Midi Syncing MPC Ren and MPC500

So I have these two machines synced up via midi clock with the Ren as the master and the 500 as the slave.

I noticed a couple things while getting this going:

The timing can often drift when playing for long periods

The start times can often be 'off' and not even start tight

Is there any way to tighten this up and avoid the drift that creeps in over time or remove the slightly off timing that occurs randomly when pressing start?

BTW, I tried syncing the other way around, with the 500 as master and Ren as slave, but couldn't get them to play 'tightly' at all :/

Instead of trying to sync them, why not open the MPC 500 project in the Ren? It should definitely "sync" then.

forwerd wrote:Instead of trying to sync them, why not open the MPC 500 project in the Ren? It should definitely "sync" then.

For making a song with the two this is a cool idea. Something I will try for sure. However, the reason why I want the two synced via midi is I plan on using the mpc500 for interludes in live sets.

Basically every time I have to load another project into the Ren I want the mpc500 playing so there's no break in the music. I realize that once I press stop on the Ren the 500 will stop too but I'm quick enough to hit play on the 500 and not have any gaps in sound (plus this adds to the 'live' feel of the show-where anything can go wrong)

Forwerd, you know...thinking about your idea...if I have a sequence loaded into the 500 while it's playing from the Ren project then when I press stop on the Ren to load the next project I can just hit play on the 500 like I have been doing???

I'm off to try this...

Thanks for the idea...

Forwerd, I owe you a drink.

It works like a charm....well 90%...the Ren doesn't play the 500 pads the same so Pad c6 on the Ren is a1 on the 500
c5 is a2
c11 is a3
c9 is a4
c7 is a5
c14 is a6

I'll take a look at the manual and see how to change this but otherwise your idea is a beauty.

Thanks very muchly

Or get a dj mixer and play the two like wheels of steel.

Using MC you send the position of your song pointer and your relative metrum (4/4 with 96 pulses per 16th I think, "relative tempo"), while using MTC gives you a fixed grid. While MC automatically reads out your tempo, it can drop some info after a time and this cumulates even more the more time passes. MTC requires you to set the tempo in both machines to the same BPM, while MC tries to do that automatically.

I'd suggest using MTC + MMC if possible, since I don't know whether the 500 supports that...