Running synced instances of Live on 2 macs

famusvictim

2013-11-15 12:11:28

NOTE - please see the next post down too for what I think might be the best way, and please let me know your thoughts!

I've heard a lot of ideas out there about the "best" way to do this, and one person says this will work, when the next says "no, try this instead" - "this is easy" vs. "no that's hard try this"…. blah, blah…

So I'm asking everyone in the community about their experiences dual OSX ableton live rigging.

Please give a response if you've ever done this, and let me learn from your experience!

Thanks SO much - this is crucial to my setup. I have ways to do it, but I want to vet EVERY option to avoid issues, as my performances will include sessions that are very long (20-30) minutes of continuous music…. and falling out of sync over that duration seems to be a tricky issue the longer you perform continuously.

I was planning on using an MMC generator synced wirelessly from an iPod to the LAN network both comps are on….
But, my current idea is actually very outside the box and intuitive, and I have yet to test it, but I think it will prevent out of sync issues by bringing in a little "use a wrench for a hammer" thinking. --> Specifically, I'm going to rig a MIDI splitter cable (DIN) to the out port of a hardware sequencer that also has beat detection technology for a single 1'4" TS jack. This will be the master and slave both the Ableton instances through their respective MIDI interfaces (both Roland Edirol pro broadway models). To keep it in sync, I have a gut feeling that if I route the metronome from both Live instances out of their respective audio interfaces, and into a simple, low-tech 1/4" splitter/combiner, and plug that cable into the audio in of the Master sequencer, that this loop should keep all three in sync. Even though all three have no anchor point and can technically drift, it would be a slow drift in either direction, and happen together (ironically). I could be thee anchor, and just use tap tempo if all three get off too far.

Thoughts on my crazy idea?

Anyone with really surefire ideas or personal experience?

famusvictim

2013-11-15 12:19:14

was also thinking of setting up a timer with MT to count measures or beats, which MMC doesn't do, but I can't think of a way to "decode" this for sending to the second instance of Live…..
….wait - I could use that counter to tap tempo in live.

This would just mean setting up a counter on the first computer's MT (receiving MMC from Live instance #1) to send a MIDI message over the network to a second instance MT "slaving" (sending MMC to) the other instance of Live on the second comp, where it would decode to tap tempo…. this would definitely take care of drifting. ***This would only work if I also sent the original MMC stream at the same time over the network, right?***


Does this new idea sound good to anyone?

I always come up with an idea when I'm writing another one down…. lol
Also - sorry about the big font, but I want this to stand out, and I can at least say that it's not even the biggest font choice - lol