For anyone who makes their tracks on the Rytm (or at least the core idea) and just wants to record that without the setup and latency of using the DAW, this standalone app method is pretty great. I went into some detail here, so while the post is long, the method is really pretty simple and fast once you try it a few times. :
If you open up the Overbridge Rytm app, there is a tape cassette icon in the top right., click that for the recording interface. What’s cool is you can choose which tracks to record and monitor. So for example I usually have to do a few takes since I may have a chord part or something that is going through the echo/reverb FX (Main L/R) and I don’t want drum sounds in that FX track. So for the first take I do the drums only and can select monitor for everything, but only select “capture” for the sounds I want to record to WAV files. Once I have those recorded I deselect “capture” on them in the app and then record (for example) the chord part while monitoring the drum sounds (I keep “monitor” on those tracks.)
As a note - before you record anything you want to go in the audio routing of the Rytm itself and make sure none of your tracks are routed to main. Most people know this but it is worth mentioning. If you do this, it just records the reverb and delay into the L and R Mains , which is great. I end up typically with 2-3 recorded channels of Reverb and Delay so that way I can keep the Drum reverbs separate from any one shot vocals or chords. This is optional, you can treat everything like a live 2 track and record in one pass.
1 key tip I would say is that I always make my first pattern in my Song on the Rytm a 4x4 kick drum and I run it for 32 steps (you can do this in song mode too) so that when I pull the files into the DAW, I can use the kicks to line up to the grid. The reason I do this is because the OB Rytm application will not start until you press “start capture”. In other words, it is not a synced record, but this is not really a problem since the recordings are very very tight and you can easily get them on the grid. I will detail that in a sec.
This standalone method is pretty great since it eliminates any DAW latency and you can build your song on the RYTM and just drag the audio files into the DAW and it’s all there. Plus for me, I am having issues in Ableton getting the tracks to record without jitter issues. This is a new MacBook Pro M1 issue, and Elektron is working on it. But this allows me to use OB anyway.
Example for Ableton:
For Ableton once everything is recorded, you select “open destination folder” in the Rytm’s overbridge app and it will open a folder with all the WAV files you just made. Select all the files and pull them into an ableton session. It will tell you to hold command (Mac) and when you do that it will drop each file in it’s own lane.
Once that is done you can easily line up the files to the grid once you do a few steps - click each WAV and make sure that “warp” is turned off in the clip view. If not, the audio will not be in time. The reason for this is there is no synced recording so you will have some empty space between hitting record in the App and hitting play on your machine.
Then select all the files again and trim the beginning to the first kick drum. Zoom in a little so you get close to the start of the kick transient. If you did a song mode recording or manually changed the patterns then hopefully your first pattern was just a 4x4 kick, basically a count in track. So the first couple bars are just the kick playing. With all recorded RYTM audio files selected , line these kicks up to the grid in Ableton and you are good to go. Keeping everything selected aligns everything together, and makes it super easy. To test your alignment, grab the looper and wrap it around 4 or 8 bars. You should be able to have perfect loops straight out the machine.
As a bonus, before chopping off those kicks you used in the first pattern, take them and put them on their own track then use them as your ghost kick if you need a side chain.
I should also add that using this method removes all jitter from the PC/Mac or your midi connection. The only small bit of jitter you will have is the Rytm’s internal jitter which is very minimal and should be 2ms at most (also depends on how your samples were chopped). This is a really tight drum machine.
If anyone else does it this way, feel free to pop in. I feel like overbridge is really cool but can be challenging inside a DAW with the latency and potential issues that can pop up. This makes it so as long as your computer is running OB smoothly, you can record your Rytm nice and tight.
To add, I ran a test to make sure there was no clock drifting. over 5 minutes of a 4x4 kick and then pulled it into Ableton and lined it up. There is none at all. the last bar of kicks was right on the grid just like the start. So no drift to worry about as long as the BPM in your DAW is the same tempo as the track in the Rytm.