Re: Repeater: Persistent Problems with Sync

[landman@wco.com (Mark Landman)]

Brett Maraldo wrote:

>I've been experimenting with the Repeater and midi sync because i've
>been having problems getting the Repeater to sync up reliably to the
>sequencer. I have to report that it doesn't sync reliably and for all
>intents and purposes

Repeater has some "issues" in recording while slaved to midi clock. Below
are some snippets from Electrix's Forum, where users were complaining about
Repeaters midi clock sync being totally wonky;

----------------------------------------------------------------------

o.k. Randy the saga continues,
I have done the test with the drum machine and you are
right, this is a different issue than the phase alignment I
was rattling on about. It does seem like there is a
very minute shift that can occur at the start point of the loop.
This is not perceptible when sampling from live playing
so I wouldn't worry about guitar applications Todd.
Repeater will sync up fine. This seems to only be a
problem with full kit drum loops sampled from a drum
machine or other mechanically tight timing source. So
yes, an issue for drum loops in a Techno application. I will
ask our braniacs to look at this issue.



IP: Logged
    damon
    Moderator
                        posted 09-05-2001 11:02 AM

                    Furtherer investigation has revealed the following:

1. The shorter the loop the coarser the resolution. If
your tempo is above 120 BPM I would suggest capturing 2
or 4 bars. 1 bar won't be very precise because of
Repeaters resolution of the start and stop points of the loop.

2. loops made purely in user mode and played back at
the native tempo seem to be fine.

3. Loops recorded in beat detect at fast tempos that
are 4 bars or longer seem to work a lot better.

4. MIDI sync quatizing of the initial record to some
drum machines can be funky. This is a definite issue (don't
know yet if it's Repeater or the quality of some MIDI
outputs). A loop will generally synchronize to the MIDI but
quantizing the recording to the same MIDI seems to have
some issues. Try beat detect or user mode and
record about 4 bars and see what kind of results you get.
(total phase alignment is a separate issue)

We will keep looking at the issue.


IP: Logged
    damon
    Moderator
                        posted 09-05-2001 04:16 PM

 More info on this issue.
There is actually a bug with our MIDI sync record
quantization. Yes we are now looking at this for the next OS
release. (Thanks for the persistence Randy).
Pressing start on the drum machine does not define the
downbeat of an empty loop. (It will start a full loop). This
means Repeater is receiving the tempo properly but the
beat location might be wrong. This is effecting the
quantization so if the beat location is half off you
might miss half a beat of your loop. This would create a "very
bad DJ effect". This should be easy for us to fix.

This will not fix "phase alignment" of similar waveforms.

MIDI sync after a loop is recorded works.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Good news is the problem evidently has been identified, and Electrix is
working to fix it for the next O.S. release. I do feel sorry for Don
Goodeve and his crew, as after all this work it must be tough to have to
jump right back into fixing things without getting some sort of short
vacation first...

Best-

Mark