Midi clock sync, unstable and high jitter

Hoi

I have an external FX unit that listens to the midi clock from Traktor. Sometimes it jumps a bit up and down with the bpm even with no BPM changes in Traktor.

Anyone else experienced this?

I went so far to write a small app just to listen to the midi signal Traktot sends out, and it turns out it has very high jitter and low stability.

What Traktor is sending:

BPM: 130.26 | Stability:  78.6% | Jitter: 21.43%

Another midi clock as comparison:

BPM: 130.00 | Stability:  98.8% | Jitter: 1.21%

wat.jpeg?

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Traktor Pro 4

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Stevan

Ever since 2.8 or 2.9

I midi sync everything on Ableton and then Ableton linkit with Traktor.

lord-carlos

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/251749#Comment_251749

Man that is to dumb. 😩

Your way works. I don't have ableton live, but let AI write a very minimal program that reads Ableton link and send out midi clock.

Silly :)

maniacintosh81

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/49301/midi-clock-sync-unstable-and-high-jitter

Okay, that explains why syncing Maschine with Traktor MIDI doesn't work.

Yes it works if I use Ableton Link, but Ableton Link in Traktor has another issue: Traktor decks cannot be tempo master with Ableton Link. If you activate Ableton Link the Traktor master clock defines the tempo and beat. As I play with Traktor Scratch usually the current playing deck has to be my tempo master. Silly limitation that this isn't possible while activating Ableton Link.

And with MIDI… Well, Maschine never stayed in sync. So my Maschine stays on the shelf until I find the time to get into making some loops or even tracks myself.

And out of curiosity: Which external FX unit do you use?

lord-carlos

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/251775#Comment_251775

And you can bet your a## this will never be fixed and ableton link will never be updated. It's a shame. Some student developer could probably fix this in a week. Low hanging fruit.

I use eventide H9. It's horrible

maniacintosh81

Was interested in the Eventide H9 for years and hoped for a nice Black Friday deal this year. Unfortunately there was none - but one for the H90 Dark. You can imagine what happenend.

Why is the H9 horrible? Essentially the H90 is two H9 in one case. Haven't integrated my H90 in my booth yet. Just played a little bit with it but first impression was that it features great effects which sound really great. Of course as it is a guitar pedal not all FX are suitable for DJ use. And yes it is a very complex tool. Much to learn with it.

And with Traktors external syncing capabilities: I am afraid you are right. Not much if anything at all will happen. It's a pity especially as there isn't at least a way to sync Maschine - which is an NI tool too - in a tight and reliable way.

lord-carlos

I can honestly say, the H9 android app is one of the worst apps I ever used. Buggy clunky, bad ux.

It's just so cumbersome to set effects up and make them ready for DJing. And probably because something I did, all my presets are not on my unit again... Ahh. Just not fun.

I kinda want something like Le fx. But lol brexit it's freaking expensive. And you have to hold down a button every start to make it work on send/return mode.

I wrote (or rather Ai) a small program that listens to the master out of my mixer, calculates the bpm and sends out midi clock. Even with vinyl records.

merve

I've been trying to sync a korg volca to traktor for the last month, thought the flutter was a windows issue, but I guess it is traktor…. wouldn't stay synced for longer that 1 bar…. The only way that works is for me to send Link to an ipad with the korgSync app, then output through the 3.5mm to sync in on the volca…. pretty annoying to turn it on and off every time…. plz fix NI!

maniacintosh81

@lord-carlos Well, that issue with the Android App got resolved with H90: There are only apps for Windows, macOS and iPadOS. At least the macOS app looks good to me. Still have to test the iPad app though. But I think H90 is much better controllable from the device itself with 5 rotary encoders and its display.

Yes the Union Audio stuff is not cheap. But it already was before Brexit as they built mixers for MasterSounds. Have a MasterSounds FX and a MasterSounds ISO 4. And have an eye on LE FX too. But space and connections on my Xone are running out. If I find some spare money anywhere I consider getteing an two.valve or four.valve. Elara.6 is also tempting, but offers not much more than my Xone:96 (in fact the Elara misses the audio interface).

Found LE FX on Music Store web shop at 539€ incl. VAT and shipping to Germany. Still not cheap but ordering from Union Audio it costs 539€ plus shipping and VAT on import. Valid for other Union Audio products too.

DrCain

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/251767#Comment_251767

Any chance you can release this app? I need a reliable way to sync my TR8-s to Traktor and the built in MIDI jitters quite a lot, leading me to having to reset the downbeat every now and then.

NI really needs to fix this!!

lord-carlos

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/253866#Comment_253866

Yes, will do. Remind me again on the weekend if I should forget about it.

I can only build it for windows. If you are on mac you have to build it yourself, or ask someone. It's written in rust, so I assume it's just a few commands you have to execute.

lord-carlos

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/253866#Comment_253866

Here it is:

https://github.com/lord-carlos/rust-ableton-link-midi-clock

I uploaded a windows .exe file under releases.

On mac os you can follow this guide on how to install cargo: https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/getting-started/installation.html Just a single command.

Once you done that, you can compile my program with cargo build --release, and run with cargo run. And also have a binary you can copy and start in target/release.

Good luck, tell me how it goes :)

DrCain

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/253972#Comment_253972

Ahhh thank you so much for this!!

I just played through a 30 min test set on Traktor on Windows with the TR8-s through USB MIDI and it works perfectly. It's amazing having a jitter-free stable midi-clock, I really thought for the longest time that there was something wrong with my computer or something, since Traktors native MIDI implementation would start drifting after a few minutes forcing me to reset the clock.

It also shows that Native Instruments really needs to fix their MIDI implementation if I can get a stable clock from your tiny application, I should be able to get one through Traktor as well.

Native Instruments I ask you again, please fix this🙏

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