using midi beat clock to sync Pro Tools Free with Reason

[supernova777]

so heres one for the noobs from another noob

im a nerd, but im excited i got this working..
all i did was load reason up, im using v3.05 which is the first version to run on
intel processors! because im using my toshiba a100 hackintosh-macbook pro
my protools free machine is an mdd with a delta 1010LT card installed..
i tried using the inputs from the delta but it just froze my machine so i guess the
sound manager drivers for the delta1010LT are not properly written or compatible with pro tools free 5.01

so im outputting audio out of the 3.5mm headphone jack on my laptop..
jut farting around but i was recording 2 tracks at a time by panning hard left + hard right.. i grabbed my chinese crappy $3 midi usb cable (which works great in osx but unfortunately not so much in os9) and i ran that out of my laptops usb port and connected the out to the in and the in to the out of the delta 1010LT's midi ports.... obviouly i ran oms setup on the mac and setup my ports before launching ptfree..

but yea! i was trying to get it working and it wasnt, but all i had to do was enable the sync option on the reason transport.. lighting up "enable" + "midi" + "play" which is directly to the left of the click level and to the right of the audio out clipping on the left side of the transport at hte bottom.. and its workin!
when i press play in pro tools free .. it starts playing reason

and so i can record my 2 tracks of audio in sync via midi beat clock and it actually working pretty tight!

setting to "grid" in pt + then selecting a loop by click + drag on the ruler at the top of the pt screen makes it so i can grab a specific clip length and pro tools automatically stops at the end of the length + reason, acting as a good little slave, does too;)

[supernova777]

one thing i notice doing this is.. when im first recording a new track.. it sounds out of sync a tiny bit if its playing back tracks ive recorded already at the same time as recording to another track..
but after its done recording.. when i play it back all together it sounds perfect.
i guess this is a perfect example of 'latency' related to 'monitoring' ?

[supernova777]

im trying to solve this latency while recording issue

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun06/articles/ptworkshop_0606.htm

[supernova777]

well i thought this was working. but ive realized it not on time properly

my problem is that the beat is always ahead of the time division in the software..
meaning that when i use the grid to cut + paste portions of the track there is always part of the percussive sound of the next measure in the previous section..
because the timing is off..
and in pro tools free - there no way to add a midi beat clock offset (that i know of)
so this is kind of shit.. to have to splice + readjust the audio by hand for each track.. kind of sucks
and it confusing

does anyone have experience syncing to midi beat clock?

the good part is that it seems to be conistant timing... and i nudge it over a tiny bit it lines up + stays lined up

[supernova777]

ive had this same problem with cubase... everyone ive ever talked to about it told me the solution is to use a 2 bar preroll or count in or whatever..  i always used to have this same problem with rewire aswell.. i figured using midi beat clock + 2 computers it would be on time. and able to record without this issue.. how do i get my recordings to record in on time ..
the first beat is off by a tiny bit.. like it starts recording too late.. or the midi beat clock is ahead of the measure by a tiny bit.
making me have to cut + move the waveform to get it on the beat division properly

is there no fix to this? is this something that eveyrone deals with with every single daw known to man?

[supernova777]

its always off by the same amount no matter if i take the tempo down to 60bpm or increase it to like 150bpm...
i guess i have to use a real version of PT LE to be able to adjust this midi beat clock offset value?

http://apps.avid.com/proToolsFirstHelp/version12.0/enu/#page/Pro%2520Tools%2520First%2520Help/rec1.playback.19.40.html

http://www.protoolsproduction.com/midi-beat-clock/

i was checking these pages for a solution.. notice that the one page shows the offset value - this is for PT 8 or higher obviously (u can tell by the graphics) but the one page also talks about adjusting the grid..
is there a way for me to adjust the grid to fit my fucked up timing? because its consistant.. at least.. then i could at least make easy cuts on the grid...

i guess im on my own here....

[Protools5LEGuy]

In Logic you can adjust the MIDI latency on the setup for the notes to be sent before to make it in time.

You have to measure how many samples is delayed, and live with it. You can move 10/100/1000 samples easily with + and - on the edit window in PT.

TDM systems do Automatic Delay Compensation (?), at least when you use Plugs that delay de signal. But I think old school users had to use sample delay or something like that to compensate the delay

[Protools5LEGuy]

It could be also that FREE is limited to work synced.

Try that setup with LE systems instead of FREE and tell us if the behavior is better.

[supernova777]

ok cool at least i can nudge now.. using + & - keys on numeric keypad
i was trying to do cmd > or option > which is what some newere version of pt video told me to do

but it would be seriously better if i could just get it to record the first time on beat!!!! GRRRR

[supernova777]

heres an example of the offset i cant get rid of

u can see here my crash cymbal - its just slightly before the beat division
nudging it with (+) key is a quick fix tho.. but i really wish i could adjust the offset value.
i wonder if there is a way to do it in 5.01?

[Protools5LEGuy]

i wonder if there is a way to do it in 5.01?

Using delay on all tracks to hear it synced

[supernova777]

omg i think i found out how to do it..
press cmd-2 on numeric keypad brings up a window that says
"generate time code.." "mtc to port" and it shows a "sync offset" numeric value in samples!!!!!
and it accepts positive or negative values

nope that didnt work.. reason doesnt use MTC but at least i found out that pro tools free can do MTC!

[supernova777]

based on my nudge value at 100 samples.. i have to press nudge 11 times to bring my newly recorded channel in time with the rest of my project.. so thats 1100 samples too soon before the beat..
what the hell!! how do i fix this
could it be because of pt free recording thru the sound manager?
does anyone using LE experience this ?

[supernova777]

no offset;(

[supernova777]

ok well i did some more testing. did not get anywhere without nudging with midi beat clock - but i did have some success syncing via MTC to ableton live..

in my experimenting i used ableton live v3.0..
and i was able to setup sync out of ptfree using the panel (cmd-numeric 2)
and clicking "EXT" in ableton to have it be externally controlled by ptfree over midi
i had to set a value of -28ms to get it to line up properly in the mtc sync settings in ableton this works ok but the first beat is always missing when i record from live this way..
which is frustrating.. cant win!!!!

the idea being to slave reason to live via rewire and then have reason being in sync via MTC but i have not gone that far yet

in the attached image u can see how the first sound is missing from the recording