(Super weird?) Live bug

Maybe somebody can shed some light on the following issue, it's a weird one and quite annoying.

This is what I'm doing:

Drumrack with 16 instances of a max for live device into live external instrument plugins sending notes and midi cc to my Machinedrum.

I'll make a nice boring 4/4 pattern using push, all fine and dandy, now add some per step automation, everything is ok but of course the automation needs to be shifted a bit because latency/pdc/etc issues, so the automation is shifted a bit to the left. Now weird things start happening, everytime I send a cc to the machinedrum live's timing starts slowing down. I twist a knob, there's a bunch of lag in the pattern, and it catches up again, doesn't matter what cc is being sent or on what channel.

To make sure I wasn't going crazy I added an LFO in live controlling one of the parameters of the m4l controller device, timing goes completely nuts, it seems to sort of pulsate in time with the LFO, it's like space and time are melting...

If I delete the clip all is well again, I can jam out a new pattern on push, add some automation and then after a while control of  local space time continuum via midi cc is regained.

There's no midi loops going on anywhere, and besides this issue midi timing/jitter on my current setup has been pretty great.

Probably there's something super obvious or simple I'm missing but I haven't gotten that far troubleshooting this issue yet, sort of expected it would be a known bug or something but I've searched to no avail (possibly due to lack of searching skills).

Any ideas?

I'm using live 10 on a not super old mac. The m4l device is a slightly modified version of the Machinedrum Haters device (added level control, removed a few things), used midi monitor to check if maybe I was accidentally sending extra cc's or whatever to the md but don't see any weird things. It's as if the cc's are eating up all the available bandwidth but this seems unlikely with just 2/3 parameters being automated.

Also; why I mentioned shifting the clip envelopes's timing; it doesn't seem to happen until they are adjusted and also unlinking and linking the clip envelopes seems to help?! Completely lost here.  

I hope you record some awesome shit with that it sounds like fucking shit up in the greatest ways!

1. Does it matter if you shift the notes left or right? (probably not but just curious)
2. Tried a different MIDI cable?

3. Tried doing similar things without the M4L device? That's really my first guess as to the issues.

The clip envelope may be sending a MIDI cc that also effects the tempo or time divisions or something. May need to narrow it down to which portion of the automation is doing this and consult the manual for the MD.

Shooting in the dark almost here though so apologies if you've already checked those things. 

  On 5/19/2018 at 8:06 PM, auxien said:

I hope you record some awesome shit with that it sounds like fucking shit up in the greatest ways!

 

1. Does it matter if you shift the notes left or right? (probably not but just curious)

2. Tried a different MIDI cable?

3. Tried doing similar things without the M4L device? That's really my first guess as to the issues.

 

The clip envelope may be sending a MIDI cc that also effects the tempo or time divisions or something. May need to narrow it down to which portion of the automation is doing this and consult the manual for the MD.

 

Shooting in the dark almost here though so apologies if you've already checked those things. 

Cheers man, much appreciated.

Of course I wasn't recording when I tried the thing with the LFO, didn't think to either as I was too weirded out, as soon as it happens again though...

Haven't tried shifting the envelopes right, checked the other things you suggested.

It must be something with the max for live device, although it's been running without any problems for a while now, not able to reproduce it, argh.

It's always the first thing I suggest, but is there any way that you've got a MIDI feedback loop?  Or is your hardware somehow recieving clock from more than one source at a time?  I had some situations where I was sending more than one identical MIDI clock stream out to hardware (because of a conflict between how Reaper assigns clock to hardware ports and the way MOTU's driver deals with clock data that's routed to its outputs) and it made simlar things happen.  Controls on hardware would skip values, timing would get strange as hardware tried to lock to two different clock signals at the same time, but also a lot of the time everything would act totally normal, so it too a while to figure out.

Probably a long shot here but it doesn't hurt to check, if there's any way that CC data or clock might be feeding back in your system it could definitely cause stuff like this.

Yeah it could be that both Ableton and your Machinedrum are fighting for being the master midi clock - One needs to be in slave (no idea which way round is better, possibly the Machinedrum as Master as it might have a bit more of a solid midi clock timing)

Thanks for the responses!

  On 5/22/2018 at 4:19 PM, RSP said:

It's always the first thing I suggest, but is there any way that you've got a MIDI feedback loop?  Or is your hardware somehow recieving clock from more than one source at a time?  I had some situations where I was sending more than one identical MIDI clock stream out to hardware (because of a conflict between how Reaper assigns clock to hardware ports and the way MOTU's driver deals with clock data that's routed to its outputs) and it made simlar things happen.  Controls on hardware would skip values, timing would get strange as hardware tried to lock to two different clock signals at the same time, but also a lot of the time everything would act totally normal, so it too a while to figure out.

 

Probably a long shot here but it doesn't hurt to check, if there's any way that CC data or clock might be feeding back in your system it could definitely cause stuff like this.

Seems likely but not according to midi monitor. Maybe there's something going on under the hood with m4l that I'm missing though.

  On 5/22/2018 at 4:29 PM, mcbpete said:

Yeah it could be that both Ableton and your Machinedrum are fighting for being the master midi clock - One needs to be in slave (no idea which way round is better, possibly the Machinedrum as Master as it might have a bit more of a solid midi clock timing)

As far as I've been able to tell it's best to have ableton as master to get the least midi jitter. The md on its own has pretty solid timing I think.

To my embarrassment the bug seems unreplicatable (?) so far. Although I won't have time to really sit down with my machines until this sunday, maybe the wormhole will reopen during a longer session.