How to sync two daws which are in the same room?

[hcv242]

Hello. I've seen some posts regarding this issue but none was really what i'm looking for. I want to sync two daws, which are in the same room so that i can make music with a friend. I have two daws already and im not willing to buy more i want to know what are my options with what i already have. Those are :
Renoise v3
Ableton live 9

My first ideia was having two different laptops, one running renoise, the other running live 9, synced by a midi cable. Like that we had song position info being passed and we were both always working on the same part of the song. But the sync was terrible. Bpms always floating, the first beats after pressing play would allways be a train wreck, terrible. Dropped that ideia.

Next i tried two machines running ableton live 9 synced by the link feature that live 9 introduced. It syncs over wifi and it s really tight. No bpms floating, tight sounding, amazing. but unfortunatly it doesnt send song position info, it only sends bpm/sync info. If i jump to a part of the song on my daw it wouldnt happen the same in my friend's daw. Midi covers that, but it has the bad timimg downfall.

So the next thing i thought was as they both support rewire i could rewire them on the same machine, putting each one on a different video monitor. The problem would be adding an extra mouse + keyboard for my friend. This one i havent tried yet.

I just want to do music with my friend, it s 2018 it shouldnt be that hard Do you guys have any ideias on this ? Please share.

[JoseC.]

My guess is that you cannot do what you want. When you sync two DAWs, one must be master and the other slave, you cannot have both as master/slave at the same time like you want. I think that your best option is probably Ableton link, and for song position just tell your friend, since you are in the same room. Or you might experiment with having each a tablet or phone based remote transport like TouchOSC.

[lfm]

Sync over midi cable with mtc(midi time code) should work, but master slave configuration.
Move position on master and slave will sync to that position when play is started.

Slave usually have a dialog up waiting on the daws I've used - waiting for sync.

Midi clock is another beast, if to use that.

[hcv242]

My guess is that you cannot do what you want. When you sync two DAWs, one must be master and the other slave, you cannot have both as master/slave at the same time like you want. I think that your best option is probably Ableton link, and for song position just tell your friend, since you are in the same room. Or you might experiment with having each a tablet or phone based remote transport like TouchOSC.

maybe i havent explained myself in the best way. i have no problem at all with one being master and the other being slave. i just want to have song position info being passed and a tight clock, which i dont have with midi sync or link.

How does OSC work ?

[rod_zero]

Yes it is 2018 and it is not possible, why? because few people need this kind of set up, people either work on the same DAW on the same computer or using rewire which is the simplest way to do it, or they are just jamming so they don't need to sync song position (which is what Link is for).

[jancivil]

It can be done. The business end of this connection is the playback head. The problem with Song Position pointer is it's sending every six clicks. If you send SMPTE code thru the cable as Midi Time Code (specifically), it can resolve much, much more finely. It's hours/minutes/seconds/frames per second/subframes. Don't be intimidated by this, as it's the way to sync the playback head on two devices; here via MTC. MTC sends quarter frame clock. So you have both machines set to the same FPS (you can go back to looking at bars and beats, I assume. I look at both, always, today).

Here's the basics:
http://tweakheadz.com/sync-mmc-mtc-smpte/

Here's a description of someone doing it with Logic and PT:
https://vi-control.net/community/thread ... ols.58233/

Whether or not either of these DAWs can do this, I have no idea. Google is your friend here, You're on your own past this.