Can someone confirm this M+ behaviour?.. midi sync 'jitter'

elan benaroch
elan benaroch Member Posts: 39 Member
edited October 2024 in Maschine

when I slave sync my unit to any source in the studio I get whats shown in the video which looks like the M+ trying to hunt for the correct tempo between a small range.

while the unit still seems to sync in a basic way the wavering is a big problem because it affects the tempo delays and the playback of any loops that use stretch or even re-pitch.

Ive tried all kinds of stable clocks and its the same issue, from mpc 3000 to other solid clocks it makes no difference, Ive also tried external USB midi interfaces, Im hoping someone can try this and let me know if theirs does it.. mine is the latest version, can't remember which but if I hit system tab it says 'up to date'

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Comments

  • darkwaves
    darkwaves Member Posts: 456 Guru

    Mine does the same if clocked from my computer. That said; so does my MODX. I can test with my old mpc 1k. I don't remember if it does it (or if it even has BPM resolution fine enough for this to matter). I have a couple of other devices I could use to test, but they don't go down to .0x

  • elan benaroch
    elan benaroch Member Posts: 39 Member

    yeah if you don't mind trying with the MPC when you able would be curious to know on another unit

  • darkwaves
    darkwaves Member Posts: 456 Guru

    It doesn't show tempo when synced. It just shows (EXT). Maybe someone with a newer MPC will be able to check.

  • Rico010
    Rico010 Member Posts: 140 Advisor
    edited May 2024

    same here. I’ve read on some forum that it is normal for any slave device

  • elan benaroch
    elan benaroch Member Posts: 39 Member

    @darkwaves the mpc will show EXT when synced, what I meant was the maschine plus display when its receiving sync from the mpc

  • elan benaroch
    elan benaroch Member Posts: 39 Member
  • darkwaves
    darkwaves Member Posts: 456 Guru
    edited May 2024

    This is with a midi cable going directly from the mpc 1k into M+. The link isn't animating for me; but if you click through to imgur; you'll see similar behavior as your original video

  • b-righteous
    b-righteous Member Posts: 25 Helper

    That behavior depends on the midi jitter performance on both devices. In the case of the 3k, the clock has very low jitter so the fault would be on the M+. "Normal" really depends on the devices involved. The jitter can happen both on sending and receiving ends of the sync.

  • elan benaroch
    elan benaroch Member Posts: 39 Member

    its funny to me that ableton link doesn't do it at all, it stays solid tempo. so in this case link is more solid than midi DIN which makes no sense to me.

    I wonder if an older firmware version would be better

  • tetsuneko
    tetsuneko Member Posts: 807 Expert
    edited May 2024

    Just to clarify, you have updated your M+ firmware using the computer based firmware updater? MIDI performance especially requires this critical FW update

    I am slave syncing my M+ from a USB MIDI clock source frequently (not from a DAW though), and do not experience significant timing issues. BPM readouts fluctuating under clock slave sync is normal behaviour for most MIDI synced music instruments I own, including Korg & Elektron devices, unless you hear something wrong, its just par for the course

  • olafmol
    olafmol Member Posts: 215 Pro

    there is a difference in what systems display, and what they actually measure. Maybe the M+ is more honest than others? ;)

  • D-One
    D-One Moderator Posts: 3,627 mod
    edited May 2024

    Everything I ever tried with MIDI Sync does that, afaik midi Sync is a signal constantly being sent so its always changing a tiny little bit, that's how it's able to maintain sync if you change the BPM. 0.0X is a really meaningless margin of error for the most part - It's only a problem if you need things to be phase-aligned, most people dont care about that.

  • elan benaroch
    elan benaroch Member Posts: 39 Member
    edited May 2024

    its not so much a problem that I can see the tempo display shifting, its more that I can hear the effect of it, vs having it synced by Link or just not synced at all. Whats audible is like I mentioned any kind of tempo synced delay effect as well as any time stretched or loops set to re-pitch (the pitch will change slightly) it just generally doesn't sound right as compared to no sync, tempo master, or linked.

    To be fair, my mpc live does not love being tempo slave either and its a similar type of device. the reason Im locked into the situation of having all my devices be slaved in the first place is because of the mpc live being the master in the setup.

  • elan benaroch
    elan benaroch Member Posts: 39 Member

    Im not 100% sure it was an update that was prompted over wifi, I didn't physically connect my computer but if I go to the about page it says that 'maschine is up to date'. ill check the firmware version

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