Syncing Traktor on 2 laptops trough ethernet and MTC?
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  1. #1
    Tech Mentor Whyte's Avatar
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    Default Syncing Traktor on 2 laptops trough ethernet and MTC?

    So i've been trying to get this to work for a while:

    - 2 MacBook Pro's
    - Traktor 2
    - 1x Audio4DJ, 1x Audio8DJ

    i've got the whole midi clock sync to work last week on the 2 laptops using the midi ports from the Audio8 and my Maschine. Only bad thing is the fluctuation of about 0,2 bpm between the two systems which gets worse after a while causing both Traktors to lose sync after a while.

    This made me do some more research and i found out that you can send midi trough ethernet and even use a different signal than the usual Midi Clock, called Midi Time Code. This quote explains the difference pretty well:

    MIDI Beat Clock

    The MIDI Beat Clock signal works pretty simple, it sends 24 tick signals for each quarter note. A start signal is send to indicate when to start playing. From that moment on, the MIDI slave has to keep track of the ticks.

    The problem is that small delays in the tick signal cause speed (BPM) variations. Missing ticks can make a MIDI slave run out of sync. The BPM value tends to jump around all the time with sometimes deviations of over 2 BPM.

    Once the MIDI slave has gone out of sync it requires a re-sync. There is no way to detect that it is out of sync because the MIDI Beat Clock uses a relative value that every slave needs to keep track of.

    A re-sync has to be done manual. But applications like Ableton Live will simply wait for a new start signal to be triggered. When the MIDI Beat Clock master is Ableton Live, there is no way to retrigger the start signal without interrupting audio playback.

    MIDI Time Code (MTC)

    The MIDI Time Code signal sends an absolute time position according to the SMPTE Time Code standard. This means that at any time all MIDI slaves know where they should be. Even if there is a short interruption, the next correct SMPTE Time value will tell the software where it should be.

    Because MIDI Time Code is not telling anything about beats you can sync MIDI slaves with different BPM values. Thus every MIDI slave maintains its own tempo which is synced to the MIDI Time Code position of the master.
    This makes it seem obvious that MTC is better than MBP, especially considering the lost packages and resyncing etc.

    Problem is: MTC isn't supported by Traktor atm. The writer of this article is trying to make it work inside Ableton, which does support it.

    Wouldn't it be great to get this to work in Traktor? No more 0,2bpm fluctuations, no more loss of midi sync out of the blue etc. I can't seem to find anyone who has gotten it to work this far though.

    So can any of you guys help me out? Anyone who has an idea how to get this to work?

  2. #2

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    I tried to do syncing a looong time ago. I was trying to sync up a Traktor and Ableton, each running on separate window 7 laptops. I used a crossover cable and WACmidi. (i think thats what it was called? it was free and it worked fine) Long story short, I would never trust sync. It fluctuates waaaaay too much. And theres nothing you can do to get midi clock to work well. When I got my new laptop, i tried syncing Traktor up with ableton on the same computer. THAT worked quite well from what i could see. But I didn't experiment with it enough to decide if it was trustworthy or not.



    MTC is promising though. I've heard of people syncing up ableton instances with it over ethernet and it working really well, but traktor doesn't support MTC.

    This is where the whole beat matching thing comes into play. Even if your no good at it, its not that bad to get 2 songs into phase with each other if your staring at the BPM readouts.
    Ableton Live 9, Traktor, VCI-400, APC40, QuNeo, Lemur iOS

  3. #3
    Tech Mentor Whyte's Avatar
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    Problem is: we're both using just an X1 and our laptops, so it'd be hard beatmatching without pitchfaders and bends.

  4. #4
    Tech Mentor Whyte's Avatar
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    Just to end this thread: We ended up just beatmatching to eachothers laptop. This worked nicely during the gig but when we listened to the recording afterwards it turned out most of the mixes were no properly mixed, we thought this was strange because it sounded fine during the gig but we figured it could be blamed on the subwoofer which was located directly under the mixing table, basicly rendering it unable to properly distinct our basstones.

    It would've been much easier just to sync the laptops if that'd been possible.

    I discussed this with some people and heard NI isn't planning on implementing MTC or any other protocol as the potential userbase is too small for the amount of time it would take to implement. Such a shame.

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