SMPTE Time Code / MOTU Issues

[part12studios]

Wow I just got approved and must have submitted my application like 6 months ago. heh heh.  Good to be here!

I was wondering if anyone here has experience using SMPTE / MTC with an Amiga.  I'm learning Bars and Pipes Professional and looking at ways to sync up my Amiga to a Korg HDD 16 track recorder.  

I also have an issue with two different MOTU devices (MTP AV and Midi Express) that seem to have a particular nasty midi stuck note problem that I'd love to get validation from others if they have experienced this.  

I'm doing a pre Y2K studio with two Amiga 1200's in the mix..  One is the midi sequencer while the other is a dedicated sampler / soft synth / effects processor.

[eliyahu]

@part12studios

great to finally get everything sorted out on our end. my apologies it took so long, but hey, better late than never! welcome to amiga.org!

-- eliyahu

[part12studios]

No problem!  I know it's a small passionate community and probably pretty quiet compared to back in the day.  I'm super glad to be here.  

I'm not a power user.. don't remember most of my CLI commands..  but I've really enjoyed reconnecting with my Amiga 1200's and exploring them to get the most out of them.  

I have reasonably beefed up my two machines...  one is an 030 / 40 / 128mb (amigakit) and the other is a speed doubler / 8mb card..  and put the MK 2 upgrade to the 030 machine so I could hook it up to an LCD monitor easily.  

Music is my main focus as you can probably tell from my post.

Thanks!
Caleb

[aggro_mix]

I've been syncing Bars&Pipes to my Sunrize AD516 card using SMPTE (as the tempo in B&P isn't always correct) when I need to run at a specific bpm but I've never tried with any external gear.

Does your Korg HDD recorder understand MTC?

[part12studios]

@aggro_mix that's great to hear you're using your amiga for audio.  

i'm still learning (on my studio building checklist) the Korg D1600 but this is from the original sound on sound article:

"%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!8226; MTC and MMC transmitted and received; MIDI Clock transmitted."

The Korg unit has a MIDI In and Out.

I own a Midi Solution 4 in / 1 out and 1 in and 4 through boxes which effectively gives my humble standard trusty serial midi box which has 1 in / 2 out / 2 through the ability to reach more devices..

I would have no problem allowing the D1600 to be the driving clock for everything as long as the midi clock wouldn't stop in BnP..  since i'm looking to use midi clock on the other gear in the midi chain..  i'm looking for BnP to be the sequencer..  

I also was a long time user of Tiger Cub which I really like a lot and basically would be perfect except it has no external clock slaving.. it won't listen to another midi clock but will transmit..  but while BnP is a little complex I LOVE the plugins in has..  the arpeggiators and such are really great.  

I was emailing the original BnP creator or one of them in Germany.  He happened to have the original full manuals in PDF format (in english) which till then was difficult to find online.  Very nice man.


omg you have the Sunrize AD516?  is that the 8 track 16 bit card?  I used to dream of having one of those back in the early 90's when i was in high school..  of course i just had an A500 and no means to afford a big box amiga.. but it was a dream..

[aggro_mix]

@aggro_mix that's great to hear you're using your amiga for audio.  

i'm still learning (on my studio building checklist) the Korg D1600 but this is from the original sound on sound article:

"%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!8226; MTC and MMC transmitted and received; MIDI Clock transmitted."

The Korg unit has a MIDI In and Out.

I own a Midi Solution 4 in / 1 out and 1 in and 4 through boxes which effectively gives my humble standard trusty serial midi box which has 1 in / 2 out / 2 through the ability to reach more devices..

I would have no problem allowing the D1600 to be the driving clock for everything as long as the midi clock wouldn't stop in BnP..  since i'm looking to use midi clock on the other gear in the midi chain..  i'm looking for BnP to be the sequencer..  

I also was a long time user of Tiger Cub which I really like a lot and basically would be perfect except it has no external clock slaving.. it won't listen to another midi clock but will transmit..  but while BnP is a little complex I LOVE the plugins in has..  the arpeggiators and such are really great.  

I was emailing the original BnP creator or one of them in Germany.  He happened to have the original full manuals in PDF format (in english) which till then was difficult to find online.  Very nice man.


omg you have the Sunrize AD516?  is that the 8 track 16 bit card?  I used to dream of having one of those back in the early 90's when i was in high school..  of course i just had an A500 and no means to afford a big box amiga.. but it was a dream..

Yes it's the 8 track 16 bit card. I'm using it in a towerised Amiga 3000 but to be honest I haven't done much with it, mostly locking Bars & Pipes to a correct tempo when doing a few remixes. I've done some recordings with it but to be honest my E-mu card in the pc is way better.

I think it should be possible to have Bars & Pipes output MTC and drive your recorder (or the other way around). There's also a yahoo group devoted to Bars & Pipes but it has been very quiet the last years but at least there are some posts about syncing. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/barsnpipes

I hope to finish a small music project this year, it's been going on for ages and it's about time to wrap it up now and hopefully release it on bandcamp. The Amiga is running Bars & Pipes as a sequencer for all of the 8 tracks but final recording and editing will be done on a pc.

[part12studios]

yea that card was so cool back then.. when digital recording was still very very new..  the amigas 8bit audio design limitations (chip ram, etc)

Didn't it even have some effects?  Like delay / reverb?  

currently my studio has been somewhat deliberately, somewhat me just being on a budget, building a pre-Y2K studio..  I was most active as a musician back in the 90's so having access to all this stuff that at that time was (would still be if new) cost prohibitive.. is now stuff no one really cares about..  so now I can explore all those old ideas and new ones with all kinds of fun toys.  



I even have a tape based 4 track but going back to a reel to reel.. well that's just masochistic.. lol so when I inherited the D1600.. I was at peace with that post Y2K addition..  

I'll check that group out for sure.. i'm still awkward with BnP.. but I love what I have been able to make happen so far!  

Yea i was going to have a friend do the mastering for me on my songs as well.. one thing I'm hoping I can figure out with the Korg is how to export all of the tracks to a CD or other method so they are all individual tracks.. not just a stereo mixdown..   more stuff to learn..   but loving it.

Thanks!
Caleb

[Ral-Clan]

Hi,

I have used Bars & Pipes a lot with MTC and MIDI-Clock. Even know a lot about the quirks of this.  I used to slave Bars & Pipes to an external Yamaha MD8 digital Multitracker with MTC.  You can even have Bars & Pipes sent MIDI Machine control out to the digital multitracker so you can use Bars & Pipes transport controls to start/stop the external multitracker, but then have the multitracker send the timing code.

I have also used Bars & Pipes to control a slaved drum machine / external sequencer.

I also use a MIDI solutions 4in to 1out MIDI merge box to feed my Amiga's MIDI port.

So, am I understanding your problem correctly?  You want to slave B&P to your multitracker, but then also use the multitracker' MTC to sync some other outboard gear?

I would be very surprised if B&P will not pass-through the MTC code it received to the Amiga's MIDI out port so your other devices can use it.

If not, a hardware solution would be to put a MIDI splitter on the MIDI out port of the device generating MTC (your multitracker).  Feed one output to the Amiga, another output from the splitter to your outboard gear that needs the MTC signal.

As for the note off problem with your MOTU gear, there is a small plugin tool for Bars & Pipes that will make sure a NOTE OFF signal is generated for every NOTE ON signal it receives.  Put this on the end of the pipeline of the track. This might solve your problem.

[part12studios]

@ral-clan oh that's awesome!  That stuck note thing could be just what I need!  It was so disappointing to see it behave like it was..  but any other midi scenario (mac or pc) using the same hardware didn't seem to experience this issue.. and when it was happening equally on both the MTP AV and my MIDI express USB.. it definitely felt like the amiga was the issue somehow.  

You definitely understood me right.. as you can imagine I just want to be able to perform live things into the D1600 but make sure that the BnP sequences stay sync'd up to the recordings..  it would seem like letting the D1600 be the master would help insure that.  

My studios is a little tore up as i've been on a gear acquision spurt and some of it has needed servicing..  soldering on new batteries and this little fella just got a KDFX board installed on it:



So I am not yet ready to begin reassembling everything till later this month.. but now I have some awesome leads to look at when I go to put it all back together again!  

Thanks!
Caleb

[Ral-Clan]

Okay, so fire away questions as you think of them.

You can't just let B&P generate the sync signal for all your outboard gear?

Oh, and since you really like Tiger Cub, why don't you try it's big brother Dr. T's KCS for the Amiga?
It might have the MTC in/out sync that was missing on Tiger Cub.

[part12studios]

thanks!

Yea I'm not sure what would work better.. but it would seem that the HDD recorder would be the best thing to be the master tempo.. but maybe having BnP do all the MTC stuff and have the D1600 and all other gear slave to it..

The main thing i want is to be able to jump to a spot on a song and have the multitrack stuff match.. so maybe yea i should have BnP be the master.. but it would seem some kind of striping is still needed on the D1600 so it knows where to go too.  

I am not familiar with KCS.  Do you know a good place online to find the ADFs?  

I remember there was a site months back where it seemed like just about everything imaginable was there..  i found a lot of cool programs there..  but i can't seem to recall or have any bookmarks handy to recall it.  

Thanks,
Caleb

[Ral-Clan]

Please check your PMs.

[Ral-Clan]

The main thing i want is to be able to jump to a spot on a song and have the multitrack stuff match.. so maybe yea i should have BnP be the master.. but it would seem some kind of striping is still needed on the D1600 so it knows where to go too.

Doesn't the D1600 multitracker receive MIDI Clocks or MIDI Time Code?
Bars & Pipes would send a HH:MM:SS:Frames location and the multitracker should jump to it and match with MIDI Clocks.  

With MIDI Time Code if you set the D1600 to recieve MTC then it should sync with Bars & Pipes using Bars-beats and matching the tempo set in B&P, rather than Hours-Minutes-Seconds-Frames.

If you set the D1600 as Master then the situation is reversed.

I always slaved my Amiga to my external multitracker because the Yamaha MD-8 could only transmit MTC/Midi-Clock.

[part12studios]

Yes I'm sure the D1600 would jump to a location based on the frame of BnP.

So there is no "stripe" needed if BnP is the master?  it just tracks the length of the song and sends a frame based on the time.  makes sense.  I would assume it's possible to listen to a MTC.. BUT given that it's a HDD based system it might not like that..  access time might not be quite fast enough to work well..

I have the manual for the D1600 so I'll research it once i get everything wired up.  

The first thing I will tackle before that is getting the stuck note thing if it can be fixed.  I hope the plugin you mention does the trick..  if i remember correctly the issue happened with tiger cub too so it wasn't just BnP that had stuck note issues.

[Ral-Clan]

If you use MIDI Time Code or MIDI Clock to sync two (or more) devices, then you don't need to stripe anything.  It's not like SMPTE where you have to sacrifice a track.  These digital devices are frame accurate and know where they are in the song.  You just have to assign one to be the master and send out its position to all the others.

What might happen if Bars & Pipes is the master is that it might take a few seconds for the outboard gear to figure out that everything has started when you press play, then they will "catch up" and then everything will be smooth.  Because of this you might want to leave a few blank bars at the beginning of your composition.

Try the "UNSTICK" tool for your stuck note problem.  If that doesn't work there might be something in one of the extra tool packages (there are AmigaGuide documents in those that give descriptions of the tools).