MIDI Clock vs MTC? to Time Stamp or Not?

So, my quest begins with someone telling me that the MPC will drift over time if it syncs to a device that does not have MIDI Time Stamping.

His cure for this was to save the MPC sequence to the CF and take the CF card and put it into a reader for the Mac and import the data into Digital Performer. Then, trigger the MPC.

This sounds quite odd to me. I called MOTU regarding their time stamp technology and then said that this theory did not make much sense to them as well. Their time stamping technology linked with their MIDI devices provides the best possible quality syncing possible but the idea of the MPC drifting over time when used with the RME midi i/o instead of theirs was quite an unlikely situation according to MOTU.

I then called Akai and asked the same thing. Their first suggestion was that I upgrade to 1.22 although he mentioned that t hey are working out bugs in 1.22 sync via MTC. He said he was unaware of such drifting without the use of time stamping as well. He said that they support MIDI Clock and MTC.

So, what does this all mean folks? Who is right? Which way of syncing yields the most accurate timing?

MIDI Clock? MIDI Time Code? With or without Time Stamping Technology?

Of course I want the tightest clock, do I just make life simple and pick up a Micro Lite? Ideas anyone?

Really? Nuttin? lol... Come on folks... Surely someone has something to say about this, right?

interesting question... but ..all i can say is - i tried to syncronize logic with the mpc yesterday - and neiter midi clock nor Mtc was syncing right.
Might have something to do with the latency compensation of lohic? i don´t know...

I thought the whole purpose of MOTU's proprietary hardware/software timestamping tech was to compensate for problems inherent in USB midi transmission -- i.e. if your midi is not being sent through USB, it will make no diffrence.

Does RME even make a USB interface? I thought all that stuff was either firewire or PCI/PCMCIA -- a better way to go with midi (and audio) anyway. Only drawback is you don't get all the extended midi I/O, networking and patching functions of the MTP AV (or midi express etc.)

Yeah... I'm boggled. I spoke to all kinds of people and everyone has some different answer. How strange is this?

All I know is that the Time Stamping offered by Digital Performer works with their devices. It's suppose to make the MIDI sample accurate. Which, should keep life happy and extra tight.

But, as we can see from MACMUSIC78 something is clearly wrong here. We should be able to slave our MPC to our DAW without such a headache, no?

Regarding the RME, yes - the unit I am getting is PCI

I guess I will just have to see what happens tomorrow when my RME arrives. I hope all goes well but from the likes of it, this doesn't sound like it's going to be an easy process.

Thanks guys.

macmusic78 wrote:interesting question... but ..all i can say is - i tried to syncronize logic with the mpc yesterday - and neiter midi clock nor Mtc was syncing right.
Might have something to do with the latency compensation of lohic? i don´t know...

what OS are you running?

i run 1.21

macmusic78 wrote:i run 1.21

Thanks. From all my searching on the board, OS 1.1 seems to be the only OS running MTC solid. So, I guess there is no upgrade in OS for me. I need my timing to be solid more then I need new features.

Thanks for your help bro.

Trying inserting a bar in at the beginning of the song when using MTC

i always have several bars space in the beginning - still the timing is way off

macmusic78 wrote:i always have several bars space in the beginning - still the timing is way off

what OS are you running?

hello???? u aked b4 and i answered it ...

macmusic78 wrote:hello???? u aked b4 and i answered it ...

HAHA.

macmusic78 wrote:hello???? u aked b4 and i answered it ...

hahaha... Sorry... was like 4am here and I was a bit burnt out

So, my report with my MIDI timing is this...
Digital Performer sending MIDI Beat Clock an the MPC running 1.1 grabs the sync perfect AND without the need for 2 bars in the beginning. I'm using an RME Multiface for the MIDI as well, not sure if that's helping but that's what I'm running and all is fine.

Thanks for all your help guys.