Midi Sync issue-complicated!

Hi synthjunkie I see you have an interesting setup there. I do something similar. As well as my PC running Sonar (or Studio One these days) I run an Apple Mac laptop. On the Mac I have got Logic, ProTools and Reason. These days I tend to use Reason and just setup a big synth rack and access that from Sonar etc.

I use an Emagic Unitor 8 interface connected to my serial port on the PC and a little UM1 midi interface on the Mac. It all seems to work very well and with very low latency.

I did do some experiments trying to get Sonar and Logic sessionas to sync up. Not that I really want to do this but I thought I would try. I found no matter what I tried Sonar did not like being the master and the Mac the slave. But the other way around worked a treat for some reason. eg Mac as master and Sonar as slave. I also tried MTC as well as Midi clock in both hookups. But the Mac is further away from me and I don't want that. These days I just talk to the Reason rack over midi and it all works great.

But I will give it a try as to what you are doing and see if I can get an arpegiated sound in the Mac (Reason or Logic) to sync to Sonar. Also now I use Studio One and I have not tried this with Studio One as the master either. It may be happier for some reason but I suspect it still might prefer the other way around. (eg Mac as master and PC as slave)

Update

I have done some more testing and found out the following.

If you are sending MTC between systems then both Sonar and Studio One will act OK as a master. The only thing here is that no tempo information is sent over MTC so for this to work you have to set the tempos in both sessions/computers to be the same.

The reason the Mac did not lock to the PC was because the Mac (Logic) does not respond to Midi clock as far as I can see only MTC.

The reason it worked the other way around (Mac as master) is because the Mac can send midi clock and both Sonar and Studio One can see and lock to it. Tempo info is sent over midi clock so you only have to set the tempo in one porgram, the other will follow.

I did manage to get Reason to lock up and slave to the PC and Dr Rex for example syncs nicely to the incoming midi clock.

I think you will get to work by sending Midi Clock from Sonar and just make sure that the receiving device is set to receive that clock and respond to it and also any arpegiators etc are also reading the incoming clock rather than their own internal clocks. Setting LFO's might not be enough, they might only be used in the sound somehow. Does your arpegiator have any separate sync options that is what I would be looking for. (Check the help file for your VST's that feature arps and make sure you are setting them up right to respond to that incoming clock)

Let us know how you got on. Tricky and fiddly I know.

What is Sonar XL Pro?


Oh, you mean X1....

Looks like you are making some headway. That is good. I quite like the idea of the second DAW attached to the main one. Just addressing those instruments from your main program is a great thing to do. It enables the Logic synths and some instruments that are only available on the Mac to be used in your productions. I have my Mac laptop connected to an MBox and digitally out from there to my main stereo buss. It all works pretty well and sounds great. You do have to calibrate levels from two DAW's as well obviously.

When one computer is busy you can fire up the other and do some tracks there.

Sometimes you have to dig deep into hidden menus to get those arps and LFO's and things in your Mac setup synced to your incoming midi clock.