport from the OT (with no clock output going in the MD). This works allright but I notice that the sync is definitely not tight and after a 128/256 steps , things start slowly drifting and my beats are not synced anymore.

I did also notice that sometimes when pressing play on the OT the MD starts delayed, and sometimes it starts tight (quite randomly), but the fact that the 2 machines end up drifting is constant.

Has anyone had any issues with these 2 machines being synced before? Is my MD faulty ? Is this something normal that I should expect when working with these 2? I’ve heard so much praise on the MD and OT clocks that I must admit I feel quite underwhelmed of this seemingly perfect combo :frowning:

btw i also tried slaving both of them from an external source and the drifting is still present.

Thank you for your help everyone, have a good weekend :heartbeat:

#2

I get a constant bpm shift on the display between the MD and A4 but it never feels out of time. When syncing the swing relationship between both boxes that’s also tight, even though the bpm display is drifting in and out slightly.

Do you notice an audible drift out of time when synced via midi? Or is it just the display?

#3

I first noticed it audibly only when investigating I noticed the calculated displayed bpm drifting too.

#4

Ah ok. I’ve just ignored the visual drift on my machines as their tight af anyway. I’m sure the octa/md guys will chip in soon. Good luck sorting it and have a good weekend mate!

1 Like
#5

thank you mate, appreciate the time you took :slight_smile:

#6

Any tiny jitter in the output from the sync master will cause a little fluctuation in the calculated and displayed tempo on the sync slave. You must have very good timing perception to have noticed it audibly before looking at the displayed tempo.

When using only transport messages and not clock sync, there is inevitably a tiny but variable delay between receipt of the message and start of the slave machine’s sequence. Because the rate of the two clocks is not the same, there will inevitably be long-term drift between the two machines (which is what MIDI clock was invented to overcome).

There are literally dozens of posts on the forum that report the same observation.

It is not doing anything that other MDs don’t do. Of course, if you’re dissatisfied with the performance you might call it faulty.

Yes. It would be unusual that the MD’s performance as sync slave would cause any practical problems.

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#7

thanks for the answer.

#8

Running similar combo here, only a non-UW MD SPS mkII…

-> yes, there is a bit of MIDI jitter, that is inherent in the MIDI protocol imho and can never be 100% avoided

if you really can hear that, congrats on your ears - I have noticed it only after being told it was there.
I then started paying more attention to my samples’ start points (on the OT) being cut correctly and voila: didn´t notice any more “jitter”.

especially with samples, part of the timing issues you´ll encouter is from badly cropped samples in my experience… at least in my experience and in my opinion :wink:

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