Looper cutting parts of audio with MIDI clock sync

Hi! I sent an email with this issue to the support, but almost a week has passed and I had no answer, so I’m trying here.

I’m synching midi clock from an external drum machine and most of the time the looper doesn’t record the last part of the loop, sometimes a quarter, sometimes a bar.

The looper is getting the midi clock well as the bars are in perfect sync, so it’s not an issue with that. Also it seems to record everything, as you can see in the video, it just skips abruptly bits during playback. The songs is set to quantise to measure as otherwise it goes out of sync.

I uploaded a video to show better the issue: Problem with aeros looper - YouTube

I’m pretty sure the pedal is set as it should be… but maybe I’m missing something? or is it a bug?

Cheers

It seems the information coming from your clock is not sufficient to be considered sync, the Aeros must read sync ON to behave as it should when following a clock.

Other users have reported similar mysterious sync issues but we have not yet found a clear answer why some devices seem to work fine while others are intermittently working or not at all. I would fumble with your clock’s settings if it has any and assure you are on latest firmware 4.3.1

We will be keeping an eye on this. What is the name of the external MIDI clock you are using?

Hi @BrennanSingularSound , fellow Product Manager by trade here. :slight_smile: I ran into the same issue last night at practice and made an account to see if others are experiencing the same. I’m strangely glad I’m not the only one.

Problem:

When recording/playing a 4 bar loop, it seemingly recorded the whole loop…but upon finishing the recording of the loop and switching to ‘play’, it would only play the first 2 bars.

Details:

  • Midi clock coming from an MPC Live II on the latest firmware
  • 5 pin midi coming from the MPC into the Midi Maestro, then from the out of the Midi Maestro into the midi in of the Aeros (though I replicated the same behavior going straight from MPC to Aeros)

It was basically the same thing the user earlier in this thread showed in the Youtube video. While recording the 4 bar loop, the UI of the Aeros looked like it was recording the whole 4 bars. On playback, it also visually showed a 4 bar waveform that would just go silent halfway through, then start up again at the red ‘beginning of loop’ indicator.

Interestingly, when I played the loop by itself (not receiving midi clock), it only looped those first 2 bars. So it’s almost like the UI knows it’s a 4 bar loop when it’s connected to the device sending midi clock, but the backend only captures the first 2 bars of audio. That would kind of make sense if Aeros thinks that it only has 2 bars of audio. If it’s a 4 bar loop on the MPC and I only record audio over the first 2 bars, the looper is going to sit tight during bar 3 and 4 waiting for bar 1 to come around again so it can start the audio again at the correct time. When I disconnect the midi clock input, it doesn’t ‘know’ about the 4 bars anymore and just loops the 2 bars of audio it actually has.

Another interesting thing…when it was still connected to the MPC midi clock and only making sound for the first 2 bars, I tried to Overdub the missing 2nd half of audio. It did successfully Overdub, but now the first 2 bars were missing. It’s almost like the backend hits some limitation and can only hold a certain amount of audio on a track when receiving midi clock.

I’m not sure that your hypothesis about insufficient synching is correct. The device shows synch is on when I’m playing the MPC, and I can see the pulses in the Aeros UI match up perfectly with the click of the MPC while I’m recording. It’s definitely synching the tempo and the loop is definitely starting at the correct spot (regardless of which bar I start recording). It’s more that it panics and can only grab so much audio before stopping the recording on the backend (despite what the UI shows).

I’m going to play around with different numbers of bars and tempos to see if there’s a pattern to how it preemptively cuts off…to see if it’s a function of time or # of bars. I’m also going to use the same MPC song from last night and try recording the missing half on a separate track to see if it’s a track limitation or an Aeros song limitation.

i had the same issue when i used a master midi clock device (Maschine MK3) going to another device (Keystep Pro) and then from that device to Aeros. I had to set the middle instrument to MIDI THROUGH, not MIDI OUT. That solved the issue.

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Thanks for the tip. I’m going to try that.

I really can’t say why it is happening but it seems like the connection is not stable for whatever reason or a setting may be incorrect somehow, this is causing a MIDI desync

I am curious if your experience improves once using the latest beta version Aeros 5.0.0

Please read the forum post thoroughly before updating to not have any issues with existing songs