gotta love that slightly reassuring feeling of seeing Ricky struggle with tech like a normal person

A couple tips that I learned long ago back in my hardware synth days that might ease your mind (or drive you crazy) but at least you might know more about why this is how it is: 1. MIDI timeclock is not sample accurate, and will never be sample accurate from a device just due to the limitations of the time-code standard and the individual inaccuracies of the internal clock of the device you're using (drum machine, sequencer etc...). This is not something you can fix, and this is why most producers usually sampled their sounds into a single sequencer or program for timing accuracy. You'll notice this when DJ mixing old-school dance music too, this isn't just a tape issue, sample accuracy is just that imperfect to begin with out-of-the-box. 2. MIDI events are also inaccurate. Because of the fundamental way midi sends the data, you simply can't get all the data to arrive all at the same time. Basically even if it's seemingly simultaneous, there's several events happening in quick succession and therefor will never be sample-accurate due to this without having each device have some sort of buffer built-in that is sample accurately matched to the same clock (which again will never be sample accurate 100%) 3. There's 2 main ways devices sync. MIDI Time-clock and MIDI Timecode. One sends out a sync message (usually about 16th or 24th divisions) and so all the space in between those times can easily fall out of sync when going against the perfection of sample accurate DAWs. Timecode is based on FPS in relation to tape sync and uses reference points to sync the clocks of two devices, and any time they drift in anyway will result in the imperfection you're seeing in your DAW. 4. Additionally on top of MIDI imperfection, you're also dealing with audio jitter at all points of the AD/DA chain, so that's also another point of inconsistency. So all that combined together means that timeclock syncing different device clocks in by its very nature never going to be sample-accurate for the foreseeable future. This is also why often times going in/out of the digital realm when mixing/mastering you'll get timing variations and imperfections that are not sample/phase accurate because of the delays in all the electronics and the digital-to-analogue conversions going on. If you're all in-the-box you wont notice this because you're hearing the same imperfections equally at the same time and rendering is all software based so the sample accuracy is uniform without live processing jitter. Ultimately for synth parts and stuff it's not a huge issue and provides some nice imperfection, but for drum machines, it's usually a sample-back-in or make loops from devices on their own clock and fine-tune and import grooves to get perfection. Brian Transeau has talked about this at length over the years due to his love of outboard gear, and also why most of his stuff has to be sampled in and nudged to perfection to get the results he gets. Love the channel, stay strong.

I never synchronize a machine to Live. I type the tempo I want in the hardware, hit record on Live, hit play on the machine a moment later, warp/adjust the beginning of the clip afterwards. No weird sync nonsense, no latency problems.

I am so so happy that someone else sees this stuff happen. I have fought with weird MIDI glitches like this for so long and it bugs me out how nobody else ever seems to talk about it...like their workflow and creativity aren't just totally bombed by stuff like this all the time.

The dots are the individual sample plot points 👊 (Edit - great video!)

"just track to tape" LOL

This is exactly why I love all of your videos. I have ran into things like this with no way to explain it. I actually have a M-AUDIO USB to MiDi adapter and it has never failed me when I needed it!!!!

Dude how is it that you make videos on exactly what I`ve been thinking about all week.

Hey dude! I've been a long time watcher of your videos - I appreciate how you are constantly digging into the nitty gritty and the unglamorous parts of production - I've learned a lot from you and you've kept me really inspired the past couple of years! Thanks - keep it rocking! 🤘

Man, I relate to this so much, I just abandoned trying to track everything into a daw. If I choose to produce on MPC, I do everything in the box and record the full track and if I don't feel like it I do everything in a daw. The MPC mix can be dirty and unbalanced due to its limitations but I prefer the swing and feel over the clean sound.

Thanks for making this video. I’ve started recording a separate 4x4 kick from every machine just so I can make sure each track is tight once it’s in ableton. It’s maddening and I spend more time on this that the actual track.

I love going down these rabbit holes with you even when they seemingly lead nowhere lol. I still learned various things and got a kick out of watching you wrestle with this. Hey, maybe your "eureka" moment will come later. Keep these types of videos coming. ✌️

It was very insightful. You made several basic not talked about issues with syncing and recording from hardware into Hybrid setups. I never considered running the same sound side by side to check the sync. Genius! I always end up snapping to grid....

This is my favourite channel on KZfaq. It's funny cause I never would have thought of this kind of video, if you pitched it to me I would have said it wouldn't attract an audience, but I love every video.

This wasn't boring at all. This is extremely similar to a rabbit hole I went down on 2-3 separate occasions and it's nice to know others have encountered this.

Btw, just to be a know-it-all... the problem you're facing isn't latency, it's clock jitter.

Very cool seeing it tested like this. I've always struggled with MIDI over USB.

most relatable production video on youtube

I believe the dots at that zoom level represent each “sample”. I’ve always wondered about sync issues like this especially with the Virus TI2. Thanks for making this video! 🙏🏼

I recently connected and mixed all my hardware on my father's mackie analog mixing console. Although the noise floor was significantly louder, I couldn't believe the difference I felt in playing the gear. The only way to describe it is how immediate and responsive everything was. DAW latency might be just a few ms but when playing through it for a decade you can certainly feel the difference when you move over to electrical signals rather than converted signals.

Rick great video, the best way to get everything tight is to have a midi card sitting in your pcie slot on your computer like a RME Hdspe etc. I have the Erm Multiclock, that is maybe the best way to get computer, external gear, sequencer etc to talk to each other and when you go to print audio, you wont do any adjustment accept the beginning. As of right now Erm plugin for Cubase is not functioning correctly, according to them there is an update coming to fix that, hopefully this not the case for other DAWs as it looks like Abelton can be solid with some offsetting, working on Bitwig to see how it works. Unitor 8 for Emagic(90s)still is pretty solid and Mac is providing USB midi driver support, that is pretty tight. Another company from Germany called Miditech 16x16 USB/MIdi has slightly better results than the Edirol. There are also loads of folks using Roland SBX-1 doing all the sequencing dawless and then printing from DAW clock or just Rolands clock and trimming the downbeat. I just cant believe that in 2021 we are talking about midi not being what it used to be. Also if you can please make a video about the Erm Multiclock and how to use it as USB/interface, still have not figured out all that potential and that manual needs to be thicker. There are some folks using the ERM plugin from daw feeding something like Kenton Midi through and getting great results when printing the audio. If you have been creating a track all Dawless and love everything about it, and start printing the audio into the DAW you are going to loose that vibe, there is nothing like all the gear firing independently, this is why so many of 90s dance/hiphop has so much human feel to it, because lot of folks just record straight from a mixing desk onto DAT or tape machine or adat. We need to help everyone get this thing sorted, the amount of videos about timing/latency/jitter etc is just crazy. Thank you for all your great work. Cheers.

Hey Ricky, I can't say, how happy I am, that you made this video. For me. it's an confirmation, that I'm not such a great foolish at all... :-) . I've used Logic and now Studio One is my DAW of choice (again on Mac). The timing is way better, but you can't get totally rid of jitters and latency. My workaround is the same, as you explained: 90% of my midi-sequencing I'm doing with my Squarp Pyramid (btw: it's great!); then I'm recording my sessions and songs via an multi-input-interface direct in Studio One (or Capture), set the tempo there manually as it should be and drag the recorded tracks all together in the right grid. That works great for me. My opinion: if you're working with timing-sensitiv hardware like drummachines or grooveboxes and you will grab them into a DAW (without the multiclock...), then that's the way it goes...unfortunatly. Stay healthy!!

This is my favorite video on the internet

And this is why after 20 years of cubase and Ableton etc I went back to outboard. That and I’m a computer engineer and sitting in front of a computer in my spare time just sucks my creativity and work flow 😔

this video is of value ricky bc we do struggle with these issues but without the understanding or equipment to isolate exactly what is causing these hiccups, it helps to see problems like this elsewhere so we are more informed with respect to those random software related issues as well as products that are fails, esp when those products are very expensive tho it may mean little and be unseen by you al together thanx for absorbing the impact of buying an expensive dud, it sux and im sure many will not end up in the same spot bc you did already preesh mane.... tempo issues are very confusing in the beginning. i had a real issue learning that the Orba's 100 BPM is MPC beats 97.7..... it took me a long time to accept there is an odd gap in actual tempo so i could just move on with the recording (i wasted a lot of time thinking i was doing something wrong when i just didnt know software kind sucks sometimes with these issues) i have never mutli tracked into a DAW. im just scratching the surface on software at all and find this info very re assuring. i wish i saw this sooner, PLEASE do a beginners guide to recording tracks including these types of issues that may trip up a noob like myself. the issues that wont be mentioned in the user manual such as this tempo discrepancy with software and hardware. this video will help me harbor additional patience when recording in the future and i think you have enough others to speak on that would help someone like me, thanx ricky... keep it Gnar Gnar

Hey Ricky. Loving an honest look at your process. Inspiring me to do more of that myself. Cheers.

really enjoying your videos. i‘m facing the same problems at the minute getting my hybrid setup working. makes me feel a bit better to find out that latency and everything being off really is a thing

Absolutely not boring dude! I'm actually having lots of trouble to sync my Mother 32 to Logic Pro's clock and recording something in time... I don't know what's happening, I've tried everything too, DIN, USB, but the sequence almost never starts on time and is all over the place. Computers mess tempo up for sure!

another dope video and so happy to see the coffee in the intro again!

Good subject. I have ran into this problem lots over the years . I now only use usb after I've arranged a song using a squarp pyramid to sequence then I bring the computer in for live instruments and vox. I thought it was just me hearing usb slip in timing :)

Midi over USB for any sequencer kind of thing seems to always be funky. But the model cycles is just pretty bad over midi or usb. The only way I manage to get it perfectly timed even on the first few beats is to hit record in the DAW but have the cycles play an empty pattern. Then launch the pattern you want to record and that extra bar helps to get it all synced in time for the second bar.

We're all in this together! I thought it was just me spotting this stuff!

I love this video because this is me right now trying to multi track sequence and record my Syntakt thru over bridge in Ableton. I felt very alone and frustrated. I no longer feel alone.

Thank you for this! I'm just about to install a usb midi mix bus and this is good food for thought.

I’ve been using the Innerclock Sync Lock for years now to sync midi and din-sync hardware to Ableton as clock source. With some clever routing you can make the setup work even with monitoring via Live, allowing adding insert plugins, sends, etc.

Good vid, thanks. To deal with it I just turn off swing in my gear and able the swing in Ableton. I actually find the Groove feature in Ableton really powerful and it also quantizes before applying the swing so for the most part it fixes any issues.

Years ago while I was just switching to computers from hardware I learned about this issue And my fix was to use the computer sequencer to trigger my hardware using midi notes And record the output from my hardware into my DAW This was the only way I could make sure the clocks were rock solid

I've been stuck in latency/jitter hell for a while now, also thinking of just tracking to tape and learning the banjo lol... thanks for the relevant content Ricky

I usually skip the ads but Nikkolas Smith is legit. excellent shout out Ricky. 👍 I was in art class with that dude in middle and high school. He was amazing even back then. I was trying to make bongs out of ceramics. 😆

My clock setup right now is an actually having my drumbrute's MIDI out hooked into my iConnectivity MioXM, which distributes MIDI Clock to all of my devices as well as my computers over the network (using RTPMidi). It's impressively solid compared to other options and I didn't need to buy any new things!

Appreciate the dedication 👍

I have the same with the 4k but i guess that some machines are more musical with it's jitter than others. Best way to record using multiple outputs of the mpc's so you can mix it. Problem starts again when you want to add things later....

Since I saw a vid from you for the first time about hardware latency issue's you got me busy diving into it.. So now I want the multiclock too. Guess that's the only device to fix latency for 4 synths at the time.. (should have kept hardware out of the door LOL) Anyway, thanks for all your vids (on this topic) been really helpful.

I have had good luck with the Mio too, it works well with old synths for SYSEX (DX7, D50, POLY 800 for example). USB to Midi is basically USB to serial and uses similar chips to FTDI USB to serial parts. I did a deep dive a few years ago on this stuff because I was having issues with timing from an application over USB to a (non music) product. Basically USB has a "frame rate" and doesn't process the request as soon as it is received. It will wait up to 1 milli-second to process and send the request. The request can have a lot of data in it, but it is only sent on a 1msec boundary. (I may be paraphrasing here). Older MIDI implementations in the pre USB days would have had a Serial IC "UART" such as the 16550 style that talked directly to the CPU and interrupted the CPU the instant a message was received. Now a MIDI message must navigate the USB subsystem first which adds an unpredictable amount of latency (Jitter). The MIDI standard itself for clock is pretty amazing, it is a single byte (0xf8 I think) transmitted to sync devices. This means if you are just looking for sync, you should be able to generate an interrupt per byte, and just look for 0xf8. That is very fast, a few micro-seconds, for modern processors. Compare that to the USB latency of up to 1 milli-second and you start to see where the USB system makes things worse. MIDI clock is 24 PPQN, so at 100BPM we would see 40 pulses per second, or 1 pulse every 25 milli-seconds. A 1 milli-second jitter is 4% error on the individual 24 PPQN pulses. You wouldn't think you would notice, but it's there! Coupled with sampling latency of the audio, and you have to manually time shift a lot of stuff. I'm just getting into Ableton, and I'm finding stuff like this really kills my motivation. I'm trying to generate enough talent (i.e. buy enough stand alone gear!) that I could just track to final mix. Or I'll get rid of the clock altogether and get really really into ambient stuff.

My man finally back on the coffee!!!

Dude, always good advices I'm too lazy to test that kind of stuff aaaaaand you did it ahah Keep it up 💋

After a few years of struggling with midi jitter out of computers i think the Roland SBX1 has solved the problem. the ERM is next level though with it's timing shifting...

Thanks for the video Ricky, wasn't that boring :) This shows the world of hybrid hardware/daw setup is still an utopia nowadays. The best thing to do is either choose between DAW-only or hardware only in your project, or if you want the best of both worlds, go DAW/powerful groovebox and sample some synths when needed, knowing you'll have to manually warp/sync them.

I've experienced this too. I use Windows and the DAW mangles midi out.. Don't always record your parts as individual parts. E.g., it can be better to record your drums in 1 stereo mix. You lose the ability to edit the midi and different volumes, but you retain the groove and vibe. When I use the DAW and create drum parts then I always have to fix the audio wave. Timing is much better from the Akai, or from an analog clock. Analog really grooves for locking synthesizers and drum machines together.

This is very informative video !!!

You'll drive yourself nuts with this Ricky if you go down the MIDI timing rabbit hole, you'll start to hate the timing of DAW's. Coming from the 90's though, hardware sequencers and the first generation of computer sequencers ( they weren't even DAWS back then ) please be reassured that although this problem still exists it's exponentially better then it was back then. Midi timing from computers and sync ( post Atari ) literally sucked big time back then. For sure. We did managed to make tracks with it though :)

Clock from Ableton always jitters. It’s known fact. I don’t recommend using ableton as a master clock

This reminds me a nightmare that's a bit of topic, but related to timing problems and computers. At the time I was working with computer as the heart of my live set-up (with NI Mashine), I did many records with my band recording live with the audio coming from my "live" laptop to my studio desktop in two tracks while recording the other instruments. Afterwards, I opened Mashine as plugin on the desktop computer and re-recorded all the sounds from Mashine in separated tracks for accurate producing and mixing. No problem with this method but one time. The recording messed up somewhere and the timing between the audio-recorded tracks and ITB Mashine tracks where totally off. It started good enough at the beginning of the tune but turned more and more out of sync. At the middle of the tune, all the groove where lost and after the break, it was just a mess. We tried many things : record again from the laptop, do the stuff in the box in the laptop, slightly change the tempo of the whole project and so on. But but nothing worked. It remained far from the groove of the live recording. It looked like he tempo had slightly changed during the recording. All we had to do was to keep the electro stuff done and record again the other instruments. It only happened once, but it taught me definitely that computer timing can mess up. Now I've turned my live set-up dawless and we record live with all the instruments at the same time. No more timing nightmare.

20:59 YES, always run your audio interface (and of course midi interface) on a separate USB, directly to the computer. Everything else like keyboard, dongle, drive, etc... can run from USB hub. This is definitely a source for this kind of timing issues.

You actually have two problems here. - One is the audio clock issue on basic audio interface, that can be solved with an expensive wordclock; If you’re recording lot of audio, it makes a huge difference; even decent audio interface that are supposed to have internal clock are bad and have timing oscillation and jitter. But not everyone can afford an Apogee or Antelope and such... - The second issue is actually from USB MIDI interface that is often out of sync with internal clock, it’s often due to poor drivers on mass market midi interface. The more robust midi interface that I’m aware of is the Motu Midi Express; while back it was the only interface that had solid driver that would avoid this kind of issue. I had to do plenty of test for my work to link computer system (OpenLabs keyboards) with MPCs. We had to spend a LOT of time to develop in-house drivers for the Presonus interface to be rock solid for our system to work. it’s been a while now that I haven’t look into it, but I’m pretty sure the issue is still the same. I doubt any mass market audio/midi interface developer spent time to develop rock solid midi drivers for their interface. Only guys like Motu, Avid and such might have decent solutions... not the kind of gear we find in (bedroom) home-studios.

6 min in and that's how I feel every time I deal with anything MIDI related. Pure confusion.

Turn off monitoring in Ableton. Timing is never gonna be tight if your monitoring is not set to off in Ableton.

try overbrige. take a midi-signal from the digitakt to clock another devise while running overbrige. thats my way to "not buy a multiclock". but if i would have the money.........

Watching this really makes me appreciate knowing I am not insane, as I did the same experiments a while back before finally cracking and buying an E-RM. I love that you are looking for a cheaper alternative though, I just haven’t found anything besides the E-RM that works. If you want to try a USAMO just for fun, I can send you mine. It didn’t like my RME interface and is just sitting around my studio.

That's the reason we went to recording everything at once using a mixer that has outputs and then going straight into 8 channel interface. Certainly not the cheapest option and if you have a small home studio set up might not be possible but highly recommended if you can do it. Also saves tone of time since you just record everything all at once too.

I had an email converstion with the creator of Expert Sleepers USAMO - Andrew Ostler,and he said "there are two sides to every MIDI connection - the transmitter and the receiver. The USAMO gives you a near-perfect transmitter, but it can do nothing about the behaviour of the receiver." so Your synth,or drum machine have to a good/perfect midi receiver also to get accurate timing,no matter if You send perfect midi signal,I think this is one of the deepest rabbit hole,I end up with other method CV - control voltage, I sequence my Moog Slim Phatty,and Arturia Microbrute with control voltage,but not every device have CV input.

USB involves multiplex switching and the packets can fall behind or end up ahead of others depending on a number of factors i.e how many devices you are using that share a controller, if you are using a hub. I'm not sure of everything, but there could also be the implementation of USB on the device and clock jitter on the device itself because USB is synchronous. Someone needs to make a PCIE card for just MIDI, which would be fabulous to have. Some sound cards do have a direct MIDI DIN asynchronous connection, but they are often expensive. I always get clock drift when syncing via USB from Ableton to my Beatstep, and then using MIDI DIN to sync everything else. I can't recall if I have tried without anything else on the hub or my motherboards controller, but because of how USB works, I think you are likely to get some amount of drift or possibly jitter from the device.

Great video. The worst issue is trying to keep two kick drums from different sources in sync.... Another possible workflow might be - 1. do your sequencing in the hardware sequencer / drum machine -2. export the midi only to the daw . 3. use Expert Sleepers USAMO, which sends sample accurate midi (that's the claim anyway) out of the daw as audio which the USAMO box converts back to midi.... but I haven't tested this! Another issue with Daws (or Pro Tools at least, I presume Live does it too) is they skip a sample every couple of bars (there's a formula that dictates how often this happens, something like dividing the sample rate by the tempo or the other way around).

Though you did not provide a solution, I was relieved to find that I am not the only one in this very frustrating predicament. Yea, I guess latency will always be there, we just gotta choose how we work around it...sucks

I was hoping you’d also compare using the Elektron as the master for comparison. I guess I can always test and compare on my rig with my various devices.

You always learn something

A problem shared is a problem halved it is said. Now I know it’s not just my setup. Definitely not a waste of time 😊

I had the same syncing issues recording my elektron digitakt via USB/overbridge - things were not lining up consistently and I was getting weird timing hiccups. I found that if I set all my ableton audio inputs to "IN" and turned ON "Reduced Latency While Monitoring" in the options menu (I think ON is the right setting - could be wrong)... then things generally would line up perfectly. Another suggestion I heard someone make about syncing problems is to set your hardware sequencer as the master (ie. Digitakt) and slave ableton to that when you record.

I have given up trying to track external instruments in Ableton, particularly if I'm using instruments in the DAW as well. Unless I'm 100% in the DAW I get absolute crap. Sounds like I should stump up for an E-RM, I've been using a launchpad pro MK3 as a master sequencer and using Ableton as a glorified tape machine lately just to keep things in time.

Is it that the sync device you recommend has a dedicated clock input pin associated with a PLL? I think this would more or less force the computer to leave an internal clock dedicated to the process. Or at least not get caught multitasking in the middle of a recording session. Or if I fail to understand would someone please guide me in the right direction? Thank you.

When you get a chance please check Ableton CV tools clock out via ES-9 and then multitrack back in from the modular ... very interesting latency grooves there to say the least 😜 Thanks!!!

your actually introducing latency by recording with in on its supposed to be strictly used for monitors hence the in terminology the idea with Ableton is you would have two tracks one for monitoring another for recording seedtostage has a good video in it.

I had been setting Cycles as the master clock (over usb) and having Ableton follow that after having this same headache a few weeks ago. I thought it was working! After watching this video, I wanted to check how consistent it is...and it is whack. You can watch the clock speed Ableton's adjusting to on your computer, and though it's set to 120 on the Cycles, Ableton is fluctuating, as low as 115 at times. I've noticed that after 8 bars or so it seems to settle in. Maybe that leads to some kind of workaround? Something where you send a blank pattern for 8-12 bars then trigger the pattern you want to record (both set to the same BPM, because any fluctuations take about 8 bars to lock back in). Seems like more work than it's worth though. Kinda wish there was a way to use the audio interface portion of the Cycles to send an audio click track, since audio over USB has less jitter (I'd assume anyways). The ERM seems to justify it's price more and more.

watched again for reference. this may be the "most boring video" like you said, but it is one of the most useful

What if you use the clock out from the model:cycles as the master clock in Ableton?

20:28 We may not be able to hear less than ~10/1000 of a second of latency, but of course as soon as any kind of phase shift from parallel processing comes into play, even a completely undiscerning ear is going to be able to hear differences of just a single sample, eg 1/44100 of a second. I think a lot of these latency issues come down to how well the device drivers are written as much as the hardware itself. I'm a big fan of RME gear on that front, always absolutely rock solid.

marko polo has a workaround for latency, if I'm not mistaken. to track the song out of an MP without losing swing, create a dummy pattern on the MP with 1 quantized kick on 1 and put it before everything. track your stuff into the daw so that each track starts with that dummy pattern. then take tracks and align those kicks perfectly. this should bring the swing back

to me there is a change in the groove of any machine as soon as it's clocked by another one. I also believe that each machine receiving a clock, is constantly trying to follow the clock it receives, and then has very slight changes in its timing, but i don't see it as a problem, to me that's the interest of hardware, that it doesn't play exactly the same way everytime. Btw I think that not all hardware equipment will start it's clock properly if you don't start recording at 1.1.1 , i mean the beginning of the arrangement view. Happens to me with some drum machines and synth, mainly the older one but some recent synth too. Also if you wanna record with minimum latency, you have to trigger the "off" button, not the "auto" or "on", that let the sound go through Ableton, then to your speakers. You need to use the sound directly from your audio interface, to the monitors. I proceed that way with an apollo twin and i have 0 latency problems. Of course that means that you are processing your sound outside your daw, or recording, then processing. Love the channel keep up the nice videos and music 💪🏻

Wtf I thougth I was fking something up when I tried to record my two novatiom circuits and a TR-09 separately and got this exact problem. In this particular case is when Roland products like the MC-707 or the MX-1 help a lot. Since they work as audio interfaces you can make them send the main tempo and record multitrack while you are jamming. Hope more manufacturers do this cause' is a live saver.

damn this is basically hard proof I need an ERM. Even multitracking into bitwig using the pyramid as the main clock for my synths with no midi sync in the daw will leave me with weird jitter

Hey Ricky... I think it's Elektron Model boxes. I'm running an AMD 3.4gz with 16gb ram. I used to have the Circuit and Model:Samples as my main hardware center pieces. I had both plugged in via USB and the Circuit would be tad off but the same each time, while the M:S would be off and start late every time. I sold both pieces of gear to try and let new energy into the studio, as well as learn sound design instead of relying on presets/patches. I now have the M:C and just reordered the M:S. I Love Ableton and have heard ppl say the Model boxes suck over USB. Maybe someone will figure it out one day. As always, thanks for the video.

the ironic thing is "record to tape and learn the banjo" solution is why I was thinking to move to hardware lol but now i realize i won´t have a smooth transition from daw to dawless, because right in the midst of the hybrid phase is where most issues happen so i guess with latency is either best to be daw-exclusive with maybe some midi keyboard _or_ full on dawless

It’d be cool to see you put together a video on the Blokas Midihub. It’s an underrated midi box.

Would it work better if you used for example, SyncKontrol by Korg on your iPhone linked to Ableton?

Have you tried any of the bigger mio-devices? I got the mioXM. It supports midi over ethernet from a computer and has USB host ports as well as midi din ports. And i can configure which ports talks to eachother and a bunch of usefull stuff. I'm so glad i got it.

What about record with monitor OFF? I saw a video that doing that kill that minimum latency

When you went "I got the ERM multiclock... so I went ahead and bought one of these things" my first thought was... "Ah shit, here we go again!". :D

Latency can be accounted for with a timing offset, jitter is the real problem. MIDI over USB causes jitter thanks to things like multiple packets per frame, device contention, and host OS priorities. I'd be curious to see what kind of timing guarantees different OS class-complaint USB MIDI specs have, if any. Class-compliant USB audio is tuned for accuracy (at least for Apple).

Most of the latency you experience in a DAW is caused by the OS routing audio through the DAW itself. Try switching all your monitoring to off on the channels in Ableton and monitor the audio directly from the your hardware. I do this via RME TotalMix, which is a routing utility that comes with RME interfaces. I'm sure you have shown a similar thing for your Focusrite (?) interface in a previous video. The key is not to monitor ANYTHING through the DAW. It's not a slight against Ableton, you will get the same extra processing and in turn latency using any additional audio routing. Hope this helps!

"..just track to tape, or ... learn to play the banjo.." 😂

That was a fantastic video. The nuts and bolts of it all can really stifle creativity. I sometimes get a blast of inspiration but, by the time I've got everything working it's gone. By the way, does the little chap with his tongue out have a name?

There was a take that the model samples didnt start at one. Ive had this problem before with hardware when you stop the transport and when you press play again the machine doesnt start on 1 but instead starts on where it stopped before. Other than that i had this problem with the digitakt before using overbridge, with overbridge everything seems to line up fine every time. Also for the last technique you showed, if your device has metronome build in, i usually turn the metronome on and record some bars of the metronome (you can also just sequence a 4 on the floor sequence as metronome) so you can use it as reference to cut all the audios.

I used to have much crazy jitter on some really old slow computers a few years back, I ended up just clocking ableton as a slave to the external device. I'll try your experiment though

Don't monitor in the daw. Set monitoring to off. There is always latency on live monitor It used to be recommended to give an empty bar after midi start to avoid the 1.1.1 jittering between synced units. Mpcs don't perfectly phase cancel over takes, ever (even on master) I guess everything won't if the cycles doesn't. It all has to go down at the same time.

Appreciate Ricky's search for alternatives, but latency/jitter problems between DAWs and hardwares are the exact thing that products like the USAMO or the E-RM MultiClock were made to correct. They're pricy solutions, but definitely worth the money if you have a hardware sequencer that needs to live in harmony with your DAW.

I stopped recording to a daw a long time ago, I hated the whole process and the feel of the song I always felt was slightly different. It was great because I am lazy so now I always record stereo out and call it a day.

Ive spent so much time with these types of tests lol. It’s midi jitter via usb that’s the issue (Although polyphonic midi also has a 1ms latency per note) cuz usb is sent in lump sums every ms or more. A good solution is serial midi with an audio-source sending the data. I have had good luck with the expert sleepers esx-8md and ES40 via spdif. The learning curve for that was quite insane for me, but there is truly no jitter once you get it working. I am now trying to sequence everything and record it live one take.

I’ve noticed that my digitakt always shows a fluctuating tempo when it’s being run by ableton. The same tempo issues make the audio off by strange amounts here and there.

one fix is to use a hardware device as master clock sync everything to that and also use it to clock DAW. Therefore all external devices are in time and DAW plays in time with them. Then track the output of your external devices all at the same time.

i know this feel. i had a rock solid way to track my mpc2000xl into logic a few years ago with MTC, did an entire album with it, almost flawlessly .. just using a firewire connected focusrite interface ... then they updated logic, my os .. and it broke lmao now nothing works and im back to where you're at now