I know HX Stomp looper doesn’t support MIDI Sync, but the tap tempo does. And it works until I start the beat.
Here are steps to reproduce:
Adjust the BB tempo
Stomp goes to MIDI Sync mode, and matches BB tempo (at least the first minute)
Start BB intro
Stomp resets the downbeat to match with the start message
Wait some time without doing anything (less than a minute) or make a transition
Stomp downbeat/tempo starts to drift, significant changes when doing transition
The drift is a bit random. During one test Stomp got effectively tempo 54 when BB had 60 (without transitions). But then with next test it was different
My guess is that Stomp works as intended, but the BB time signature causes some trouble. See quote from the BB manual:
Time Signature is sent by BeatBuddy whenever a song is loaded as a Sysex
midi message (by default) and every few seconds after while stopped and
song is open.
The “every few seconds” part is what I’m thinking But I might be interpreting the manual wrong
Has anyone else experienced this?
Edit: I just realized that I can test all the BB midi out settings to see if any of them help I’ll report the results here
How big is the drift normally? I mean probably not 10% of loop time, right?
Just that my problem is not the looper but the tempo/downbeat for delay and other time based effects Anyway, good to know that Aeros is the only looper to support MIDI Sync
That being said, isn’t the sole purpose of MIDI Sync to prevent drift? So since HX Stomp supports MIDI Sync for effects then they should not drift
MIDI sync does not account for drift that occurs between two independent devices when one or both are recording and playing back fixed length audio files, but that’s more for loopers this does not affect reading clock, there’s likely something else going on. Have you asked Line 6 support team as well?
If the BeatBuddy did not work the Aeros would not work, it also works with various other products. We likely will not be making changes to the BeatBuddy if this is not a common issue across cases, I would suggest you forward your issue to line 6 support and to us at support@singularsound.com so we create a ticket internally.
@NYHC I saw your deleted post in e-mail. If I understood correctly, when you start the beat you don’t encounter the same drift that I do?
Have you enabled all MIDI out options from BB? Or have you disabled some? I’ll do the testing once I have time for it, but during my parental leave I have the luxury only once or max twice a week So latest Wednesday I’ll have my answer
I deleted my post because it was to confused for me (I Speak french)
I don’t have my Helix LT anymore , i’m now with Headrush Core
I just tested the sync tempo between the BB and Headrush and it’s just perfect still the same after 5 min, with fills, transition etc…
On the Headrush you can actived the midi clock sync
I set my midi channel on 5 on the Headrush and channel 1 on BB
On the BB
Midi out to merge
Channel 1
Sync Always on
Start main beat (for me)
Stop pause and end
Notes disable
Time signature sysex
As far I remember the Helix time; I must set the channel 1 on BB and Channel 2 on Helix or something like this
I think the issue you have is from the HX Stomp midi settings
I disabled bunch of midi out and thought that the problem was fixed as many of my experiments got the BPM 60 from HX Stomp. I tried before the beat, after starting beat, with fill and with transition and all seemed to be good
But something was urging me to try one more thing, as before disabling I managed to get different BPM before the beat was started, which I thought was not caused by any midi out signal
So I tried to change the tempo quickly, as I recalled doing that couple times before disabling midi out signals but didn’t do that after. And to my surprise I managed to get different BPM out from HX Stomp
So far I think always when changing tempo after taking longer break (like at least a second) it has worked. In practice when doing by hand it means coming from either 59 or 61 to 60. But if I change the tempo up and down wildly and end at 60, e.g. just 60->61->60 the tempo at HX Stomp can end up being 59, 60, 61
So sometimes it’s correct tempo and sometimes not. I think this has happened mostly when changing the tempo down at the end
I guess the tempo 54 I got earlier could be caused by tap tempo, which sometimes changes tempo wildly And in my iPad setup when I select a song I immediately set different tempo so that is a very quick tempo change
One way to check if this is a BB problem or a HX Stomp problem is to send multiple sysex tempo commands from iPad ending with a BPM 60 MIDI clock needs to be sent too But that might have to wait a bit longer Also, I could try to monitor the tempo messages that the BB sends
Anyway, I’ll give my update here once I get more results (and I know I should let Line 6 to know about this and I will, eventually )
Hi,
A Beat Buddy user once sent us these Beat Buddy settings which seem to work better :
always on sync
on play mode
avoid pause
But we don’t have details on Beat Buddy setup, you may want to compare it with sending the same from a DAW or another device
Best regards
Technical Support
Line 6
No answer/reaction to the question if it might be an issue on HX Stomp side But at least they know there is/has been an issue between BB and Stomp
In addition from Singular Sound support they said that @BrennanSingularSound is the go-to person in these kind of issues. So I guess I’ll just have to find by myself which machine is the source of this bug
Update: I did have a rather old firmware in HX Stomp so I’ll try to test if updating fixes the bug If not then I need to record midi tempo messages from the BB and/or send tempo messages from another source to HX Stomp I might be able to get another update still today
Now it’s 3.71 but today I didn’t have a chance to test if the problem persists. Originally it was 3.11 when I first encountered the issue
I will notify if the problem is still there or not It’s just time consuming because I need to manually time the beat for a minute to see if I have roughly 60 beats or not. And I need to test it multiple times to verify that the problem is gone
If anyone has any better idea how to test it then I might get results faster
I am only able to provide support for our products, I cannot give the same level of support on products I do not manage, and I do not have an HX stomp myself so I cannot test.
I can only help with what information is available to me
Please let us know if updating fixes the issue, but to me it sounds like HX support needs to do better, at least I’m answering
Have you tried setting the BeatBuddy to only send clock while playing?
Being that the BeatBuddy can start at any time, the clock it’s sending starts over once the BeatBuddy starts. Maybe it is this shift that the hx stomp does not like, the downside is having to set the HX stomp tempo while stopped potentially… let us know maybe it isn’t an issue …
We have fixed similar issues on the Aeros by improving the Aeros tempo filtering, maybe the stomp needs more refining there for bb’s sake but you can’t be the only user experiencing this if that’s the case
But I might be interpreting the manual wrong 
I’ll report the results here 
And in my iPad setup when I select a song I immediately set different tempo so that is a very quick tempo change 
Also, I could try to monitor the tempo messages that the BB sends 
If not then I need to record midi tempo messages from the BB and/or send tempo messages from another source to HX Stomp 