mpc2kxl - Digi 002 ....midi beat clock lag question

hi all

i hope this hasnt been covered to death.

like so many other people, i use the midi beat clock function in protools to record my mpc tracks seperately into a pro tools session. I do it using a method i learned from here; by making a single blank bar go before the sequence its supposed to give time for protools/mpc to get in sunc with each other right?

heres my problem. my tracks are in sync, but when I zoom way in there is an obvious .036 seconds before the drum actually hits, when on my mpc it hits right on the one??????

I hate this. I just want to get 8 outs and record my stuff the way its meant to be recorded.

on some beats its not a problem cause I dont lay too much midi over them or anything....but with some (like a very frustrating one today) the midi when quantized is 'out of sync' with the beat (which is im time with itself, but not with protools....this is so hard to explain...


can anyone help me to understand this?

Dj:A wrote:hi all

i hope this hasnt been covered to death.

like so many other people, i use the midi beat clock function in protools to record my mpc tracks seperately into a pro tools session. I do it using a method i learned from here; by making a single blank bar go before the sequence its supposed to give time for protools/mpc to get in sunc with each other right?

heres my problem. my tracks are in sync, but when I zoom way in there is an obvious .036 seconds before the drum actually hits, when on my mpc it hits right on the one??????

I hate this. I just want to get 8 outs and record my stuff the way its meant to be recorded.

on some beats its not a problem cause I dont lay too much midi over them or anything....but with some (like a very frustrating one today) the midi when quantized is 'out of sync' with the beat (which is im time with itself, but not with protools....this is so hard to explain...


can anyone help me to understand this?

Sounds like your getting latency from protools. This is the delay incurred when you set the playback buffer too high in protools. The delay affects the Beat clock and also affects the incoming sound from the MPC.

You can lower the buffer in the playback engine settings. The lower the number e.g 128 the lower the delay but the more processing power used and the bigger the chance of dropouts.

If you can't get the buffer low enough you could record all the tracks into protools, group all the tracks together, go into grid mode and put the cursor on the first beat before your beat starts. Zoom in and select the empty space between the grid and the start of the waveform (shift select). Go into shuffle mode and press delete. The beat should snap back to start exactly on the first beat. Latency doesn't affect softsynths like reason etc. as they are all internally processed.

thanks for the advice. I have a feeling that I wont be able to escape the latency on my system due to my slightly old computer. but that is an excellent idea with the zoom/shuffle mode/delete

this may be getting into it too much, but for anyone else having this problem...since we all often program with no quantizing and all that...I think I might start putting a single tone right on the 1 on my mpc so that I have a "2 pop" of sorts to delete up to, if you catch my drift.

thanks for your help. hopefully I will get a better machine sooner or later, and this wont be a problem

bump

i cant figure this problem out, and its frustrating me to death

no matter what i do, its **** up - i just want to record in the parts seperately and move them around in grid mode and have them be perfect.

when i record them in, no matter what the buffer is set at there is a huge gap between the beginning of the bar and the actual first beat

i thought that putting the 1 bar of pre roll was supposed to take care of this!!!! what about putting 2 or more bars of pre roll before it?


also, the 'shuffle mode / delete' thing didnt work cause then its got a big gap at the END of the audio chunk


this is so **** frustrating. can anyone please help me with this??

Dj:A wrote:bump

i cant figure this problem out, and its frustrating me to death

no matter what i do, its **** up - i just want to record in the parts seperately and move them around in grid mode and have them be perfect.

when i record them in, no matter what the buffer is set at there is a huge gap between the beginning of the bar and the actual first beat

i thought that putting the 1 bar of pre roll was supposed to take care of this!!!! what about putting 2 or more bars of pre roll before it?


also, the 'shuffle mode / delete' thing didnt work cause then its got a big gap at the END of the audio chunk


this is so **** frustrating. can anyone please help me with this??

If you can't get the buffer down to a useable amount you have to use the shuffle method to get rid of the space. There shouldn't be a gap at the end because all you should be removing is the silence at the the start. If there's a gap then there is a problem with the actual beat clock tempo.

What version of Protools have you got? AFAIK one version of protools has a dodgy beat clock. I use protools 7 with an MPC 2000 and it syncs perfectly without prerolling. There still is a tiny gap caused by latency.

Your other option is to use Midi time code and set the tempos to the same BPM on both machines. It's not recommended because the timing will drift after a while but is usually fine for short loops.

Also check your Midi cables. I know this sounds stupid but I had Midi lag for ages until I changed the cable.