Using Digitakt for Live Backing Tracks / Sync Issue

Elektron Gear Digitakt
#1

Heya Elektronauts,

Just got a Digitakt and loving it so far.

I know this is not its intended functionality but I’m wondering if I can use the machine for live backing tracks where I play the audio of a 3 minute finished song and send midi clock to a Prophet 6.

To test this, I cut one song perfectly at the initial transient and exported it, imported to DT,
and assigned it to a one shot trigger (using the conditional trig 1st) on beat one with the BPM of the machine set to the song’s BPM.

It starts out playing back in sync but starts to drift off quickly.

I made sure all the sample playback settings were correct (start time at 0, FWD playing, etc)

Anything I’m missing? Would I need to export the song at a certain sample rate?

Why wouldn’t the song be totally locked in?

Thx!

#2

Try it with another DAW to see if you really did cut it perfectly. If it also drifts maybe you weren’t as precise as you thought?

#3

It should not drift. If you trigger a sample with no transposition, on either the TRIG or SRC pages (and the LFO isn’t modulating the SAMP TUNE) - then it should just play as you exported it from the DAW.

Sample rate won’t matter: Everything is sample rate converted to 48kHz, mono, 16-bit on being transferred to the DT. (Though you probably should rather do that yourself in the DAW so that you control what you get.).

I would check what the BPM is carefully in the DAW: Even a fraction of a BPM off will quickly cause things to drift. You can set the DT’s tempo in 1/10ths of a BPM by using the up and down arrows while on the Tempo page. Besure the track’s BPM isn’t some more finer fraction, like 121.25.

#4

Did you use the scale per track mode ? ie different lenghts on each of the tracks ?
this is notorious to create out of sync patterns.