01-26-2025, 01:41 PM
I’m encountering an issue with the MIDI clock that I can’t quite figure out. I use The NDLR as the clock master and a mioXL to distribute its USB output to all devices that need to sync. However, in this setup, only about 50% of my devices respond to the clock signal.
Here’s the odd part: if I unplug the USB cable from a non-functioning device (let’s call it Device A) and plug it into a functioning device (Device B), Device B syncs perfectly. This suggests that the cables and mioXL routing are fine.
When I switch to using my DAW as the clock master (with a different mioXL configuration), everything works flawlessly. This leads me to suspect that there’s something unusual about the MIDI clock output from The NDLR that I can’t explain. MIDI clock should be one of the simplest things, right?
I conducted another experiment: one of the machines that doesn’t sync to the NDLR’s clock can still play a motif perfectly. However, when I filter out all MIDI messages except the clock (including note ON and OFF messages), it still doesn’t sync. How is it possible that this machine receives the clock signal from the DAW without any issues, but not from The NDLR?
Unfortunately, I don’t know how to monitor or “spy” on The NDLR’s MIDI output directly, but I suspect it might be sending messages that some devices can’t handle. For example, I noticed a delay pedal changing its configuration even though it wasn’t mapped to any MIDI channel on The NDLR. I resolved that issue by drastically filtering out everything except the clock signal, and the pedal behaved normally after that.
Here’s the odd part: if I unplug the USB cable from a non-functioning device (let’s call it Device A) and plug it into a functioning device (Device B), Device B syncs perfectly. This suggests that the cables and mioXL routing are fine.
When I switch to using my DAW as the clock master (with a different mioXL configuration), everything works flawlessly. This leads me to suspect that there’s something unusual about the MIDI clock output from The NDLR that I can’t explain. MIDI clock should be one of the simplest things, right?
I conducted another experiment: one of the machines that doesn’t sync to the NDLR’s clock can still play a motif perfectly. However, when I filter out all MIDI messages except the clock (including note ON and OFF messages), it still doesn’t sync. How is it possible that this machine receives the clock signal from the DAW without any issues, but not from The NDLR?
Unfortunately, I don’t know how to monitor or “spy” on The NDLR’s MIDI output directly, but I suspect it might be sending messages that some devices can’t handle. For example, I noticed a delay pedal changing its configuration even though it wasn’t mapped to any MIDI channel on The NDLR. I resolved that issue by drastically filtering out everything except the clock signal, and the pedal behaved normally after that.