MIDIclock and other syncing

[Matthias Grob <matthias@grob.org>]

a while ago, talking about the Line6 units, Rick Walker said:

>Actually,  I jumped for joy when I heard that they have midi. On our 
>recent
>tour I told somebody, "if the DL-4 had midi syncing, I would dump every 
>one
>of my Jampersons in an instant".

Why dont you use EDPs? I claim the actual version has more syncing 
options than all other loop units have, including the Repeater which 
has no word clock sync.

I remember that JamMan users always complained about the little hicks 
they get when syncing with MIDI. Its what you get with MIDIclock. 
More or less. I wonder how well the Repeater solves it. Maybe thats 
what they are fighting with right now?
Does anyone use MIDIclock to sync audio equipment in a studio?

I suspect that the importance of BrotherSync has not been understood yet.
There are two lines in it: Word clock and CycleStart / Reset.
I just did some sessions with EDP users here in Switzerland and its 
awsome to follow each other without having to define which is master 
and which slave, beeing able to offset loops from each other whithout 
loosing sync (so the offset is constant).

The upgrade goes much further with this. A synced Record is like a 
Multiply over the time of the brother musician. The brothers loop 
time appears in your display before you do the Record over it. And 
with a free key in Reset you can define whether you want to follow 
the others timing or create a new one which then your brother can 
take over if he likes it. No plugging, no parameter changing, really 
improv- and stage proof!

The more loopers meetings happen, the more important syncing will be.
How did you do it in the recent events?

MIDI can be helpfull but is made to sync MIDI events to each other or 
to audio and is neither acurate nor handy enough for audio.
It does not transmit where the beginning of the cycle is! You have to 
remember it since the beginning of the song by counting / 
caluculating the clocks right. Ok as long as you keep the same 
measure throughout the song, bad if you change it.
Worse if you start the sequencer and somewhen later switch a loop to 
it: the sequencer has no way to know where your loop starts.
Worse when you switch the loop on and off or want to move it against 
the sequencer beat. The new EDP verstion interprets Song Position 
Pointer as much as possible, but its 6 times less acurate than the 
MIDIclock itself and also does not tell anything about where you are 
musically, just how far you are from the start.
Some Sequencers dont stop MIDI clock when you stop them.
During playing there is no Song Position Pointer allowed.
...
I have been fighting at least two heavy programming years of my 
precious life with MIDI and with great help of Claude Voit and Kim we 
worked out the maximum possible.

But I would not "jump of joy" because of MIDI sync :-)



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