A simple patcher which allows you to control the Ableton Live Transport from your Elektron Device Transport.
Supports Start, Stop, and Continue messages.
Uses imp.midi externals
Note, Windows Limitation:
When using in Windows, Elektron Transporter cannot use any port that the host application (Ableton Live) is also using. Any ports required to be used with Elektron Transporter should be disabled in Ableton MIDI preferences. This is due to Windows lacking a native multi-client MIDI driver.
Instructions:
Drop on a track anywhere in your Live project.
Select your MIDI input for the device you wish to control the Ableton Live transport with.
Set your Elektron device to send transport controls.
If the MIDI port list does not automatically populate, click the elektron logo to refresh the list (this will deselect any ports you have already selected).
You should be able to use multiple devices to control the transport by dropping multiple Elektron Transporter devices in your project and selecting the corresponding MIDI inputs (untested).
Just tested this with the new Digitone and Digitakt updates and it’s working for those devices now too.
The new updates separated the clock from the transport controls. Previously the clock had to be sent with the transport controls from the Digitakt and Digitone. This caused buffer overloads which made the transporter device unreliable for the Digi Elektrons.
Enable transport send and disable clock send on your Digitakt or Digitone after updating to the newest firmwares
Try loading your OB plugin and pressing play on your Elektron Device with Ableton as Master Clock.
Does the Ableton transport start playing as well?
It doesn’t for me unless I’m sending clock to Ableton from the Elektron Device.
It was a quick free device I made in response to someone asking how they could control the Ableton Transport from their Elektron gear.
If you’re using Overbridge it’s best to choose one device to control the transport. On that device you want to choose “clock” only in the overbridge plugin. This way you will use that Elektron device as the transport controller for itself, Ableton Live, and any other Overbridge devices that are set to “Transport + Clock”.
Without Overbridge, you can setup all of the devices to control the transport at the same time.
It’s for somebody who has their Elektron far away from their computer and needs to be able to control the transport on Ableton Live from their Elektron device.
I’ll probably eventually expand it to be bi-directional for better functionality with Overbridge in the future.
In that case you’d just set the OB plugin sync to “clock” and control the Ableton transport from your Elektron.
The downside (for now) is that pressing play with Ableton won’t start your Elektron transport. It’s one or the other right now until I add the option to send transport.
This is only when using OB.
The appeal of OB for me is that recordings are perfectly sync’ed to abletons timeline. You lose that when decoupling tempo and control.
The other thing i still need to crack is that external audio interface inputs recording at the same time don t sync up, regardless of track delay settings…
In this case you only turn off transport and not the clock.
I only use OB as a controller and for total recall. I route the physical outputs into my interface and record there.
To get rid of the OB latency, I mute the OB plugin channel and turn off latency compensation in Ableton Live. I’m also using an ERM Multiclock as my clock. In my case I set OB to “no sync” and use the Multiclock to lock everything together.
But then you can never start the AR manually in sync with ableton (i mean so that your recording is perfectly on the ableton grid)
I do that too but i ve started recording AR channels via OB in parallel with that so i have that material to edit with later on. My Xone:96 records only 6 stereo channels, one being the master bus, so i can t multitrack the AR on it. And i wouldnt anyway because of all the extra cabling. Only when OB offered to do that over USB it became interesting to me.
