I’m having endless problems recording my hardware into Ableton, currently I have the A4 through overbridge with the model cycles into the Ext in of the A4 and that seems stable. My octatrack I sold because I could never get it to sync with Ableton. I also have a Hydrasynth explorer and a Pro 3 which I use with the external instrument feature in Ableton. Variable results but as I’m not using them for rhythm duties I can live with a bit of post mix adjustment. Annoyingly, sometimes adjusting the latency compensation in Ableton seems to get them in sync one day but not the next. It’s all very confusing with so many variables. I feel I’m spending more time with ‘trial and error’ attempts to get everything just right than I am enjoying making music.
Everything is linked via CME MIDI thru box for ‘offline’ and they all work together fine when the computers not involved.
However I recently bought a TR6, a big part of that decision was the ability to track in each track separately using an aggregate audio setup on my M1 Mac mini. However, when I try this the TR6 is WAAAY off.
This has been a longwinded way of asking if the ‘budget’ interface I’m using (behringer UMC1820) is what’s causing these issues? I’m looking at ERM multi clocks and the like but its such a lot of money to fix something that I feel should work anyway and I really don’t want to buy something like that if the Behringers the issue anyway?
man, i’ve torn out my hair so many times trying to troubleshoot latency. so many people seem to make hybrid setups work, but i’ve never been successful. I wish i could, because i’d love to use Live’s juicy effects on my hardware. I tried the Multiclock, but was too much of a simpleton to make it work. anyway, i’m following thread on the off chance of a new tidbit of help.
Oh man that’s disheartening to hear. I kind of thought the multiclock was the magic bullet that would answer all my problems. The only downside was the price.
More food for thought though so thank you.
I have heard it said that live is notoriously bad with hardware but I bought the full live 11 package so I’m sticking with it. Plus I feel I’ve got quite proficient with its built in synths and effects and don’t want to start again with another daw
Are you using live’s external device ‘device’? I always get a lot of latency using those, whereas making a midi track and recording audio without the external device I have no issues at all.
This should be where you should look. Check all your synths with A4 connected to ableton and forwarding midi from its out. See if they are all individually stable. Then add more one by one.
That’s interesting, and yes I am. I would have thought the self contained ext instrument would have been more efficient. Well that’s one place to check. Thanks 
Hi, One of the best videos I’ve found so far covering latency in Ableton Live:
And if you are on Live 12 this might be useful, too:
Excellent thank you, I’m on live 11 still but will definitely be watching the first video…. Although if upgrading would fix all my issues it would certainly be worth doing
…my first guess…ur working on windows and u got that classic audiodriver configuration confusion IN there…
for now, i’d say…have u ever tried to use ob stand alone, sketch all ur hw content there and then open ableton and just import those ob takes and then start intertwining with all the itb workflow…?
or the other way around…actually really just use ur audio interface to record ur hw stuff without intertwining with any realtime ob plugin workflow…direct usb audio vs audio signal in/out flow operations of ur interface is the root of all ur shaky sync struggle…
Worth a look also
A short video showing how CLOCKstep:MULTI can help in Latency Compensation while performing a Sample Accurate Clock sync between Ableton and an external synth. It’s the same concept as Multiclock, and can even rely on the Multiclock plugin. It also has a lot of utility as a CV sync source alongside MIDI. Since you mentioned price, it’s a bit more affordable.
Interesting, never heard of that. Thank you, I’ll look deeper into it.
I’ve been following this thread and watching the videos folks have recommended. What isn’t adequately explained in any video on the subject is how to deal with the difference between system latency and the latency of hardware that has an internal sequencer. For example, my setup has a Bassline DB-01, a Digitakt, and an Arturia MiniFreak. I want to use Live for transport control for everything, and send MIDI to the MiniFreak, but I want to use the internal sequencer on the DB-01 and the Digitakt. This causes me to get different latency amounts on all three tracks. I’m using external instruments for the Bassline and the MiniFreak, and the Overbridge plugin for the Digitakt. I’m routing all three to audio tracks for recording purposes. To get as little latency as possible, i’ve set my buffer size to 128 samples and my sample rate is 44100. I’m using a decently fast Mac. I don’t think my workflow (having some tracks sequenced by Live and some sequenced internally) is is that unusual. How do people make this work?
Edit: I forgot to add that i’ve noticed when I stop and start transport on Ableton, the sequencer on the Digitakt isn’t always starting from the beginning. This obviously messes with syncing. Does anyone know why this is happening?
Hi @Dogead
Sorry to hear your frustrations, I know them very well. I haven’t mastered them myself yet, but I can add one important thing that I haven’t seen mentioned in this thread explicitly: I believe the problem comes from combining Overbridge and non-Overbridge (audio interface). Unfortunately I’ve always had issue with that, i I believe the manual of OB even stated that you shouldn’t do this.
Try running ónly Overbridge or only using an audio interface. In that case things will start aligning up correctly, providing you set things up correctly. That still takes some figuring out with some YouTube tutorials, but as long as I tried figuring it out with a combination of Overbridge ánd audio interface I never figured it out correctly, until I realised that. (Please, anyone correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I’m not)
Still a shame though. Elektron should introduce and Overbridge audio interface because of this, in my eyes. I did the opposite, I now run a simple setup using only a few audio interface ports for now and no OB.
Well it’s nice to know I’m not alone with these issues at least. This is exactly it. Individually overbridge, tr6s, line up perfectly but together along with my interface is a real mess. I guess for now I’ll just use four stereo inputs on the behringer and record jams like that. It’s just a shame as obviously you lose the ability to edit everything separately post jam which was a big draw to certain items I own in the first place. Plus if that’s how I end up working I should have kept the octa.
Yeah, same for me for now. There míght be pro tricks that I don’t know about, but to my knowing this is it for now.
At some point I’d like full OB (with an Elektron audio interface), ór a mixer that has full post-fader multitrack audio interface built in. The second would probably suit me even better.
A friend of me has a Mixwizard 16 track mixer which he runs every track post-fader out into a 16 channel audio interface. Works like I would want but too expensive/much for me at the moment.
Keith McMillen Kmix? 8 in 12 out.
The overbridge clock is very stable. You could make it the master clock for everything