With the Midronome as master, does its sync carry through to devices receiving the DAW’s clock?

[spacialrob]

Sorry for the weird phrasing, but essentially I’m wondering if a controller like the MPK MINI MKIII, which receives the DAW clock to sync its arpeggiator, would be more precise if the Midronome is sending the clock as master? Or would the Midronome not affect the MPK’s timing accuracy at all?

[Simon]

Hi Rob

The short answer is probably not. This is a USB keyboard, so the only way to send it the clock is over USB, which is not going to be very precise. You could try to forward the Midronome's clock sent over USB, i.e.:

Midronome -> MIDI Clock over USB-MIDI -> computer -> MIDI forwarding / MIDI Thru software (f.x. PocketMIDI) -> USB-MIDI -> MPK Mini

But this might not be much better than sending the DAW Clock right away. To this day I have not found a solution on how to sync USB keyboards, I just do not think they were designed to be synced really Like it always surprised me why they would put an arpeggiator on this device, especially one that sends arpeggiated MIDI notes. I have the mk2 at home, so if I get some time (that's a big if), I can try it out and see if the Midronome can help the situation.

Cheers
Simon

[spacialrob]

That makes sense, thanks for the reply.

On a similar note, would a device that's synced via my interface's MIDI Output be cleaner with Midronome as master? So Midronome -> DAW -> Digital Sync Tickbox -> Interface (Scarlett) MIDI Out port cable -> synth, for controlling its arpeggiator. Essentially the same question as the MPK, but instead Ableton would be sending out its clock via a physical DIN connection through my interface rather than USB :P

[Simon]

Well I actually do not think Ableton would be able to receive the clock from the Midronome and then send it further to your audio interface (it seems it is what you are trying to do... Or maybe I misunderstood).

But if the synth you are trying to sync has in fact DIN-MIDI, then yea that is definitely something the Midronome solves. The way to do it is:

DAW -> DAW sync via audio -> Midronome -> MIDI Clock over DIN-MIDI -> synth

Alternatively you could do:

Midronome -> MIDI Clock over DIN-MIDI -> synth
Midronome -> MIDI Clock over USB -> Ableton

But that might not be as tight as the first option. I made a video on youtube which compared DAW sync (which uses audio) and USB-MIDI for Ableton: https://youtu.be/-T7KW3hfvDI