Sim'n Tonic Forums

Hej there

Your device looks promising especially with the Ableton Link built in, which is rumored to be a lot more stable than syncing Ableton alone through outboard gear.

My scenario is as follows:
I want to use an Elektron Sequencer like the Syntakt (especially since they now have their own "Song Mode"), which can provide a clock itself either vie USB, or Din-Midi (24 & 48 ppq), as the "Brain" in my setup to play live and have Ableton follow. However even with a 48x clock Ableton is very unstable and takes about 2 bars to be in-sync. Meanwhile any midiclip or other element that needs a clock signal will be unstable too and thus just sound weird.

Here are two screen captures of the problem:
first one is just starting a midi clip which sends out to a synth and returns audio and you can see the unstable clock and hear the syncing

https://imgur.com/a/h3lrTEx

and secondly a clip of the piano roll with also quick restarts any you can see the transport jump and not behave like it should do

https://imgur.com/a/kvE6NVv

I hope your clock might provide a better and more stable solution to this problem, so Ableton can follow hardware and not just be the brain.


cheers,
Cat

Hej Cat!

Sorry your topic must have fallen through the net.

Just looking at your images, wow gosh... This is bad
I suggest you have a look at this video where I show the exact same thing (MIDI Clock sent over USB) but with the Midronome so you have an idea. It still fluctuates - that's because of USB, not much I can do about it - but a LOT less than in your images.

==> https://youtu.be/-T7KW3hfvDI

Just to make sure this is clear, Ableton Link is *not* included in the Midronome which will be shipped to the Kickstarter backers. It will come later as an add-on module (a year later at least).

I really want to work on this issue (because I love nerding about it), so I hope my brain will come up with a better solution eventually, but for now the only solution if you want tight sync between DAW and hardware sequencer is to use what I call "DAW sync" which uses an audio sync signal, and where the DAW is the master. You can see on the video how it sounds.

I have not investigated much Ableton Link, but it's pretty impossible it will be as precise as an audio signal sync

Cheers
Simon