Hello! Considering Zynthian to use as a secondary sequencer/ audio player to use with tape multi-tracking. Specifically with a box that stripes a track of tape with SMPTE timecode, and decodes it to MTC. After reading through the wiki, 24 Timebase; I see that there is some implementation in using Zynthian as a “slave” unit. Is that only with the sequencer or is it possible to have audio tracks follow the midi timecode from the external SMPTE to MTC box? Something similar to how Ableton “warps” tracks to an external clock.
Thanks!!!
Hi @kittycomputer! A very warm welcome to the community.
The current stable release of zynthianOS (Oram) only supports rudimentary sync of its internal tempo to external MIDI clock. This allows the built-in sequencer and effects to sync. There is no audio (file) playback sync to clock.
I’m not sure if Ableton Live syncs long-form audio to MIDI clock, like slaving a tape machine via LTC. I know it can warp short samples to allow them to be played in time with a beat.
There is a development in flight that provides this short-sample launch/sync which we should see in testing soon but a while before it hits a stable release.
Hi @riban thank you the detailed reply and warm welcome!
Ableton does in fact sync long form tracks to external clock via a function they call “warp” that allows it to sync with the fluctuations of an external clock. So long as the track is aligned to the grid in the project file, it will stay in time while following external MTC. It’s been in there since 9 or 10 I believe…
I understand there is no direct development towards that end… Still excited for short sample syncing!
Cheers!
Presumably it does some kind of beat detection on the audio file and creates an internal map of beats/position then warps the remainder of the file to drag the overall file playback into position of the tempo changes during playback. We have decided to avoid doing any time stretching (warping) on long files due to the time it takes to perform the operation, especially on a low power device such as the raspberry pi - and with the possibility of many concurrently playing clips. So we limit the maximum duration of warpable clips to 30s (IIRC). We also don’t warp live playback but may have some ideas of how to do that in an efficient way so that might come later.