I’ve recently bought a x0xb0x (a TB303 clone). I’ve got the midi out on my audiophile 2496 pci card connected to the midi in of the x0xb0x and the mix out of the x0xb0x connected to the line-in on the 2496. I have renoise (2.6) running on ubuntu 10.04 using jack. In renoise I have a line-in device and can hear the audio from the x0xb0x. I have programmed some patterns into the x0xb0x, and then set it to “pattern play (midi sync)”. When I press the spacebar, renoise and the x0xb0x both burst into life, so far so good!
Unfortunately the audio from the x0xb0x seems quite out of sync. I discovered the midi clock master offset control in the renoise preferences and had to adjust this to almost -90ms to get things sounding in sync (at a leisurely 70bpm). At higher BPM’s the required offset seemed to be less, but it was still drifting in/out of sync as it played. I also tried recording the x0xb0x audio as a sample, which actually seemed to be in sync.
I really want to be able to use this “live”, selecting patterns and twiddling knobs on the fly. Has anybody had a similar problem? Can anybody suggest a solution? This is my first time using a hardware synth, so it’s possible I’ve missed something.
I hope that all makes sense! Thanks in advance for any replies.
Thanks for the response oootini. I’ve not tried this, but the x0x doesn’t have a very accurate way to set it’s own tempo (just a tempo dial or tap-tempo) so if I had a loop in renoise at (for example) 128bpm then it’s unlikely I could get the x0x tempo to match the loop tempo exactly. Although renoise may then sync exactly with the x0x, tempo dependent samples would not. I could also try sending the notes to the x0x from renoise, but I really would like to get midi sync working with patterns programmed into the x0x.
Has anybody else with experience of using hardware synth’s got any suggestions?
This issue has now been solved. The strange thing was that recording the audio as a sample worked great and was perfectly in sync, but when listening through line-in it lagged badly behind.
sji suggested I check my jack config and latency. The latency was 67ms (practically the same as the offset I was having to apply, probably not a coincidence!). I lowered the frames/buffer setting until the latency was about 4ms and now it plays back in sync with little or no offset required. Excellent!