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Comments
With hardware, I've never needed timestamps, neither with the iOS apps that work properly. Just tried again syncing with GR-16 as a clock slave, it works perfectly! Fast tempo changes, intermediate start/stop/continue, "stutters" ... GR-16 follows everything done on the hardware with no audible latency whatsoever, if anyone can show me how to achieve that with LINK, I'd love to learn how
I personally prefer using hardware generated MIDI Clock but Loopy can work well as master clock if using iOS - I've used it that way a bit. Given Michael built the MIDI functions in Loopy and Audiobus, I'm confident Audiobus 3 would generate sufficiently stable MIDI Clock. You could also add MidiPace into your iOS chain to tighten up the clock if needed, perhaps immediately before it leaves iOS and enters the iCA4+ for distribution.
The reason I prefer hardware MIDI Clock master is because iOS apps can crash, requiring re-spring (and therefore stopping MIDI Clock). A re-spring of one iOS device can be managed if other devices can continue to be in sync & playable during the re-spring. Your entire deck of cards collapses around you in real time if you lose clock sync, so invest wisely!
It is really saying something when an Atari ST holds better midi clock timing than practically every iOS app.
Try multitasking on an Atari ST though...
Hardware clock does have its charm, tap tempo on a real button and adjusting tempo on a physical knob feels a lot better
It's impossible not to have some latency with Link. But GR-16 following even the best clock will have latency too. There is no way it can't.
So you obviously haven't even tried. For the first few milliseconds you're right, but then the forward (i.e. negative) latency correction will kick in and make it 100% tight.
That's why there is positive and negative latency correction in GR-16.
I know what offsets do.
I don't have GR-16 and don't really want to buy it just to prove a point. If it's acceptable for you great! Having fixed latency with Link is acceptable to me because I can correct it and it's jitter free. GR-16 slaved to hardware Midi clock is not jitter free.
Got no problem with midi clock ⏰ just that i will pick Ableton link any time if the option is there. Ableton is just more stable and jitter free as far as i can tell. It has a latency of about 7ms on my setup and it always stays at that latency, it always start and stops at that latency which is comforting when recording a track, I can adjust in post. Sure i like the latency lower.
Link latency inside of iOS can get as low as 0.15ms. Maybe lower but that's the lowest I've got it to. Over wifi yeah it's pretty severe but at least correctable.
Yep that’s over wifi into the daw.
Link + autosave is a pita....when using link it changes the tempo of a project so autosave means that tempo gets updated in your project and you lose the original tempo, I have messed up a few projects because of this.
Link cannot be used to sync external gear....sequencers, arpeggiators, LFO's on synths...time based FX. Until all these hardware units are Link enabled there will always be a need for MIDI Clock.
If I were you I’d sell the eventide pedals and move to iPad for fx and looping within Audiobus, make Audiobus a clock master for your hardware and you’re away. You might need to get something like softstep to control your fx and I’m not sure whether stuff like Turnado will satisfy your taste for quality as I expect eventide will be top notch but this route simpliied my set up no end.
I’ve been doing exactly this for the last few years but especially in the last twelve months since the release of AB3 v3 everything’s gone rock solid. I only slave Novation Circuit to it but I see no reason why every other hardware wouldn’t ‘just’ work.
Audiobus even gets you clock compensation sliders for every midi clock destination.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJyGsh5gQF5ORkgN198vnFw?app=desktop
This is what I do myself -- I ditched Link a while back for causing more problems than it solves and making it much harder to jam with live musicians (no tap tempo and instant drop in) and MIDI Sync in Audiobus is just a top class solution. My outboard hardware and second Audiobus device are all synced from the primary Audiobus device. The primary Audiobus device can then be synced to a different master device or hardware instrument (or just cooerced into time with the musicians in the room!). Love it.
Audiobus 3 receives Midi Clock super in sync. I‘ve connected the iPad Pro via Iconnectivity Midi 2+ with RME Babyface Midi In and Maschine MKi Midi Out. So I can use 16 Maschine Channels in Bitwig and trigger Vsti with Patterning 2, Rozetta Bassline, StepPolyArp and so on.
I got on board with is, and it is very (very!) good. Running a single instance fine at low latencies. Going to explore setting it up and controlling it with foot pedals later today.
Midi clock is fine and I have to use it currently for some bits of gear but it has jitter so for recording this is an issue for me. Now I'm lusting for the ES-8 for my eurocrack.
That's really the way to go if you want tight sync. You can then use something like an ERM Multiclock with that to get the MIDI gear perfect too.
In my experience, the receiver side is much more critical than the sender.
I have done a few quick measurements yesterday to get a first impression, and the MIDI clock quality sent by most iOS apps is very good. I repeat: Very good!
If there are deviations in bpm, it's much more likely caused by the link between master and slave or by the slave itself.
Here are a two quick measurements with only 1ms resolution but you get the idea.
Note that the values jumping between 20 and 21ms are due to the fact that 120.0 bpm is in fact 20.83ms time interval between MIDI clock ticks.
Best: Audiobus 3, Loopy HD, apeMatrix, Xequence, Genome, MidiFire (Dynamic Clock), Modstep, Oscilab, Xynthesizr
(only one chart because they're all very similar)
Worst: BeatHawk
I believe the issue is 1ms or more jitter means phasing of the transients. Not only that it can double or completely cancel out a wave form.
No! This is MIDI, no audio and 1ms was the measurement precision, not the actual MIDI clock!
Guess I should have explained it better...
I am referring to the midi jitter of 1ms or more?
Again, it's the measurement interval. I could develop another utility with microsecond timestamp precision but that's not the point. On the receiver side, averaging the clock stream using windows of 100..200ms length will even out tiny jitter easily while keeping the clock slave instance fast enough to follow bpm changes. What do you mean by "cancel out" if not talking about audio? MIDI is a serial data stream with 100% fixed clock.
MIDI clock over usb gives a jitter of 1ms or more meaning the generate audio also has this jitter to my understanding.
@rs2000
hey, nice one.
i've only got modstep, which i thought had a pretty stable clock.
i'm in the middle of building a midigal which has a clock tester, so i'll have a play around with various apps and hardware that i've got.
but, yeah, 1ms is tight as a ducks arse
Not if you sequence samples. It totally depends on the implementation on the client side and
it's up to the client to do a little clock smoothing. It's not even that critical when triggering samples and sampled instruments, the real challenge is to synchronize audio tracks or loops with MIDI clock or Ableton LINK. One could just re-pitch the audio to always match the LINK or MIDI clock, but that would sound terrible. One could also just leave the audio clips as they are (like in Gadget for example) but that only works for short clips. So the apps that support it (like BlocsWave, LaunchPad, Loopy HD) have to do some kind of time stretching.
Developers often follow an approach involving two steps: After smoothing out the incoming MIDI clock, when a tempo change occurs, the audio is time-compressed or -stretched using a real-time algorithm with lower quality while rendering the stretched loop in higher quality in the background. As soon as rendering is finished, the HQ stretched version is played instead.
Long story short: Whenever possible, use the app with audio tracks as a clock master and the one with MIDI tracks or sequenced samples as a clock slave.
And make sure you're using apps that have solid MIDI clock support.
I would say so, yes 😅
And I wouldn't recommend it if it wasn't dead-tight with the right apps.
Flux:FX does not do time stretching and gives 100% accurate loops when slaved to MIDI clock.
I think I stick with Ableton link when available and completely avoid the jitter issue.
Really? Almost forgot this one!
Good to know.