That made me wanna back to Akai OS

I did the same test with the SQUARE20S_A_3.WAV sample available on JJ's website.

Same result. I'll contact Murai and see what he is gonna answer.

Despite that, I don't track 8 outs, I track stereo out, and I have to solo pads, solo tracks, one by one, so in that case is a lot more difficult to be switching from song to seq and soloing pads, and going back to song mode again. That´s maybe even another reason to not MTC sync.

1: so why don't you "record track mutes" on a blank track the way you like it, then have that playback? EDIT: i get what you mean now, you like to do multiple runs of 2 tracks? why not use your outputs you have?

this way, you are not making the machine work overtime, thus causing general off-time behavior.


2: having a huge computer chase a small drum machine is ridiculous to me (esp a PC computer) MASTER should be the most powerful, quickest CPU... which is not your drum machine.


3: having your Computer be the master will insure that your drum machine will "chase" your computer's time code... and bottom line... all it is doing is having your machine follow the 96.5 bpm that your comp plays at, not the 96.5 that your MPC plays at.


4: to tell your computer to alter its general time signature (MTC) you are wreaking havoc on your sample recording (samples meaning 44,100 samples/second @ 24bits) because it is trying to invent a way to mend itself to follow the drum machine.




go to protools midi screen... set PT to generate MTC (the check boxes) for the device and output you want.

midi out (soundcard) to midi in (MPC)

set MPC to be slaved to MTC

set EXACT matching Bpms on both protools and MPC

record desired track mutes in MPC until you like your take

press rec+playstart in PT...


and watch your MPC follow with ease.




If you really want to get anal about the grid (although I really have no idea why you want your sync to work at all when you are only 2 tracking (seems very pointless), you can nudge the track after recording setting the first kick or whatever to be on the line.



more than anything... doing the reaper step first is redundant, and probably causing some conversion loss anyway.... any time you take a processed file and import it into protools, it converts it anyway, causing some quality loss.




Trust me... try it.


I get 5 machines at a time to chase, sometimes at 16+ tracks recording at a time, with all different ages of machines.... works every time.

yeah if it's just one drum machine or piece of gear in general then I dont get why synching is needed at all. push record on the computer, push play on the mpc... trim the beginning, call it a day. keep it simple. why converting the entire project to sequences, having the transport on the mpc start the computer daw rolling, etc... all that is adding steps and apparently causing problems.

why converting the entire project to sequences, having the transport on the mpc start the computer daw rolling, etc... all that is adding steps and apparently causing problems.

exactly.
\

Its one thing to make your computer start when you press play on your drum machine, but it is yet another to have your computer actually TIMECODE locked to your drum machine... the latter is much harder to achieve in reality... especially while live trackmuting etc.


i always master DAW and slave MPC

YES. this is what i'm talking about yall
i love being proved wrong. especially about a bug i didn't experience/realize i experienced.
and grublet i've done mpc master for years now and never been dissatisfied, but your CPU comparison makes perfect sense.
though i may not change out of working habit i definitely like knowing the bigger picture.

The Grublet wrote:although I really have no idea why you want your sync to work at all when you are only 2 tracking (seems very pointless), you can nudge the track after recording setting the first kick or whatever to be on the line.

Maybe there's something wrong with my English. So I'll try to explain it better.

I don't record a single stereo. I have about 15 different sounds on the MPC to export (kicks, snares, hihats, toms etc.), and I want each one on a separate track on my DAW for mixing. I don't have track mutes. I don't have BPM changes.

Why I don't use the 8 outs from my MPC to my Digi002 8 ins ?

Because Digi002 preamps and AD conversion sucks. I don't have a great $6k 8 tracks preamp with a great $2k 8 channel AD converter yet, so I prefer keeping digital than loose quality with poor gear processing and conversion.

That's why I record, track by track, each element of my production separately, via SPDIF stereo out.

About the MTC thing, I admit that your comment about CPU makes sense, so I´ll give a try to slave the MPC to pro-tools. BTW thanx for your willing to help at all, I appreciate it.

le rat wrote: Can someone do the same test and share his results?

Hope I did a mistake and I'm tripping

Awesome test, man. I´ll do it tomorrow. From this project I know that not every single event is being played by the MPC earlier, I realized that the problem happened somewhere between the bar 16 to 17, so I started to think that it was just a bug that came out with this particular project, but your test surprised me. I'll go deeper into it tomorrow and bring some pics here.

le rat wrote:I did a quick test this morning

a sequence with one track with one program with one sine sample.

the sequence is 4 bars at 100 BPM with the sine trimmed in trim mode recorded at the beginning of each bars.
program settings checked properly

I've converted the sequence via song mode to be 280 bars (approximately 11 minutes)

I've recorded the result via the main out and checked in a DAW.

From what I'm seeing in my computer the MPC replays the event a little bit earlier each time.

Can someone do the same test and share his results?

Hope I did a mistake and I'm tripping

Just did the same test except I used a kick drum (trimmed right to the attack) instead of a sine wave. Not sure if you recorded the converted song to sequence using record mode or song mode, but I used song mode. My findings under the daw microscope: The beat was solid as a rock, on point all the time. Surprised me a little because the results contradicted the tests I ran several months ago. For reference, I'm using a MPC 1000 JJOSXL 1.43. I'll do the test again later today with the latest os update.

I did another test (with pretty similar conditions than the other one) that I ran on akai 2.13, os1 4.99l, os2 1.33 and os2xl 1.46.

When the song is converted in a new sequence, there is a "problem" on all the recordings on the long run.
Anyway I can't tell more right now. I had several mail exchanges with Murai. He transmitted to JJ to check it. So I'll wait for his answer.

In that current state and as someone suggested earlier in that topic I think too that it's better not to convert the song for sync and tracking purpose.

Well here we go. First of all, I recorded the kick track again on Pro Tools to see if there was something on Reaper causing the problem. Nope. Same shit. Let´s go to the print screens;

I´ve put each bar of the kick track on one track below each other for you to see the different positions it gets from the bar ruler. As you can see there´s not too much zoom. The rulers are at 1/64 note. Something happened from bar 16 to bar 17. I checked the step edit to see if there was something wrote like tempo changes or pitch bend event that could have been generated unintentionally, but there´s nothing. Just note events, nothing more.



Funny thing is: I´ve checked the bar lengths between the 1st kick of two bars at different bars, and only bar 16 have a obviously relevant different length. Check it:

oh snap, so you are telling me, it automatically adds that dilla swing on the kick all by itself?

*Excuse me for another off topic interval*

The Grublet wrote: i always master DAW and slave MPC

What version of Pro Tools are you using ? Tried here with Pro Tools 8.0.3 and I could not sync. PT as master didn't worked at all although all the settings were correct like I used to do before on PT7 a few time ago. PT as slave plays in sync but when I arm the track to record and press play on the mpc, the track disarms by itself and starts just playbacking. After following the AKAI´s oficial site steps to sync MPC with Pro Tools with no success, I messed with all the settings for about 2 hours and could not sync as master and could not record as slave (MTC, didn't tried beat clock). So I opened Reaper, in 2 minutes or less, I did it, as master, and as slave, and compared them two. Understand why I use Reaper now ? MPC as master has given me the best result. MPC as slave has given me the track quite a bit before the grid.

Now on topic: I did this with another beat and it didn't gave me that bug on bar 16 to 17. But it's too early I didn't finished tracking all the tracks.

quote:
2: having a huge computer chase a small drum machine is ridiculous to me (esp a PC computer) MASTER should be the most powerful, quickest CPU... which is not your drum machine.


i think this argumentation is an illusion because:

pc s cpu s are overloaded with a lot! of processes also in the background, like graphics, colours, usb, pci,internet etc...

making a solid timing difficult!

take the groove of an 808 for ex. and it s cpu... nec?

mpc has a very specialised cpu with less power less cpu instructions at the same time... and.. brings it to the point.

to my ears, an 808, mpc has much groovier timing than a pc even an i7!!

that s why i prefere mpc/ 808 as master.

the sequencer with the highest resolution should be the master no? and my guess that would be the DAW.

(bump)

any updates on this, guys? thanks