8 Replies Latest reply: Feb 9, 2010 6:49 AM by SJDuff RSS

    Do I need one midi-cable or two, in order to sync Audition with an external hardware midi-sequencer?

    Ned43 Community Member

      Going to buy cables, I was able to sync the hardware sequencers as a slave to Audition but couldn't make Audition a slave (despite switching the cable around and changing settings in both the program and hardware).

      I read the Manual, I don't understand it it's very confusing on that front.

       

      I don't want to use smpte just MTC.thanks, if someone could walk me through the midi-sync setup that would be greatt!

        • 1. Re: Do I need one midi-cable or two, in order to sync Audition with an external hardware midi-sequencer?
          Ned43 Community Member

          Also, when slaving the hardware sequencer/synth and pressing record on Audition, it cuts off a very small portion of hte beginning of the sound... is this due to my latency setting? 256 samples is what it's set at on my soundcard... is there a settings that fixes this small portion that gets cut off (its approximately 1/4 of a kick drum that gets cut off). thanks again.

          • 2. Re: Do I need one midi-cable or two, in order to sync Audition with an external hardware midi-sequencer?
            Ned43 Community Member

            wow what a great forum look at all these replies!

             

            What is it with this sync ******** I think adobe just cannot perform a midi-sync, I have adobe as the slave, hardware sequencer as the master: put adobe in record, hit play on hw sequencer: adobe records the audio but cuts off the first half-bar of the first bar...furthermore if I try to workaround that by just recording two takes of the loop in a row and then drag the clip boundaries to match with where it should loop (snap to bpm grid with ruler) it's still off a sliver at the beginning meaning not only does it cut off the very beginning but it's not exactly in sync with the hardware sequencer on the bpm grid!!, even though Audition and the hw sequencer are at the SAME TEMPO!!

             

            WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?

             

            HELLOOO *ECHO ECHO ECHO* IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE, THERE, THERE... HELLO-LO-LOO

            • 3. Re: Do I need one midi-cable or two, in order to sync Audition with an external hardware midi-sequencer?
              Ned43 Community Member

              correction on original post: It was the other way around though, I couldn't get Audition to be the master, only the slave... and I now know I only need one midi-cable and it should work but doesn't.

               

              it seems audition just wants you to work extra hard, not only do you have to loop it up in your hardware sequencer, but then you must again loop in manually but doing little start and end point adjusting until you get it just right.

               

              there's no way to automatically transfer your loop with midi-sync?

               

              I was told this program had midi-deficiencies but this is very very basic stuff here, what is going on?... is this program that bad at midi it can't even do a basic sync??

               

              somebody tell me there's a setting I can adjust here this is nuts.

              • 4. Re: Do I need one midi-cable or two, in order to sync Audition with an external hardware midi-sequencer?
                SteveG(AudioMasters) Community Member

                Ned43 wrote:

                 

                wow what a great forum look at all these replies!

                 

                 

                WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?

                 

                HELLOOO *ECHO ECHO ECHO* IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE, THERE, THERE... HELLO-LO-LOO

                You want replies about MIDI in Audition that the forum admin wouldn't be tempted to remove? You'll  be lucky!

                 

                The stories you heard about MIDI in Audition being (how can one put this politely) being 'embryonic' are all true. From my own POV I don't think that it should be there at all. Audition simply can't compete in MIDI terms with just about everything else out there, simply because it would be playing catch-up all the time, so better to ignore it completely and concentrate on what it's actually good at.

                • 5. Re: Do I need one midi-cable or two, in order to sync Audition with an external hardware midi-sequencer?
                  dstdean Community Member

                  As SteveG said, the problem that you describe is inherent to all versions of Audition (and to CEP before that).  This software was conceived and developed to be a WAV editor.  It is great at that; in fact it far-and-away has the best out-of-the-box tools for this purpose of any editor on the market regardless of price.  That is why I originally bought CEP 2.0.

                   

                  What I wanted to do was similar to what you describe: "fly" tracks (or parts of tracks) from a stand-alone DAW (Yamaha AW2816) into CEP using an ADAT interface; edit the WAVs; then send the edited versions back to the 2816 for mixing.  What I encountered was the exact problem that you described - there was no way to get MTC or SMPTE to accurately sync the two.  I could have dealt with latency, but the worst part was that no two transfers were the same - there was no consistency in the amount of offset that would be introduced in each transfer, therefore I would need to align the WAV or group of WAVs with each transfer.

                   

                  I had to adjust my workflow to compensate.  First, there was no way to accurately deal with portions of a complete WAV, so I would transfer whole tracks.  Next, I would put 5 seconds of silence at the beginning of the track to allow for "chase/lock" and also add a "sync tone" to each track so that I could use this as a reference to hand-align the tracks.

                   

                  The top reason that I upgraded through the versions of Audition was in search of this elusive sync function, since I was quite happy with each version's EDITING capabilities.  Alas, I have long ago given up hope that this "accurate sync" function will EVER work correctly, but as I say, that does not diminish the primary function of the software.

                   

                  YMMV

                   

                  --Dean

                  • 6. Re: Do I need one midi-cable or two, in order to sync Audition with an external hardware midi-sequencer?
                    Ned43 Community Member

                    Thank you both. You have confirmed my own suspicions and I had already begun to get my mind around completely ignoring the midi function and just aligning things manually etc..going into edit view and picking out good zero crossings for loops, then I can still align them in multi-track view but it takes more time.  I understand now that just like cubase was midi before audio, Audition was first an audio editing app and then well, not so much with the midi even today, so heh the parellel is not their completely.

                     

                    Another thing that bothers me is that Audition seems to round the tempo up or down on the timeline, making me wonder how professional it is as multi-track recorder,  when I zoom in completely the snapping doesn't align exactly with the marks on the timeline (edit: this happens in MT and edit view), it lays in the middle of the ruler marks and I'm wondering if this is related to it not showing the correct tempo down the 89.4 of my hardware sequencer.

                     

                    SO, should I just ignore midi and the TEMPO as well? ?... I don't know maybe it's really at the right tempo it just shows a rounded figure?  It makes snapping things to the grid more difficult, they should tell you in the manual whether it's just before or after the marker that the clip or selection is resting on that beat.

                     

                    I think ultimately I would like to use Audition as an editor but if they can't solve these basic problems maybe I should try something else that would allow a quicker workflow, especially when syncing multiple takes or loops, the problem is I seem to dislike Abletone Live, have never tried Acid but I assume it would be a step down from Audition. Anyway thanks again for your help, do you use any other program as an adjunct to AA3?

                    • 7. Re: Do I need one midi-cable or two, in order to sync Audition with an external hardware midi-sequencer?
                      SteveG(AudioMasters) Community Member

                      Ned43 wrote:

                       

                      Anyway thanks again for your help, do you use any other program as an adjunct to AA3?

                      Last time I did this (not recently either) I used Sonar. Nowadays I do very little, if any, MIDI at all. And if there's no MIDI involved and just using Audition the way it was originally intended to be used, it's absolutely fine. Mind you, I can't say that I thrash it the way other users do, because most of the stuff I do with it is classical editing, and having more than 4 stereo tracks on the go at once would be pretty unusual.

                      • 8. Re: Do I need one midi-cable or two, in order to sync Audition with an external hardware midi-sequencer?
                        SJDuff Community Member

                        I have had very good outcomes when syncing my external recording device to Audition via MTC/SMPTE.  There will always be a latency between the slave and master. So you need to play around with Pre and Post Roll.  The other thing you may want to look at is the reference for your samples. Make sure they match 30fs - 29fs-something else? If 29 is it 29 drop or just 29?