Sim'n Tonic Forums

Short description of the issue: The BPM display is flickering when syncing to a DAW on Windows using the "Midronome" plugin. The issue is very similar for any kind of sync between 1 and 24 ppq.

Setup: DAW sending 24ppq pulses using the "Midronome" plugin, cable from audio itf output to Nome's "INPUT". On Nome, "inP" setting set to 24P.

Steps to Reproduce: press play in DAW

Expected Behavior: BPM is stable but also following tempo changes

Actual Behavior: the BPM flickers a lot so it is barely readable, for example if DAW is at 140 bpm, the BPM is constantly moving between 140.00 and 139.99, so the integer BPM display flickers between 139 and 140

Nome generation (I or II) and Firmware version: both, FW 5.0

This is such a small thing but actually very challenging to solve, because on one hand you want the tempo shown on the Nome to actually match what you are sending (so showing 140 instead of 139 would not work, as then when looking at the decimals, the user would believe that the tempo is 140.99), so if you are sending xxx.yy, the BPM display should show xxx.
And at the same time you want the Nome to react quite quickly to tempo changes so that the BPM display is not too far behind (a couple of seconds is acceptable there I would say).

But on the other hand, I fully agree that the flickering BPM makes it very difficult to read.

In the concrete example with the DAW at 140, truth is the actual real tempo is indeed flickering between 139.99 and 140.00 (maybe a bit more since there is already quite a bit of averaging in place in the firmware), so the BPM display is representing the reality.

I'm open to suggestions. So far my best bet is simply to disable some of the decimals while syncing to 1-24ppq. Internally the tempo will match whatever speed is there, but the BPM display will only show the first decimal for example (i.e. BPM in xxx.y0).