MPC>Pro Tools sync is ok but MPC jumps to 3rd bar at start o

Ive got my MPC slaved to Pro tools and its all good and fine except when I hit record on pro tools, the MPC jumps to 003.03.00 and starts recording from there.. And when I say jump, i mean I've got a bar of blank space for pre roll (in the MPC), but when I hit record (even when Ive stepped back to 001.01.00) the mpc instantly jumps to 003.03.00 and plays from there... I'm just trying to get everything running smooth and this isnt helping

Also, when I turn loop off in the MPC and press play in pro tools, it just jumps to the end of the sequence and doesnt play anything at all...

I've got pro tools 8 and the 2500 akai os 1.24

am i missing something?


edit: ok so my tempos are set in both the MPC and PT to 86.5... so i turned off my mpc then turned it on so the tempo was reset to 120 on MPC, clicked record in PT and the MPC started at 001.01.00, and when i go below 86.5 in the MPC the sequence starts later... why is this happening??

edit again: alright so its gotta be something with the tempos? Because different tempos on the MPC start it at different spots
Also found this: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-co ... stion.html

I changed some setting that i cant find anymore in pro tools that was set at 001.01.00 over to 001.00.00 or something along those lines, now its almost perfect, just a tiny bit late but only noticeable when you zoom in pretty close, and everything is equally late so itll do for now but if anyone knows anymore let me know

All you need to know is right here: http://www.mpc-samples.com/product.php/ ... pro-tools/

thanks i just bought it and definitely needed it, found my first answer on page 73/74

Except i still dont understand (and cant find an answer to) why when i turn "loop: off" on the MPC and hit record in pro tools, the sequence in the MPC jumps right to the last bar and doesnt play anything, but with "loop: on" its fine. Not the biggest deal but it would be nice to just have it play the sequence and not repeat because it will save me some trim time in PT

I assume you're using MTC to sync the two?

I had the same issue with Logic (but in reverse). Every time I would hit play on the MPC, Logic would jump back to Bar -8 (negative eight - eight bars before bar 1, which is the farthest back Logic could go).

It turned out that Logic had an MTC sync start time of 01:00:00:00 (hour one - one hour, 0 minutes, 0 seconds, 0 frames), whereas the MPC started at 00:00:00:00 (hour zero), so Logic was trying to rewind an hour in order to sync up with the MPC. That's because MTC has positional information (in other words, unlike MIDI clock, MTC thinks in terms of absolute time, not tempo). So, being that your situation is in reverse, what's happening is that Pro Tools is telling your MPC to move an hour forward, because the MPC thinks its midnight, but PT is saying that its 1AM. Took me a week to figure it out.

It sounds like your MPC is trying to jump forward (whereas my DAW was trying to jump backward). Somewhere in PT's preferences there will be a setting that called "MTC Clock Start" or something to that effect. (Not too familiar with PT...) Change it to all zeros, like above. That should fix it.

Hope this helps.

As far as the loop-on/loop-off differences, with loop on, the MPC obviously jumps to the beginning of the sequence when it reaches the end. Since the MTC sync thing is causing it to go an hour into the future, it just loops because loops are infinite (well, until you press the stop button)... But with loop off, its continually trying to go an hour into the future, and it can never get there because the sequence isn't long enough, but it keeps trying, so it plays nothing...

Think of it like a circle that you cut and stretch out into a flat line. If its a two bar long circle, then bar 4,000,001 is the same as bar 1. It just keeps going forever and loses reference to time. But as a two bar long line, its only two bars long, and there is no bar 4,000,001.

Hope all this makes sense. Its a lot easier to visualize than it is to put into words.

Yes im using MTC, and i think i get what you're saying but ive searched hi and low but cant find anything relating to MTC clock start in pro tools

its all good though i was set up pretty nicely last night but now tonight im back to recording in the middle of sequences (with pre roll bars and all) so im letting the half of sequence play, until i hit the beginning again and let the full sequence play, and then trimming and dragging in PT... so im all over the map right now but i definitely appreciate the help and maybe once i read the book more ill figure this out, thank u both

You have pre roll on in pro tools, but are you also using a blank amount of bars before the actual beat starts? For example, I use a pre roll of 1 bar in pro tools. And in the MPC, I make a BLANK 1 bar sequence (same tempo) that plays back during the pre roll. Then once the pre roll passes, the real sequence comes in. Of course you have to do a sequence change immediately after starting playback. So what I used to do was just set up a song mode with that black 1 bar sequence as the start of the song and set the main beat sequence for however many reps I want. This way you just hit record in pro tools and don't have to do a manual sequence change in the MPC.

As explained in the book, MTC takes a couple of seconds to lock in, so the very start of the beat does not play right away. This is why we set pre roll. Now if you set a 1 bar of pre roll in pro tools, but do no account for it in the MPC, your sequence is gonna start playing back at bar 4. With 2 bars of pre roll in pro tools unaccounted for in the MPC, the MPC will start play back at bar 3. So the blank sequence basically is equivalent to bar 4 (or bar 3 depending on how much pre roll you have). 1 bar of pre roll and a 1 bar blank sequence is enough to lock in the sync.

Yea I have one bar of pre roll in pro tools and ive been doing the 1 blank bar sequence on the MPC and using the song mode to just link the blank bar and sequence i want to record together, but still no luck

I have a 16 bar intro on my MPC, so the Song sequence i created is now 17 bars (because of the blank bar sequence), but still when i hit record in pro tools (tempos matched), it records within .20 seconds and starts at about bar 009.03.00 on the MPC which is the part the really confuses me

Do you have Pro Tools frame rate set to 30? Not 30D, but 30. And you have your hardware buffer in Pro Tools set to 128 or lower? Also, maybe the Akai OS could be your issue? Maybe try the free JJOS?

Yea its set at 30 no D, but my hardware buffer is set to 256, i guess i got some more learning to do about that which ill read about, and i do already plan on getting jjos soon, but......

It's fixed, i think i found mp3's setting he was talking about while making sure my frame rate was set to 30 under Setup>Session... theres "Session Start" and "Incoming Time", session start had a 1 somewhere in it but i changed it to 00:00:00:00 because thats what my incoming time reads and now im in sync, finally

so I definitely owe a big thanks to both of you, thank you SO much

ThatsMisterMooreToYou wrote:Yea its set at 30 no D, but my hardware buffer is set to 256, i guess i got some more learning to do about that which ill read about, and i do already plan on getting jjos soon, but......

It's fixed, i think i found mp3's setting he was talking about while making sure my frame rate was set to 30 under Setup>Session... theres "Session Start" and "Incoming Time", session start had a 1 somewhere in it but i changed it to 00:00:00:00 because thats what my incoming time reads and now im in sync, finally

so I definitely owe a big thanks to both of you, thank you SO much

Weird. That defaults to 00:00:00. You must have accidentally changed it at some point, or maybe loaded a session from someone else's computer who had that changed and it over wrote your setting.

Glad to help homie.