Prime 4 (3.3.0) user here! Getting a real hang of the standalone mode now… I’m in LOVE!!! Trying to get Ableton Link to work so I can sync Live 11 with my decks and have fun playing MIDI keys with in-tempo arps/effects.
If I enable Ableton Link on Prime 4, press sync on some track(s), and hit play…the tracks will start very slowly drifting away in unison from Ableton Link. It’s as if the Link tempo is hundreth(s) of a percent above the actual tempo of the tracks. It visually shows this on the phase meters! To confirm this, I tried linking Live 11 to my Prime 4, enabling the metronome in Live, and audibly lining up a track to it on the Prime. Sure enough, the Live 11 metronome was ahead and the Prime 4 tracks were falling behind, and the divide kept growing very slowly.
The catch: my profile settings affect this. The drift does NOT happen when the setting for sync is Beat or Bar, and you do nothing except “press sync and forget.” Then the tracks never deviate from the Link tempo. But as soon as I nudge a platter even slightly to compensate for super tiny differences in downbeats…or if the setting for sync is Tempo…the drift will show up for any tracks affected by my actions/settings.
Tl;DR How come Ableton Link on my Prime 4 acts like my tracks are all a tiiiiny bit slower than the master Link tempo…unless the sync is in Beat/Bar mode and the platters are never ever nudged? Is this fixable? Any insight is appreciated!
Yeah it’s not necessarily a time offset but a slightly out-of-sync master tempo, enough for the effects to be noticeable after a minute. And Id love to be able to fix that without having to lose control over phase alignment…!
I think the normal MO would be to sync it and leave it.
The way Link works, no one device is in charge, and everyone is allowed to adjust tempo, so I imagine that your jog wheel nudge is not only adjusting locally, but is being sent out via Link to the other group members too - when you’re expecting it to only affect the local track.
Hey @axi_beat, glad you’re enjoying the standalone experience!
Thank you for reporting this.
I have confirmed reproduction of the issue. However, I have also confirmed reproduction of the same issue when using Ableton link with Virtual DJ. So this appears to potentially be a wider issue with Ableton Link rather than a specific bug within Engine OS.
As mentioned above, the initial delay can be compensated for using the Ableton Link Offset slider. However, the drift over time is a separate thing.
I would recommend 2 things for when Ableton Link is incorporated into your sessions. 1. Using beat / bar sync modes and ensuring sync is active. And 2. ensuring your beat grids are perfectly aligned to the waveform (editing the grid using the beatgrid editor if necessary).
Either way this is now on our radar, so thanks again for reporting!
Jog wheel nudges only nudge that particular track, but will still trigger “drift” for that track if it hadn’t already been drifting. (e.g. the track could be 126.00 bpm, with the Link tempo set to exactly that upon the first Beat/Bar-sync press, yet as soon as you nudge the platter the track will gradually lag behind in tempo!)
