a reason not to slave your mpc...

i've spent a good deal of time going back and forth on how to sync my mpc to my daw. the convenience of midi clock usually won out over all the negatives i had heard about it, and i have used that for the majority of the time.

but out of curiosity and boredom i redid this testing method from the innerclock systems webpage...
http://web.webhost4life.com/innerclock/ ... ge&name=34

basically you sequence a bunch of quantized quarter notes of a click at 120 bpm, record the audio of the sequence into your daw, and measure the distance between each click in samples.

innerclock systems wrote:"At 120 BPM - a perfect quarter note interval recorded at 44.1 kHz is exactly 22050 samples."

so ideally the measurement should be 22050, or something somewhat close to that.
for this test i used my mpc1000 (JJ OS1) recording into reaper and i examined from the 3rd bar on....

test #1 wrote:here are my results first for recording my mpc into reaper with NO type of sync whatsoever.

22047/22048/22047/22080/22015/22080/22047/22048/22047/22048/22047/22048/22047/22048

except for the occasional hiccup up to 22080 or down to 22015 the 1000 stayed within 3 samples of 22050 the majority of the time. not exactly rock solid, but not an absolute nightmare either.

test #2 wrote:now here are my results for the same exact sequence except my mpc is slaved and my audio card (m-audio audiophile 24/96) is sending out the midi clock.

22049/22080/22017/22048/22113/22400/21633/22048/22049/22112/21985/22112/22049/22016/

the values are ALL OVER THE PLACE NOW. 22400? 21633? its the same exact sequence but now my clicks are now spaced out incorrectly by over 300 samples. all because my midi clock source controlling my mpc is doing a terrible job.

i had occasionally read people mention how midi clock affected the swing of their mpc's and i always shrugged it off.... well not anymore. time for me to finally start using mtc sync.



EDIT: i just tried slaving my mpc to my computer through mtc and got the same results, so i guess the real thing i've learned is that my soundcard is terrible as a master regardless of what method i use. gonna stick to having my mpc as the master from now on....

what DAW are you using to sequence the mpc in that test?

mr_debauch wrote:what DAW are you using to sequence the mpc in that test?

reaper.

is it possible to try that out with other DAWs? see if it changes anything.

I did a sync accuracy test like this a good while back, using Pro Tools LE if I remember correctly.

It's buried deep around here somewhere.......

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=80943

I've never been able to get my MPC1k to sync accurately with Reaper, with either MTC or MIDI clock. I had much better results with Cubase SX3 however. I've been meaning to raise it as an issue in the Reaper forums but had no 'hard' evidence other tan how sloppy it sounded.

What version of Reaper are you using? I've seen numerous references to improving the accuracy of MIDI sync in the buigfixes, but I tried it a few releases ago and it was still shit.

Maybe you could take your results over to the Reaper and see what they say? Maybe get this fixed once and for all. Its the only gripe I have with Reaper.

Ive never had any issues slaving Reaper to my mpc1000 via MTC.

someone correct me if im wrong, but the sync timing being accurate is going to be dictated by the cpu clocks timing in processing the commands while recording.

the timing being all over the place could be caused by the way your computer is configured possibly.
Especially when DAWs are concerned.

Do you have your PC optimized for recording? things like minimizing backround processes, and setting your processor scheduling to background services" and memory usage to "system cache".

There are plenty of sites that can provide tips with tweaking your pc for audio and music production.
But one program that can help let you know if your even up to the task to begin with is DPC Latency Checker.
http://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat.exe

download that and run it, and see how your pc rates (while running your DAW). If you peak above green into anything yellow or higher, then its no surprise. Sometimes the most mundane task running in the background can affect your DAWS performance.

try that and we can go from there.

try it without sync, and see what happens.


it is not your soundcard, or compter. it is the mpc

Lord Toranaga wrote:try it without sync, and see what happens.


it is not your soundcard, or compter. it is the mpc

dude, did you actually read my first post....?

Punchdrunk wrote:

test #1 wrote:here are my results first for recording my mpc into reaper with NO type of sync whatsoever.

22047/22048/22047/22080/22015/22080/22047/22048/22047/22048/22047/22048/22047/22048

except for the occasional hiccup up to 22080 or down to 22015 the 1000 stayed within 3 samples of 22050 the majority of the time. not exactly rock solid, but not an absolute nightmare either.

the whole reason for my original post was because i tried recording the same sequence frist with my mpc not synced, and then later synced. the synced one where my mpc was a slave had hits placed incorrectly all over the place....

M02 wrote:I've never been able to get my MPC1k to sync accurately with Reaper, with either MTC or MIDI clock.

What version of Reaper are you using?

i'm using reaper version 3.

even syncing my mpc as the master is providing really unreliable results. mtc or midi clock it doesnt matter.
at this point i cant figure out if its a solely a reaper problem, a soundcard problem, a cpu problem... or most likely some combination of all three.

this is really frustrating.

Triple-X wrote:There are plenty of sites that can provide tips with tweaking your pc for audio and music production.
But one program that can help let you know if your even up to the task to begin with is DPC Latency Checker.
http://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat.exe

download that and run it, and see how your pc rates (while running your DAW). If you peak above green into anything yellow or higher, then its no surprise. Sometimes the most mundane task running in the background can affect your DAWS performance.

try that and we can go from there.

thanks for the advice triple-X.

i tried the DPC latency checker while running reaper and its in the green almost the whole time, except there is an occasional 3 second burst of activity up to yellow. never red, but yellow and it happens just about once every other minute. i tried to figure what was causing this extra activity but couldnt figure it out.

but seeing as how this peak into the yellow isnt happening consistently i dont think this is necessarily the cause of my midi sloppiness (although it IS something for me to look into regardless...).

For anyone interested in the reasons why:-

http://web.webhost4life.com/innerclock/ ... ge&name=35

Midi Clock or MTC In or Out from your DAW will be a rough ride. Take it as fact. Firewire or USB. Doesn't matter. There are loads of reasons. If it bothers you or you not it still makes a difference to how things sound.

At least if you have your hardware as master - something in your rig will be keeping time. With the DAW running your rig via USB/Midi Firewire the whole show gets the wobbly knee syndrome.

We are a few weeks off production of a solution.

Sample and tempo accurate Midi Clock from any DAW. And it does simultaneous Din Sync and Trigger Outs for your TR-808s/303s and Step Sequencers too.

We've been continually testing MPC-3000s running Mansell Labs Vailixi 3.50OS on our lab prototype and getting maximum 2 samples variation off perfect timing which is the limit of the MPC stability and testing anyway.

Our sync conversion between DAW and Hardware is less than 20 microseconds firm.

Apart from sounding truly amazing - having your external hardware and DAW locked properly means you can record/overdub and have everything line up properly in the grid.

Less editing to make up for tight beats ruined by a rough clock on the way in.

Bliss. Shipping Mid October.

http://web.webhost4life.com/innerclock/ ... ge&name=16

best - David
www.innerclocksystems.com

Looks like an interesting product David, any firm ideas on release date and price?

Are you able to demonstrate the effectiveness of the product?