Analogue-sequencer

Thanks Colin...I will investigate. I have lodged a question with 
Steinberg as I cant see any mentions of problems on any notice boards. 
Also I'll do the simple stuff like buying a higher quality shorter MIDI 
lead. Can I ask a more general question..you mention new modes of 
working with MIDI clock with Cirklon but from my investigations MTC 
would seem to be the preferred method of syncing equipment...is there a 
reason why you are not going this route?
Thanks
Sean

Colin f wrote:
>  
>
>
> > Just done some more tests with Cubase/P3 and I've noticed
> > that its not drifting out of tempo its stepping out of tempo
> > i.e. it sounds like either Cubase isnt sending or P3 isnt
> > receiving a few MIDI clock pulses.
> > This is happening in a random fashion, sometimes sync is fine
> > for 60 bars, sometimes 20 sometimes 5..no real pattern to ot
> > as far as I can see.
>
> Something I've discovered while developing the code for slaving Cirklon to
> MIDI clock (Cirklon has a very different method of generating internal 
> tempo
> to P3), is that the MIDI clock output from a PC can have a remarkably
> high-level of jitter.
> You really have to smooth out any changes in tempo, as PC people seem to
> think that a steady tempo of, for example 120bpm is the same as an 
> *average*
> tempo of 120bpm.
> If you consider that 120bpm is 21ms per clock tick - if you have a clock
> tick delayed by 15ms for whatever reason, the next tick occurs 6ms later.
> Which amounts to a sudden drop to 69bpm (36ms per tick) followed by a leap
> to 400mpm (6ms per tick).
> That seems to be considered fair play for a PC sequencer.
>
> It could be that there is a bug that causes Cubase to drop the odd MIDI
> clock.
> Or possibly an extreme case of having two clock pulses back-to-back might
> cause a race condition in the P3 sync handler, which could happen if the
> Cubase clock output was irregular enough.
> I think the first thing to look for would be any other references to 
> loss of
> single ticks on devices slaved to Cubase under your Mac OS.
>
> Cheers,
> Colin
>
>