I'm attempting to sync Resolume's midi clock to Maschine but I'm not having much luck.
I've got the midi communication set up but the Resolume bpm skips about all over the place. Maybe I'm expecting too much from it - havent used it much before.
I am also sending midi messages from Maschine to trigger clips and it seems as if Resolume quicly becomes overwhelmed with too much midi information.
I'm using a 2007 Macbook Pro with 10.5.8, and IAC driver for the midi. Also tried the Maschine virtual midi port.
Its a shame because it (Maschine + Resolume) is a phenomenal combination. I'll make a video if I can get it to work.
Midi Clock Woes
Re: Midi Clock Woes
Hey Gavspav
We don't have hands-on experience with Maschine, but does the BPM actually skip, or do the numbers just waver? A little offset in these numbers is okay. It's best to keep an eye on the four-beat indicator, as long as that is running in time, you should be fine.
Resolume should be able to handle as much midi as you can throw at it. At a certain point your HD might not be able to keep up with triggering all the clips. Is this the issue you are experiencing, or is it something else?
Joris
We don't have hands-on experience with Maschine, but does the BPM actually skip, or do the numbers just waver? A little offset in these numbers is okay. It's best to keep an eye on the four-beat indicator, as long as that is running in time, you should be fine.
Resolume should be able to handle as much midi as you can throw at it. At a certain point your HD might not be able to keep up with triggering all the clips. Is this the issue you are experiencing, or is it something else?
Joris
Re: Midi Clock Woes
What's happening is that the BPM number in Resolume fluctuates by +/- 4 BPM (occasionally more) with a constant tempo in Maschine.
Its more than just the calculated BPM changing as I can sometimes hear the pitch of audio clips changing.
Syncing Resolume to Live is slightly better but even then I get the odd fluctuation and with both set ups occasionally midi messages seem to get lost and clips fail to trigger.
It works but it just seems a bit loose.
By comparison syncing Live to Maschine seems very tight.
I'm using a Macbook Pro.2.2 Core 2 Duo, 10.5.8. Activity monitor shows nothing hogging CPU.
Has anyone else been slaving Resolume to a software midi clock? Is it a problem with my set up, a problem with Resolume or just the way it is?
Its more than just the calculated BPM changing as I can sometimes hear the pitch of audio clips changing.
Syncing Resolume to Live is slightly better but even then I get the odd fluctuation and with both set ups occasionally midi messages seem to get lost and clips fail to trigger.
It works but it just seems a bit loose.
By comparison syncing Live to Maschine seems very tight.
I'm using a Macbook Pro.2.2 Core 2 Duo, 10.5.8. Activity monitor shows nothing hogging CPU.
Has anyone else been slaving Resolume to a software midi clock? Is it a problem with my set up, a problem with Resolume or just the way it is?
Re: Midi Clock Woes
Well, from first glance I'd say it's a problem with your setup. We use Live and Avenue on two machines, linked via an ad-hoc wifi network. For an hour long AV set we get some flux in the BPM, but nothing like the offsets you're describing. Also no messages seem to get lost, and this is via wifi!
Maybe the two apps on one machine is becoming a bit much. Do you have access to a second computer to test with?
Joris
Maybe the two apps on one machine is becoming a bit much. Do you have access to a second computer to test with?
Joris
Re: Midi Clock Woes
Hmm tried it with two machines and I get different results but I am now so confused I want to give up 
Bizarrely if I use Ipmidi I get better results than using a cable except that I lose some data - probably a combination of thick walls and an old router.
Thing is I haven't got a dedicated midi interface on either machine so not sure how good the cabled test it is. I am sending midi out from Macschine on my laptop into a Remote SL Zero connected to my desktop (running Avenue).
I get pretty poor results no matter how I set it up. Barely acceptable from Live to Resolume.
Using midi clock from Maschine is certainly worse than from Live. When there's alot going on the pitch in Resolume is wobbling around all over the place.
I realize there are too many unknown variables here.
Shame it doesn't work better on one machine - my CPU meter is only showing about 55%!
I'm gonna have to forget it for the moment, at least until I can try with a different setup.
Bizarrely if I use Ipmidi I get better results than using a cable except that I lose some data - probably a combination of thick walls and an old router.
Thing is I haven't got a dedicated midi interface on either machine so not sure how good the cabled test it is. I am sending midi out from Macschine on my laptop into a Remote SL Zero connected to my desktop (running Avenue).
I get pretty poor results no matter how I set it up. Barely acceptable from Live to Resolume.
Using midi clock from Maschine is certainly worse than from Live. When there's alot going on the pitch in Resolume is wobbling around all over the place.
I realize there are too many unknown variables here.
Shame it doesn't work better on one machine - my CPU meter is only showing about 55%!
I'm gonna have to forget it for the moment, at least until I can try with a different setup.
Re: Midi Clock Woes
How's about using the IAC driver over an ad-hoc network? That cancels out any problems with midi hardware or cables.
Re: Midi Clock Woes
I just gave it a shot using IAC via an ethernet cable and it seemed better.
Still get glitches though eg triggering clips via three 1/16 notes in succession in piano mode. This will usually work but sometimes it'll miss out the middle trigger. This could be hard drive limit I guess?
I'll give it a more thorough testing and report back. Thanks.
Still get glitches though eg triggering clips via three 1/16 notes in succession in piano mode. This will usually work but sometimes it'll miss out the middle trigger. This could be hard drive limit I guess?
I'll give it a more thorough testing and report back. Thanks.
Re: Midi Clock Woes
i've just done a bit of testing of this. Sending midi clock from my MPD32 connected via usb.
I downloaded a test tone from http://www.mediacollege.com/audio/tone/ ... _30sec.wav and loaded it up in resolume. Using a test tone lets us hear even minor changes in speed which are reflected in the pitch of the tone.
with BPM set to manual it sounds OK - you can hear small inconsistencies in the speed of playback but you have to really listen for them. However slaving resolume to midi clock makes the tone warble as it constantly speeds up and slows down with the midi clock variations that you see in the numerical display of resolume.
Maybe the BPM could be devised from a bigger sample of midi clock, averaged out as is done with BPM tap?
I downloaded a test tone from http://www.mediacollege.com/audio/tone/ ... _30sec.wav and loaded it up in resolume. Using a test tone lets us hear even minor changes in speed which are reflected in the pitch of the tone.
with BPM set to manual it sounds OK - you can hear small inconsistencies in the speed of playback but you have to really listen for them. However slaving resolume to midi clock makes the tone warble as it constantly speeds up and slows down with the midi clock variations that you see in the numerical display of resolume.
Maybe the BPM could be devised from a bigger sample of midi clock, averaged out as is done with BPM tap?
Re: Midi Clock Woes
Have you seen this thread:
http://www.resolume.com/forum/viewtopic ... hing+patch
Haven't tried it yet myself. There is also a Max for Live patch for sending tempo to Resolume:
http://www.resolume.com/blog/post.php?t=6747
I'm sure it said these things work out of the box in the apple adverts
http://www.resolume.com/forum/viewtopic ... hing+patch
Haven't tried it yet myself. There is also a Max for Live patch for sending tempo to Resolume:
http://www.resolume.com/blog/post.php?t=6747
I'm sure it said these things work out of the box in the apple adverts
Re: Midi Clock Woes
Yeah well MIDI clock averaging isn't really a job for a bolt-on max external!
The assumptions made in that thread are incorrect anyway. We can easily see that it is a Resolume problem, not a live problem by using a hardware clock source. The clock still skips about because it is not smoothed / averaged properly. Worse than this we can turn off clock sync altogether and just listen to a clip playing in non synced mode, we can still hear very minor timing / speed problems.
I'm not surprised by these things, making an audio sample accurate video playback software is an insanely hard bit of work, there is only one app that has ever really managed to have accurate AV playback. For most users its not that important anyway but if you want to use resolume to playback audio you need to understand the limitations that it has. This includes the fact that it cannot really do accurate timing.
The only way that i would suggest working with resolume is to not use it for audio playback, keep the audio samples in your audio software and just use resolume to trigger the videos. Then the timing drift is just going to make your lipsync a little worse than it should be, in the scheme of things this is not a problem that anyone will notice.
The assumptions made in that thread are incorrect anyway. We can easily see that it is a Resolume problem, not a live problem by using a hardware clock source. The clock still skips about because it is not smoothed / averaged properly. Worse than this we can turn off clock sync altogether and just listen to a clip playing in non synced mode, we can still hear very minor timing / speed problems.
I'm not surprised by these things, making an audio sample accurate video playback software is an insanely hard bit of work, there is only one app that has ever really managed to have accurate AV playback. For most users its not that important anyway but if you want to use resolume to playback audio you need to understand the limitations that it has. This includes the fact that it cannot really do accurate timing.
The only way that i would suggest working with resolume is to not use it for audio playback, keep the audio samples in your audio software and just use resolume to trigger the videos. Then the timing drift is just going to make your lipsync a little worse than it should be, in the scheme of things this is not a problem that anyone will notice.