midi clock nightmares

[mowgli]

I've been battling with a network set up that is turning into a big headache. basically there are three laptops,

1-G4 running torq
2-macbook pro running modul8
3-macbook pto running ableton

The intended set up was to have them all networked with torq sending a midi clock signal to the other two. With this set up laptop 1 receives the clock fine but laptop 3 receives a fluctuating clock which is unusable.

If laptop 3 becomes the midi clock master torq receives a fluctuating clock

I thought that there might be some issues between torq and ableton, so I tried sending midiclock from laptop 2 (which should be running modul8) using ableton and to my surprise torq received it fine but laptop 3 also with ableton stilll fluctuated.

Then I tried only laptops 2 and 3, both with ableton but using 3 as the master and to my surprise again this worked fine!

The only conclusion that I've been able to reach is that laptop 3 has a personality disorder.

I've searched the internet and have found numerous cases of people having similar problems when hooking ableton to other software (traktor etc...) both on mac and pc platforms but no solution to it. Basically it looks like it works on some machines but not on others.

Can anyone help?

Cheers

[Meierhans]

Ableton as slave will not handle a fluctuating midi clock good enough to sync beats without noticable jitter. Tried to get it working with Traktor and Ableton several days and came to the conclusion that there is no way around a external sync generator.

[skulpture]

This blog may be some help to you but I can't remember the exact post...

http://www.djtechtools.com/page/1/?s=sync

[vj_jasper]

perhaps try using a soundcard or midi interface with two physical midi outputs - port 1 and port 2 ..

this way, the midi time clock signal does not have to negotiate its way through one laptop to the other. both receive clean timecode from the same source, at the same time.

[Meierhans]

The DJ techtolls tutorial is great, but still the limiting factor stays Abletons inability to sync tightly to a incoming midi clock that changes over time. It works (ok with synths), but at least if your ears are trained for beatmatching you will be unhappy with ticks. Last tested with AL 7.03, if someone could please prove me wrong...