Jump to content
IGNORED

MIDI Clock to MTC software?


Recommended Posts

Is there any software out there that can generate MTC from a MIDI Clock signal or am I forever going to have to use DAWs that will slave to MIDI Clock?

Link to comment
https://forum.watmm.com/topic/99003-midi-clock-to-mtc-software/
Share on other sites

I don't know a whole lot about how MTC works, but this seems like a good use case for a general-case toolkit like Max, PD, SuperCollider, etc.

Actually now that I'm thinking about it, I remember I wrote some C to loop a sub-section of a sequence in the Monomachine using MTC song position, and I remember it was < 200 lines of code. So, yeah, pick your poison.

Edited by sweepstakes
  On 4/29/2020 at 7:08 PM, b born droid said:

Is there any software out there that can generate MTC from a MIDI Clock signal or am I forever going to have to use DAWs that will slave to MIDI Clock?

It seems like a cool idea but I don't immediately get why it would be useful? I mean MIDI Clock is pretty accurate and combined with timestamped MIDI (in systems that support it) it should be pretty good already?

yeah midi clock is much better for syncing stuff together than MTC in the purely audio domain. MTC becomes more useful when syncing audio and video signals together. MTC sends no start/stop signals either. what you looking to do?

I'm trying to be difficult that's what ?

All my gear is at home where I write/record.  But I mix all my stuff on the Pro Tools rig at work, and considering I have a PC sitting here at home with a copy of Pro Tools, it'd be really fucking useful if I could track everything inside the same DAW and not have to fuck about with say, recording in one DAW, and then exporting blah blah blah.  And I want to slave PT so I can easily do overdubs; press play on my hardware and PT will run back with any prerecorded tracks that'll be in time with anything running on my hardware.  But PT only accepts MTC or MMC, neither of fucking which I can seem to generate from any of my hardware (BSP/A4/DigiTakt).  And I don't want to have to make my DAW the master because I don't always have it on when I'm fucking around with ideas; only when I wanna record/track some tunes.

I have a feeling I'm going to have to work in two separate DAWs and constantly import/export stuff ??

Humm I thought I read correctly from the wikipedias and internets that MTC has no support for start/stop or any transport control.

Sounds like what you need is a piece of physical kit for controlling your ProTools transport. Play/stop/record/rewind etc. 

https://www.presonus.com/products/faderport ?

 

Edit: I mean most hardware supports automatic sync fallback. I.e. let's say you make the rest of your kit slave to Digitakt, then set up the DT so that if it has incoming MIDI clock, it slaves to that, but otherwise generates it's own clock and keeps the rest of your kit in sync.

Then when you have PT as master, the Digitakt follows that and so does the rest of your gear and you can use your fancy schmancy faderport to start stop overdub etc. When PT is off, things still work the regular way.

Edited by thawkins



  On 4/30/2020 at 12:21 AM, b born droid said:
press play on my hardware and PT will run back with any prerecorded tracks that'll be in time with anything running on my hardware.  But PT only accepts MTC or MMC


Yeah this can't be done mate. MTC does not respond to start/stop messages and MMC (Midi Machine Control) is for syncing to tape machines, and not much use for anything else.

Trying to find a DAW that will act as a Midi slave and start/stop when you press play on your sequencer or whatever is pretty much impossible. I've been looking for this functionality for years and unfortunately realised it can't be done in any real practical way. Most manufacturers removed the ability for DAWs to act as a Midi slave years ago, not sure why.

Reaper still has this option however, and I have sometimes got it to work, but with limited success. It's unreliable and glitchy - always ended up easier to make Reaper the Master clock source. I think Ableton can also act as a Midi slave (or used to be able to) but again, it's pretty sketchy and not really practical for actually getting on and getting stuff recorded easily.

So I'm sorry to say I don't think you can do what you want to do.

Or just make peace with the fact that your DAW will always have to be the Master clock source and always be turned on when you're making tracks. Everything needs to sync to the DAW and you'll need to press play/stop on the DAW rather than any hardware.

  On 4/30/2020 at 9:38 AM, thawkins said:

Humm I thought I read correctly from the wikipedias and internets that MTC has no support for start/stop or any transport control.

Sounds like what you need is a piece of physical kit for controlling your ProTools transport. Play/stop/record/rewind etc. 

https://www.presonus.com/products/faderport ?

 

Edit: I mean most hardware supports automatic sync fallback. I.e. let's say you make the rest of your kit slave to Digitakt, then set up the DT so that if it has incoming MIDI clock, it slaves to that, but otherwise generates it's own clock and keeps the rest of your kit in sync.

Then when you have PT as master, the Digitakt follows that and so does the rest of your gear and you can use your fancy schmancy faderport to start stop overdub etc. When PT is off, things still work the regular way.

Expand  

Oooh I've been looking for a reason to buy the Faderport for a while now hahaha.

This could be a good fallback option, might have to fiddle around with this. Cheers.

  On 4/30/2020 at 11:11 AM, BCM said:


Trying to find a DAW that will act as a Midi slave and start/stop when you press play on your sequencer or whatever is pretty much impossible. I've been looking for this functionality for years and unfortunately realised it can't be done in any real practical way. Most manufacturers removed the ability for DAWs to act as a Midi slave years ago, not sure why.

Reaper still has this option however, and I have sometimes got it to work, but with limited success. It's unreliable and glitchy - always ended up easier to make Reaper the Master clock source. I think Ableton can also act as a Midi slave (or used to be able to) but again, it's pretty sketchy and not really practical for actually getting on and getting stuff recorded easily.

So I'm sorry to say I don't think you can do what you want to do.

 

Expand  

No worries.  Yeah I remember trying to use Ableton as a MIDI slave when I was in a band and we had two copies of Ableton running; the slave was always sketchy as fuck.

  On 4/30/2020 at 11:55 AM, b born droid said:

Oooh I've been looking for a reason to buy the Faderport for a while now hahaha.

This could be a good fallback option, might have to fiddle around with this. Cheers.

No worries.  Yeah I remember trying to use Ableton as a MIDI slave when I was in a band and we had two copies of Ableton running; the slave was always sketchy as fuck.

You are not the first person to mention Ableton being crap at slave, but I would hope ProTools being the industry standard does not suffer from this extremely basic thing.

For what it's worth I am doing a project now keeping Ableton slaved to Reaper. So far so good, but both the DAWs are running on my laptop with timestamped MIDI that MacOS supports.

For syncing several copies of Live with each other I would actually use the Link thing they have instead.

  On 4/30/2020 at 12:02 PM, thawkins said:
You are not the first person to mention Ableton being crap at slave, but I would hope ProTools being the industry standard does not suffer from this extremely basic thing.
For what it's worth I am doing a project now keeping Ableton slaved to Reaper. So far so good, but both the DAWs are running on my laptop with timestamped MIDI that MacOS supports.
For syncing several copies of Live with each other I would actually use the Link thing they have instead.
Slaving PT to another PT machine is a fucking dream. I regularly have to do it remotely with other studios and find it incredibly stable, but as with most things, it clearly doesn't like being slave to anything else. I guess by design manufacturers want their programme to be the centre point.

Gesendet von meinem SM-A320FL mit Tapatalk

Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   1 Member

×
×