Sim'n Tonic Forums

As has been noted elsewhere, many DAWs do not follow external clock, even if they generate it and expect other devices to follow. I've asked about Studio One, and have been told that Presonus don't follow clock because it's not precise enough (kind of ironic) but the program will, apparently, sync to MTC (MIDI time code). I'm guessing other some DAWs are similar.

Following on from a discussion on FB, then, if anyone has ideas on how something could be done to accomplish having these DAWs follow the device, not just the other way around, please chime in.

So far, my thoughts include: a VST that would make the DAW sync to the Midronome; having the Midronome produce MTC (I've seen Simon mention this in another thread); spending a lot of money for one of the few pieces of hardware that generates MTC, and hope that it could follow Midronome and simultaneously produce the corresponding equivalent in MTC for the DAW to follow (yeah, really impractical); finding a way to sync two DAWs together, like the apparently mothballed Rewire, so that one, like Ableton, could follow the external clock, and have the other one run in parallel; or finding some 3rd party utility program to do something similar. Just some wild ideas; there's a reason I'm not rich.

You would with the Nobel Prize if you used your newfound fame to reach out to the folks at Reaper to work out a solution! I will nominate you!

-Z

Thanks for the suggestion

Regarding MTC, actually I did test it early on and I got terrible results. Laurent from the FB group also did a test with an MPC sending MTC to his DAW to see how it was performing and it confirmed my original tests: see comment on https://www.facebook.com/groups/midrono ... 985757987/ (post and comment is in French)

And if not using MTC but a plugin, what is your idea on how to do this (get the DAW to follow the Midronome)?

Thanks for your reply on this, Simon.

Since you ask for my suggestion on how to get a plug-in to facilitate DAWs following the Midronome, well, given my many years and vast amounts of inexperience and ignorance, I don't know! Perhaps it is a non-starter, and is merely wishful thinking on my part. But, given my penchant for throwing things against the wall to see what sticks, I'll just mention some potentially irrelevant observations, on the off chance the someone with buckets more tech savviness than myself might find a thread to develop a solution.

I'm using Studio One on a PC. One of my controllers is a Novation 61SL mk3, which incorporates a keyboard and sequencer, as well as some assignable controls. It will follow the DAW after being set up as an instrument in the external devices section of options, but the DAW will not respond to it. However, if you set it up as a controller using the Mackie HUI template, and put the keyboard into its "In Control" mode, then you do have transport control over the DAW. Sadly, though, in that mode when you access the tempo function, it just displays whatever is set in Studio One, and does not respond to changes, as it does when running independently. That's obviously discouraging in light of this vain hope of mine.

Moving on to another controller, the Presonus Atom SQ, here we have transport control as well as a tempo setting in the menu which allows adjustment from the encoder when selected, which the DAW follows dynamically. Now, to allay any misconceptions that I'm a total idiot, I do realize that the SQ is a Presonus proprietary device specifically designed to integrate with Studio One, their own DAW (although I do believe it has some Ableton functionality included for good measure), whose setup is simply selecting it in the devices list, and it just works there, and as such doesn't compare to general devices talking over USB or MIDI or whatever. I only mention it as an observation that Studio One, at least (don't know about any other DAW), does have some ability to follow tempo and transport together (not sure about clock, per se, either) in a fashion that may be hidden from non-native devices, but, and here's where I may be stretching things, could possibly provide clues to some mad scientist leading to an approach to control the DAW in a way that is blocked from view normally. Also, clearly this thing isn't using a plug-in at all, having built-in factory communication.

Definitely, the best scenario would be if the software companies would change their tunes on allowing DAWs to sync to more external devices than is currently the case, so people like me don't need to wish for some mad Dr. Frankenstein to create an illegal hack for it. OK, now back to real life...

I second this request -- I actually didn't realize it wouldn't be possible to slave my DAW, Reaper, to Midronome (my mistake) and this has severely impacted it's utility in practice. If I could give this kind functionality all 6 of my votes I would!

markhw wrote: ↑30 May 2023, 20:55 I second this request -- I actually didn't realize it wouldn't be possible to slave my DAW, Reaper, to Midronome (my mistake) and this has severely impacted it's utility in practice. If I could give this kind functionality all 6 of my votes I would!

Thanks for commenting
I just want to point out there is a big difference between a feature that has been moved to the "Potential Future Features" (the ones you can vote for) and one like this which no one really is sure how to even do

The only idea I potentially have would be to make the Midronome an audio interface and send the sync signal as digital audio over the USB - that would be tight enough. But that would require DAWs to handle two audio interfaces (AFAIK none do today), or a plugin able to send data to another audio inteface than the main one, or an external software able to "redirect" some of the audio to another interface... All these ideas are pretty complicated and to my knowledge not really possible today. But the computer music world is constantly evolving, and for example if at some point DAWs can handle multiple audio interface then we would have a pretty good solution

The other options is to get DAW companies to update their DAW to follow MIDI Clock! I mean if Ableton, Bitwig and Reason can do it, why not all the others?

Chiming in here, as well. MIDI Time Code is well specified and supported by tons of DAWs, as opposed to MIDI clock, which, well, isn't (and which provides no location information, as you know).

As a non-Ableton/Bitwig user, this would tremendously increase the utility of a Midronome. I'm sure I am not alone there...

If I may ask, what were the terrible results you had a few years back? No lock, no sync, jitter, latency?