Midi Clock Slowing Down,,,,

[Jathon Delsy]

I live stream with a Boss RC600 floor looper synced to follow Ableton via a midi lead from my Foscurite Scarlett 18i20.
Everything is fine for a while, but then the looper falls a bit behind. I notice that when I do something like a tight bass line the initial attack of the first note is cut off.
But if I stop Ableton and restart it then the looper resets and is bang in time.

Does anyone know why this happens, and what if anything I can do to stop it. It's not too big a deal stopping Ableton once in a while, but it does compromise the flow of my performance and really I should not need to do it.

[James Perrett]

Do you know exactly what Midi messages you are sending to the looper? Could it just be free running after it receives a start message?

[Jathon Delsy]

No it syncs to the tempo that Ableton is running at. The loops on the looper perfectly sync to the music on Ableton.
It's just a slight slowing, but still it cuts the intial attack of tight loops, which ruins the groove.
When I adjust Ableton's tempo the looper follows.

[James Perrett]

I don't know any of the gear involved, but my first thought would be that the looper's digital audio clock is losing sync with the Midi clock or the loop isn't waiting for the right Midi clock signal. Probably an obscure option not set correctly...

[Jathon Delsy]

Ok thanks I will contact Boss directly and see if they have any answer.

[ManFromGlass]

Maybe this could help as a temporary solution? -
Insert a tempo event every few bars only keep the tempo the exact same.

[Jathon Delsy]

Maybe this could help as a temporary solution? -
Insert a tempo event every few bars only keep the tempo the exact same.

Sorry, ManFromGlass, I don't understand what this is. Could someone please explain?

[ManFromGlass]

In your DAW when you change tempos in your song the DAW should create an event with that new tempo and where/when it happens. So that event gets sent out to everything syncing to your DAW.
If you enter one of these events every 2-4 or more bars it might keep the Boss unit synced better. Until Boss tells you what the best thing to do is.
I hope I explained it well enough.

[Sam Spoons]

As a midi novice (well not really but it was a long time ago) I would think of it as changing the tempo every few bars but resetting it to the original tempo. Not sure if that helps but that's how I understood it...

But, if the tempo on the looper is drifting/not synced would the tempo message arrive at the correct time? Worth a try though...

[Wonks]

Are you actually sending MIDI time code from Ableton to the looper, rather than just a BPM value and a go signal? And if you are, does the looper recognise it? It sounds to me like the looper is running on its internal clock and isn't being fully synched.

[Eddy Deegan]

It sounds to me like the looper is running on its internal clock and isn't being fully synched.

My thought also. Note also that the RC-600 can sync to an incoming MIDI clock via the DIN or the USB interface, but only to both if the sync mode is set to AUTO.

I'd check the MIDI sync settings on the RC-600 as described by Roland here.