U-SYNC: sending MIDI Notes on time

[Simon]

Right now U-SYNC, and generally the Nome, is only used for MIDI Clock and MIDI Start/Stop.
You can send MIDI Notes to your machines either directly from your DAW or through the Nome using the MIDI Forwarding feature.

But that feature simply "forwards" the MIDI Data received, at the time it was received. In other words, it does not do anything to improve the timing of the MIDI messages sent by the DAW, which can be terrible and not in time at all with the U-SYNC timing.

For sequencers that's not a problem because the note sequence is usually in the sequencer and can be triggered with a MIDI Start message, sent perfectly on time by the Nome. But it's an issue for arpeggiators, or simply synths you want to "play" directly from MIDI Notes in your DAW.

So, with that in mind, the idea is to add the possibility for U-SYNC to send MIDI Notes as well, perfectly on time with the clock timing.

Any thoughts?
Simon

PS: there has been quite a few discussions about this, in particular @asender on this topic but also @dheeraj found a workaround using Ableton's tempo follower in that topic.

[Manu W.]

I would love to have this feature in Nome II as I have issues from time to time to get my recorded MIDI-Events in Logic in time to my analog synths and back recorded in time! It`s annoying to shift the recorded regions by hand to be right... One time the recorded audio was even before the first note (maybe happened because of Logics latency compensation).

Furthermore when a DAW-project is more filled with plugins causing latency the problem gets worse. I don´t know: is it possible that U-SYNC could also help in that case or is this a "natural" latency problem that can't be improved?

[Simon]

Thanks for your thoughts Manu!

Plugin latency should not affect this as it should be compensated by PDC (Plugin Delay Compensation) in your DAW. Check your settings
(in fact the U-SYNC plugin, in order to be able to send things on time, adds also a bit (7ms) of Plugin latency)

[MPrinsen]

This would be great!

[spdk]

Yes please, I'll have that too

[jaybee6264]

One million +1’s for this feature.

[Simon]

This has been asked quite a bit recently. I've boosted the timeline for this feature and it is now officially included in the U-SYNC 2.0 roadmap.
See https://forum.simntonic.com/viewtopic.php?t=541

[producer_steve]

Would need this before buying as two of my synths are midi over DIN only. Need clock and midi notes on the same cable.

[Simon]

Would need this before buying as two of my synths are midi over DIN only. Need clock and midi notes on the same cable.

You can still send notes and clock over DIN-MIDI with the Nome. The only thing this feature add is better timing for the MIDI notes (as its title says). With the current version they have the "usual" timing, i.e. the same timing you would get without the Nome.

[autopoiesis]

+1 to this one!

[Foksadure]

With the current version they have the "usual" timing, i.e. the same timing you would get without the Nome.

FWIW, just got a MacBook Air M4 runing masOS 26 Tahoe, and configured U-SYNC to use with my Midronome and Cubase 14, whom MIDI Note timing is actually very very sharp out of the box thanks to Core Audio. MIDI Clock not so much, but that's common behaviour on many DAW.
Tested with the MidiGAL, a good old AMT-8, and an UMC404HD audio interface.
https://midisizer.com/midigal/midiclock-tester/
I'm running 4 bars of MIDI Clock, then 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 and 1/32th notes (clock disabled if possible), at 120BPM then 175BPM.

When introducing the Midronome in the system, bi-directionnal works like a charm, and it sharpens the MIDI Clock as expected from ~0,222% deviation over the median to a mindblowing 0.004% at 120BPM (0.333% vs 0.006% at 175BPM).

But it kinda messes the Note On timing compared to Cubase alone, especially at the beginning of the bar when looping.
I think combining MIDI Clock and MIDI Note into Cubase (or any other DAW) messes the later a bit already, even without the Midronome.
Have to investigate more.

Still, overall figures on macOS are still very very good. Best MIDI timing I've ever got on any computer so far.
Especially without specialised hardware & software combination like Steinberg's LTB or Emagic's AMT back in the days.

Which leads me to a question: how would you fix the timing of MIDI Notes sent too late by the computer or any MIDI device, without timestamping and buffering of the events into the Nome?

[Simon]

Thanks for the analysis, that is very nice to know!

how would you fix the timing of MIDI Notes sent too late by the computer or any MIDI device, without timestamping and buffering of the events into the Nome?

The same way it works with the clock, the U-SYNC plugin has the knowledge of which note is where (for this it will need to receive the MIDI Notes somehow). Then it simply passes that information to the Nome who then "plays" the notes where they are supposed to be (based on the clock's timing).

Let's see - I have not even started development on this. FW 5.0 first

Simon

[Foksadure]

I think combining MIDI Clock and MIDI Note into Cubase (or any other DAW) messes the later a bit already, even without the Midronome. Have to investigate more.

I have to correct myseIf: it appears that the excellent timing accuracy of Cubase 14 on macOS is not affected at all when sending the DAW's internal MIDI Clock signal along with the Note On messages to the UMC404HD audio interface DIN MIDI Out.
Figures are exactly the same, indicating (I suppose) that Note messages have priority over the Clock messages, hence the lower precision of the later compared to the Nome.

The slight degradation of the Note On accuracy only appears on the Midronome DIN MIDI Out when mixing the Clock from the Midronome with the Note On from the DAW.

Both tests done with U-SYNC enabled.

BTW, adjusting the tempo in Cubase 14 from the Nome with its heavy dial is a bliss.

Feels like a poor man' Synclavier's knob: https://store.synclavier.com/collections/regen-knob

[Simon]

The slight degradation of the Note On accuracy only appears on the Midronome DIN MIDI Out when mixing the Clock from the Midronome with the Note On from the DAW.

My guess is that Cubase simply sends them one after the other, depending which one comes first, and in your tests the clock moved instead of the note.

But if there is only one MIDI cable, and if both messages have to be sent at exactly the same time, there is no way around it: one of the message needs to move. The Nome is a clock so clock messages will always have the utmost priority, in fact the clock is 100% unaffected the other messages (0 jitter added).

And just to prove this approach is the right one:

• If note message + clock message have to be sent at exactly the same time, and that the note is sent first, that means the clock message is delayed by a whole millisecond - that's a lot! Translate that in a BPM world, say you were running at 125bpm, this translates to a temporary jump to 119bpm, then 131bpm, then back to 125bpm
• On the other hand, moving the MIDI note message simply moves the actual note by ~0.3ms (length of the MIDI Clock message) has very little chance of being heard or noticed.