I for myself begin to get slightly insane. I tried many times to sync my M:C to Ableton Live (latest version) but every time the timing seems to shift.
That’s how I do it: Make a 4/4 kick, record it into Ableton, look at the delay, compensate the delay in the midi clock settings, record again and adjust again if needed (normally not needed).
What happens if my Mac goes into sleep mode or when I restart the cycles is that the delay changes by anything from 10-40ms. Sometimes I get the feeling it sometimes even changes without the cycles or the mac “sleeping” but this is only a suspicion at that point.
Any suggestions what might cause this?
TL;DR
Every time the Cycles or my Mac get connected the delay time varies by 10-40ms and I don’t know what to do about it. Any suggestions?
There’s a guide in avid and sweatwater for tunning the macs for music production based on the osx your running have real good info there… about macs sleeping when producing
best
So I think I found the cause…maybe (too early to say for sure) but it seems to be the combination of midi and audio over USB.
I sampled 4/4 kicks, checked the delay, compensated the delay. Sampled 4/4 kick variations (all on time) got to a variation which had a lot of reverb on the 4/4 kick —> 15ms late. Then I sampled the initial kick again (which was dead on before) and it was also 15ms late. (This issue was repeatable on different Macs)
I now switched the usb to midi only and record into my audio interface which seems to work fine. It seems to have also resolved the fluctuations in delay when turning the cycles off and on again.
@elektrobot7 Thank you, I read the article and it was useful despite being not useful on this occasion. <3
From my experience, its 90% chance it’s audio latency and how you go about handling it…
when you say checked the delay and compensated it how exactly did you do that?
also how are you monitoring it? if you are listening to it after it goes into the computer and setting a channel to IN , within ableton you will be hearing audio latency
I wanted to record patterns and variations of patterns I did in the cycles into different Ableton tracks.
I record a 4/4 kick, check the latency in the audio by highlighting it and compensate it in the midi output of the cycles in the Ableton settings. I record the kick or variations of it a few times when I get to a certain kick with reverb the kick is 15ms late. If I change back to a kick variation which was dead on before it is now also 15ms late. Been like this with audio+midi over usb on two separate macs, one of which had the cycles as it’s only usb periphery.
I listen to the recordings while I record, I look at the waveform afterwards and play it in Ableton. There are no plugins in the Ableton project, just 6 audio tracks.
Additionally to this problem the general MIDI delay changes with every restart of the cycles or sleeping and waking of the Mac. (As described)
When I only use Midi over usb and record the cycles through my audio interface everything is consistent (until I reboot any of the machines). My push 2 however induces 49ms latency instantly when it powers up which is also pretty weird but I kept it off for testing so I could concentrate on one problem.
Do you have an option on your soundcard to monitor the model cycles before it goes into the computer with a mix knob?
If you reset all your delay compensation back to normal and listen to it that way you will be hearing it without latency it will probably be bang on …
the audio gets delayed because it’s going into the computer into your daw then back out again… I’m guessing that is the problem not the midi, think you are just moving the midi clock delay around to chase that, and that could vary depending on what your computer is doing and soundcard and soundcard drivers etc…
If you use the delay compensation in preferences to compensate you it will be wonky for the first couple of bars for it to catch up it even says that on Abletons website
Yes sure if I use direct monitoring I will hear it without delay because I directly monitor it through the interface but I want to clock the cycles via the daw and record it according to the clock. Midi is not really involved except for the clock. The cycles plays it’s patterns and gets clocked via Ableton.
The clock is not 100% accurate when pressing the play button and it needs some time to get tight and thats okay but after this it should be tight. And it normally is when I record via my audio interface but when I record via USB it differs like I described.
Maybe I am missing something since I am not really experienced with hardware? How do you set up your hardware to get a tight recording?
I’m clocking everything through overbridge now but Before I had elektron gear I did it how I explained in other post by monitoring from my soundcard before it went into the computer with the mix knob so I could hear the daw and the synth or drum machine together… then I didn’t have latency from monitoring inside the daw… then i didn’t have to mess around with delays when I recorded it was good because had channel set to off not in
Another thing you could do is in options at the top disable delay compensation when you want to record then switch it back on after recording.
There is a general problem in syncing hardware to a DAW, it is not only your combination of M:C and your Mac. You can google it, you will find a lot of information out there about it. The problem is located in the way computers (Win and Mac) prioritize audio processing versus midi data.
Briefly said, it is almost impossible to get a tight sync between DAW and hardware via midi in 99% of the cases unless you use special tools like Overbridge or e.g. ERM Multiclock.
So unless you have one of these tools available, don’t waste your time on trying to get the sync working and simply use “Manual sync” (=hit play/record on both DAW and hardware simultaneously) plus direct monitoring of the hardware…
not impossible people have been using it for 30 years … think I pretty much explained how to get the best results… It will never be as accurate as those but good enough to work with
