BSP + multitrack sync w/o midi

[jahasw]

I have a Zoom R24 digital multitrack recorder, and soon the Beatstep Pro will come in to play as well.
Zoom R24 fits my needs quite well, except for one thing: no MIDI/MTC support.

So when recording a project in several phases, track by track, synchronization becomes a problem.
The clock signal thus must come from the MTR when I'm recording tracks for a song.
I can get metronome clicks from a single mono out with optional pre-count.

Question is, what kind of signal does BSP's clock input accept / expect?
Will i be able to sync BSP to an audio click track?

[jahasw]

I found a solution that works for me, I'll share it here briefly in case someone is having same issues.
It's not BSP specific, but should help anyone with similar MIDI hardware + MTR setup to
synchronize recordings.

The Zoom R24 allows for any compatible audio track to be played as metronome sound.
So I realized it is possible to use an LTC signal as a metronome track,
and route it via phones output to a device capable of LTC -> MTC/MMC conversion.

Hardware devices for this purpose exist, but they seemed a bit overkill and out of my price range.
There might also be software for Win or OSX platforms that can do this conversion,
but they too are unsuitable for me since I'm using Linux on my PC.

Gladly there were OSS packages for Linux that allow for routing, conversion and retransmit of
different time code protocols.
Namely, you need following software components: jackd2, qjackctl, a2jmidid and ardour DAW from
version 3.x onwards (technical explanation of ardour's ltc sync: http://gareus.org/wiki/a3extsync).
I'm using ardour 3.5.403 from debian/ubuntu repos, that seems to work.

I wont go into specifics of the configuration since my head is still spinning from
examining this setup, but in short you need to do following steps:

- start ardour3 and configure it to use jack as audio driver and specify your capture device
  that will input the LTC signal.

- export hardware midi devices (like the Beatstep Pro) to jackd with "a2j -e" command,
  this can be made automatic from qjackctl setup window to run every time jackd has been launched,
  then you will probably want to use a2jmidid daemon program running in background.

- configure ardour3 session properties and program preferences to support incoming LTC
  signal of your choice.

- route your soundcard capture device to ardour's LTC-in, and also ardour's outward MMC/MTC/MIDI Clock
  ports or whatever signals you want to the hardware midi device, in this case Beatstep Pro.
  The routing can be done either from ardour (Window -> Audio/MIDI Connections),
  or from qjackctl Connections window.

- use a software tool to generate LTC wav file, or check out page http://elteesee.pehrhovey.net/
  for generating such file online. For testing I used 30fps 44.1kHz 24bit wav file, with start
  time 00:00:00:00 and duration longer than I expect my recordings to have like 30mins or so.

- from MTR set metronome to play the generated LTC wav via phones out to computer soundcard.
  Remember to set playback and capture levels to something reasonable so ardour will recognize
  the signal.

- in ardour press the clock sync source from main window to wait for external sync signal.

And the end result?

After pressing rec from the multitrack recorder, your Beatstep Pro should start playing
when it gets MMC/MTC commands from ardour, and your MIDI gear starts playing sounds.

It will take something like less than a second for ardour to recognize and catch up on the LTC signal,
depending on your audio setup latency, but it will soon lock sync, and short experiment
showed the tracks/loops will be in sync after you trim out the first bar or so.

Ardour's MIDI Tracer can become handy if you're having problems.


- Jah Has Soundwave -

[I grec]

I am just answering this (in case someone needs to know)

Question is, what kind of signal does BSP's clock input accept / expect?

BSP accepts MIDI clocks (USB or MIDI) or Clock DIN signal (24ppq, 48ppq, 2ppq (Korg Volca/Teenage Engineering sync) and  1 pulse per step).

Regards,
Y.

[megamarkd]

I own an R24 and an R16 and have toyed with the idea of using a sync track by recording the clock-out of a BSP or Keystep, then playing it back to the device's clock in when recording but couldn't work out how to reliably get things to start in sync...
Could set a count-in some how, but I have to look to see if the Zooms have that function.  Maybe punch-in set to 1 bar in so to be ready to hit play on the 4th beat?  Still haven't even tried recording a clock-pulse track so don't know if it would work, but, I know that there was a tape sync way back when I owned a 4-track recorder, though I never wanted to sacrifice a track to run one.  It's the same principle, recording a sync24 pulse (or any of the other analogue sync forms), but again, I've never listened to one...it couldn't be worse than a telephone modem signal, could it?  Hopefully the signal isn't so high that the recorder can't pick it up and adequately reproduce it.

So to try you would need to record the pulse for a good deal of time to start with, then assign that file to, say track 24, then have in playback mode while recording.  To start you recording in sync, you 'd have to turn on your R24's metronome and then count yourself in using that.  As sync24 works but moving the sequence on the receiving sequencer by one step when it receives a pulse, you can prime a sequencer to start on-queue by hitting play just before the first pulse of the beat you want to start on,  so you can successfully start a sequencer manually in time with another using analogue sync far more easily than you can using MIDI, making it a good candidate for syncing to a non-MIDI recording device.