I want to know about syncing external gear with the NDLR

[Anastasia]

Hey everyone! ?

I am using my NDLR with some external synths & I am loving the workflow so far. Super inspiring stuff! That said, I am running into a bit of a snag when it comes to keeping everything properly in sync—mainly tempo drift or slight timing weirdness after a while. ?

Also I have tried a few different setups  but I am still not quite getting the tight sync I am hoping for.

So I figured I would pop in here and ask: how are you all setting up your clocking when running the NDLR with other gear?? Any tips or tricks to keep things running smoothly without MIDI chaos?

I Appreciate your advice.

Thank you.

[Thark]

I always sync my keys and eurorack stuff (and my NDLR) from my DAW. Seems to work ok for me.

[House de Kris]

Perhaps you could share some descriptions of your setups you are having issues with? In all the years I've used MIDI, I've never had any "MIDI drift" or anything other than tight timing. But, I've heard others complaining about this before. General rule is: use only one clock. Someone has to be the master, and all other devices are synced to it. I typically have multiple sequencers and/or arpeggiators running simultaneously. Only one can be in charge - the others follow. Sometimes, I have the NDLR as the clock and sync everything else to it. Sometimes it is the NDLR which is following the external clock from another sequencer. Either way, tight timing.

The only issue I've ever had was with arpeggiators, as most of them start not with MIDI Start, but with the first key press.

[pomfritz]

The best price vs quality for me is the MIDIHUB. It can act as a master and you can manipulate the clock in all the ways on the four outputs.

[Jesse Johannesen]

It should be said that because of the hierarchical nature of computers' processor priority it is likely that syncing to a computer will create more instability than it would fix. All kinds of things have interrupt priority over a DAW or other MIDI software, and so things can bog down to anything from disk access to anti-malware software running in the background. I know the NDLR clock should be pretty dead on, so I'm also curious to sort out what the setup your using looks like. Maybe also what FW version and device generation (V1 or V2).