how to sync two notebooks via midi?

tom · Post by **tom** » Fri Jul 05, 2002 10:49 am

Hi guys,

this is what I want to do: jam togehter with a friend using two notebooks with live installed on each one.
How do we synchronize the two versions of live? What kind of hardeware do we need? Can anybody describe a setup (or serveral setups if there are more than one solutions) that can solve this problem?
Many thanks,
tom

jory · Post by **jory** » Tue Jul 09, 2002 6:31 pm

Hey there,

You can do that one of two ways. In each case both laptops will need at least a 1x1 Midi Interface.

Method one:

One Laptop is Master one is slave>
Run the Midi Out from one laptop (the Master) into the Midi in of Laptop 2 (Slave)

In preferences:
Master- set the Sync Output to the Midi Out port on your interface taht you used. When you press play now, you chould se the midi out indication light-up and you midi-inteface should show activity.

Slave-Set the Preference for Sync input to the port you are receiving midi to.

Now the Master Laptop will control the starting and stopping of the Slave.

(NOTE: you may have to adjust the auido latency settings if the beat is slightly off due to sound processing time and the time it takes to send the midi message)

The SECOND option is to slave both Laptops to an external hardware device that is running a MidiThru box that splits the midi signal to the two laptops... This is nice because these devices will often have tap tempo...

tom · Post by **tom** » Thu Jul 11, 2002 3:52 pm

thanks

RobotOnTheToilet · Post by **RobotOnTheToilet** » Sun Oct 27, 2002 6:58 pm

I actually tried method 1 with my friend last night and it didn't work too well... it seemed that the slave laptop was having trouble recieving the tempo info. The latency was a bit crazy too. We could cut the latency down quite a bit by adjust the rate, but then the sound was terible.
I assume this is a sound card/midi problem? Both Laptops had pretty low end sounds cards in them.
Here's a question... would the bad latency/sound be due to the SLAVES soundcard/midi only?

normal0c · Post by **normal0c** » Sun Jul 27, 2003 12:08 am

I'm just wondering if this is still an issue, as I am looking into the best way to sync two computers running Live, and don't want to go this route if it's not going to work... Thanks for any feedback.

RobotOnTheToilet · Post by **RobotOnTheToilet** » Mon Jul 28, 2003 1:01 am

I never got them to sync quite right... the sound was always very choppy on the slave. The only software that seemed to sync well was Live as the master and Reaktor as the slave... no other software that I tried synced to Live very well.

how to sync two notebooks via midi?

how to sync two notebooks via midi?

still an issue?