Synching Drum Machine, Question about synching midi tracks. Options

[hazimel]

When I record midi tracks from my SR-16 drum machine to cakewalk, the drums gradually get out of synch with the bars in cakewalk. How do I get the two in synch so each bar of music is recorded accurately? Trying to adjust tempos never works.

[Synthetic]

i have learned that all instruments with tempo based rhythms seem to have their own timing and also midi lag is another factor. For instance, my synth and drum machine always seem to loose synch after about 4-8 bars when you start both with the same 120bpm tempo.

Anyways, I ran into this problem trying to using arppegiated synth riffs from my Yamaha CS6x and this was just using the built-in arp. generator at a set tempo. The rhythm of the both my arp'd synth lines and the beats created from synth always seem to sway a bit and had nonperfect timing. Not sure what is the exact reason for this but... this is good and bad depending on how you look at it.

The good part is... since the timing is not 'machine perfect' your rhythms will seem a little less computer driven and more like actual live drummer or band.

The bad part is... to make use of this slight swing or fluctuation... you have to set your grid to match the drum track by using slight changes in tempo thorughout the track to align grid to beats. I am not real sure if this is possible in your Cubase or not but I do it all the time in my ProTools LE.

This technique of changing tempo from measure to measure as needed to synch beats with grid is commonly used by engineers who record live bands due to fluctuations in tempo. I had a chance to see a track session from the alt rock band called Live at a Digdesign lecture in our area aand sure enough there were several tempo changes throughout the song.and it was easy to see that the tempo changes were not intentional but more part of the human timing because some changes were only 1 or 2 bpm and some were just a fraction of 1 bpm.

Doing this on my tracks... I realize it can be a bit time consuming but worth the effort. Hope that helps a little.

[geedoubleyou]

You need to set the SR-16 to external clock. And cakewalk for transmit.

[Synthetic]

i have learned that all instruments with tempo based rhythms seem to have their own timing and also midi lag is another factor. For instance, my synth and drum machine always seem to loose synch after about 4-8 bars when you start both with the same 120bpm tempo.

Anyways, I ran into this problem trying to using arppegiated synth riffs from my Yamaha CS6x and this was just using the built-in arp. generator at a set tempo. The rhythm of the both my arp'd synth lines and the beats created from synth always seem to sway a bit and had nonperfect timing. Not sure what is the exact reason for this but... this is good and bad depending on how you look at it.

The good part is... since the timing is not 'machine perfect' your rhythms will seem a little less computer driven and more like actual live drummer or band.

The bad part is... to make use of this slight swing or fluctuation... you have to set your grid to match the drum track by using slight changes in tempo thorughout the track to align grid to beats. I am not real sure if this is possible in your Cubase or not but I do it all the time in my ProTools LE.

This technique of changing tempo from measure to measure as needed to synch beats with grid is commonly used by engineers who record live bands due to fluctuations in tempo. I had a chance to see a track session from the alt rock band called Live at a Digdesign lecture in our area aand sure enough there were several tempo changes throughout the song.and it was easy to see that the tempo changes were not intentional but more part of the human timing because some changes were only 1 or 2 bpm and some were just a fraction of 1 bpm.

Doing this on my tracks... I realize it can be a bit time consuming but worth the effort. Hope that helps a little.

[hazimel]

So you don't think changing my settings as geedoubleyou suggests will work?

[Synthetic]

don't know how I posted twice... but oh well

yes... if you are sending midi track from Cubase to SR-16 then it may help but due to latency you may still need to nudge beats depending on how well your midi timing is... if you are just recording patterns to audio with no midi then it will not make a difference.

[damann]

sorry but none of this should be necassary, use mtc, it's phase accurate.
one machine, usually the sequencer, but not always, is the master.
hit play on it, the slave device reads midi song position pointers to stay in sync.
i've done it loads of times with loads of devices and it's always worked.
i can provide more info here if necassary.
if you're experiencing a midi lag situation it will be global, no variation, one offset for the whole track will sort it out.
in my experience, follow geedoubleyou's advice, make sure though that cubase is transmitting midi time code and that song position pointers are enabled.