RK-006 and syncing drum machines

Andrew J

So I've really done a deep dive into the RK-006 in both standalone and USB/Daw hosted modes. This and the RK-008 have been my workhorses for the last year or so. I'm totally obsessed with the ease of use and how it's brought my setup together.

My only issues have been with sync to external drum machines and sequencers, and I'm pretty positive this has to do with my gear and not the Retrokits stuff, but I figured I'd ask the community what their setup is like and if they've had issues like mine.

I sending DIN Sync to a Roland TR-606, and also to a Drumulator, but the Drumulator Run/Stop doesn't want to work with the pulse sent from the RK-006, and I was told that the pulse width of the Run/Stop signal is probably too narrow to trigger the Drumulator (if anyone has a simple solution of how I can fix this, pulse stretcher module?).

The Drumulator is pretty damn rock solid, I don't have a unit with midi, so I can't compare, but using clock provides me with sounds right on the money, for the most part.

The TR-606 is flaky. Sometimes it's really great, and sometimes it's off by about 12ms. Since it's inconsistent, and varies when I restart it, I haven't had much luck with offsetting the clock. Any 606 owners have the same results? It's more obvious when it is playing against another drum sequence (for instance, a drum sequence played from the RK-008 and sent to a module, or the Drumulator). I've always heard that DIN Sync was super reliable, but I have definitely struggled with this.

The MPCs are super unreliable. I've tried with both a Live II and an MPC60, and they both perform about the exact same when clocked externally. Almost always, they are off by up to 30ms, and offsetting isn't particularly helpful because it adds a "hiccup" to the start, which can be fine if you have a 4 bar blank leader sequence, but then it really makes it hard to test if everything is grooving. What I ended up doing, was sequencing the drum sounds externally with the RK-008. It works but it eats up tracks fast. I've also figured it would be best to use them as the "Master", but I really do enjoy having the RK-008 as the master, I like pressing record and play on that since it's where all my midi is getting recorded, it's a much better system then holding down record on the RK-008, and pressing play on an MPC.

Is this just something I should expect when trying to sync up so many sequencers, especially vintage ones?

And another question for the Retrokits team, if I connect the RK-006 and have it hosted by the computer, with the DAW as the master clock, is this going to effect how everything syncs up at all? For instance, if I have everything syncing up really well in Standalone (maybe have some offsets in the preset I'm using) and then switch to the DAW, should I be using a different custom preset with everything set so that the DAW is clocking everything best? I record into Ableton with monitor set to Off on everything, so that when I check the audio on the grid, there should be no added latency, other than the latency that my interface naturally has. I usually try and make adjustments if something is off (I've actually found the Drumulator to get triggered early, and I'll offset it about 2ms or so).

Sorry for the rambling, but I've been doing this for a year, and while I'm super happy with the ease of use, I am still having trouble getting everything perfectly in sync. This may just be the nature of the gear I'm using. It usually takes a couple of starts and stops and then everything will be dancing together nicely, but it's tricky.

Any help or tips are appreciated!

grit

Perhaps a different way of sending start/stop could work on the drumulator, I'm not sure how it reacts to what start signal.
in dinsync mode the run/stop is just an on/off level, not a pulse (we use this on the RK008 as well as the RK006) On the RK006 however you could for example play with a note2gate setting on a port and use a midi key to trigger start/stop. on the 'rk006 flexible dinsync video' i've played around with that and a TR606 ( youtube.com/watch?v=cIr0_NMZNbM ). With this config you can change a note length in your daw to send out what you need (or use the rk006 settings page to set the gate signal to pulse mode (instead of latch) to just send out a short blip for start)

About connecting both the RK006 and RK008 together:
The RK006-USB-host-RK008 combo is of course an easy way to combine them together and add an extra MIDI bus to the RK008 but you'll get the best clocksignal if you use TRS-only - this is because the RK006/ RK008 usb combined flow is pretty complex:

midi in from rk006 -> through USB cable to RK008 -> through USB goes back to RK006 -> to it's outputs

Whereas if you can connect the RK008 out straight into the RK006 trs in, this is just a 1-way signal directly over midi.

Using a DAW as masterclock works fine on OSX, but Windows seems to do a bad job at pushing a steady midi clock through USB (hence the boxes which combine audio with midi for a dinsync like clock pulse signal).
You can try and have the RK006 generate the master clock and slave the DAW and the hardware to it, perhaps that can improve sync on a windows system. this would require a bit of testing specifically for your setup I guess.

If you use ableton's clockshift function on individual outputs, just select the clock out on only the ports you want to slave the sequencers to, this to prevent too much unnecessary clock data going through the USB connection.

I hope these tips give you some more insight on how it all works and perhaps you can optimize the flow a bit.

Andrew J

grit Thanks so much for the tips. I have tried a bunch of different sync methods with the RK-006 and I think actually the TR-606 just needs a little working with to get it going. I will say, it grooves really nicely at higher BPMs for sure. There’s also the ability of the Drumulator to divide the clock rate from 96 to 24 to 12 etc, and maybe when doing this, I could then run both that and the 606 at the exact rate from the RK-006. There’s a possibility that might help them lock up better.

I realize I actually have a lot of messing around to do with the USB hub hosting mode. I was surprised when I had the RK-008 plugged into the hub via USB, that clock, start/stop, and midi notes were being sent. For some reason I thought the RK-008 couldn’t send MIDI over usb so this was pretty eye opening. But I now understand the clock priority in this mode with USB, and it’s a lot of fun jamming with the QuNexus/KSP/RK-008 in different clock priority routings.

I have thought about getting a product with audio rate clock sync, purely for the MPC60, since it really doesn’t like being clocked, but I’ve heard people have good results that way. I considered the possibility of clocking the entire RK-006 in standalone/USB hub mode via TRS in from the DAW, I’m curious to see how that performs. I have only used it in the DAW as a MIDI/USB interface.

I definitely need to try out the note2gate functionality, it’s something I could really use in my setup. Also, I didn’t realize you could change the length of a pulse with the note length, so I’ll have to try that with my Drumulator. Just being able to trigger drum machine sequencers on and off with a midi note, that would be a game changer for writing full songs on the RK-008. Can’t wait to sit and mess around with it.

Andrew J

Note2Gate is really, really cool. I did find my 606 struggling to keep up sometimes, but for the most part it works wonders and is a great way to add variation to a single pattern on a drum machine. I don't know if it's possible within the RK-008 to create a sequence that mimics a 24ppq clock, but if so, that means theoretically I could put swing on that sequence, and thus send a shuffled clock to the 606.
I also tried sending out a note with a long note length to the Drumulator Run/Stop input, but still having the same issue. I simply can't get it to "Stop" upon note off, so it's behaving the same way as when I have a Run/Stop signal sent from the RK-006 set to 'neg' and 'pulse'. It's SO close to working but not quite there yet. Considering just doing the MIDI mod for the Drumulator, I just find it to be rock solid when synced via analog clock.

Also, I was under the impression that the RK-008 could not send or receive midi over USB (without a RK-006). Is this correct?

grit

The RK008 is a usbserial device and that is what the RK006 hosts too, if you have something similar (for example what the hairlessmidi driver does on PC (https://bla.retrokits.com/flarum/public/d/6-how-to-use-the-rk008-with-midi-on-a-daw)) you can use the RK008 for serialMIDI over USB
Not sure why the drumulator doesn't play ball with the start/stop, but clockwise ; You can make a drum trigger signal with notes and put a shuffle/swing on it but it's a bit of a shame to use note-on for that at 24ppqn (because usually that also initiates a note off afterwards and then that's just useless data, at 64th note rate that hurts 😉 )
The TR606 can be put in double speed, which means you could do 32rd notes on shuffle (effectivly switching it back to normal speed), perhaps that's a better balance in notes/pulses if that's also an option on the drumulator. I must say I'm tempted to test it with the 606... but... I bet a (solid)MIDI kit on the drumulator and triggering notes from the RK008 won't be that bad either.

Andrew J

grit Ok, that makes sense why notes were sending via usb when I had it connected to the RK006 via the USB hub. I'm definitely considering getting midi installed. I'm convinced I could somehow get the Run/Stop to work somehow, maybe using an envelope follower beforehand or something. I really appreciate your insight on this issue, since it's clearly just a "me" thing and everything is working fine otherwise, albeit sometimes the 606 varies a bit on start (especially when I used note2gate actually), which is probably just a quirk of the unit itself.

Andrew J

When you said: "If you use ableton's clockshift function on individual outputs, just select the clock out on only the ports you want to slave the sequencers to, this to prevent too much unnecessary clock data going through the USB connection.", do you mean I should not enable sync on the OUT_ALL port, in the Ableton MIDI preferences?

I actually got it going incredibly solidly using only the OUT_ALL, and was able to employ a timing shift on that port, that allowed me to record with Monitor In enabled on all tracks, and the audio would actually be lined up to the grid perfectly, something I wasn't ever able to to before.

But I only have clock going out to 3 devices (606, Drumulator, and RK008), so I wanted to adjust the clock on those specific instruments for more precision. However, when I disable sync on the OUT_ALL ports, and just send clock through the respective ports going to those devices, the timing is almost double speed, but also completely off. Something with Ableton for sure, but do you have any tips?

grit

That does make sense because when you send out to OUT_ALL, the internal RK006 clock generator replicates the DAW tempo and matches it to it's own internal one. (So: one clock from DAW through USB as a master reference which the RK006 will replicate internally so you don't have the USB jitter) when you use clock send to the individual buses it will use the direct (jittery) clock from the DAW from USB. Which means if you send DAW clock to three individual outs, there will be three clocks over USB for it.

clock image

Perhaps in your case sending to OUT_ALL and using the RK006 internal clock generator works better. You can set CC's to control clockshifts within the RK006 (https://retrokits.com/rk006/settings/ -> global operation -> control CCs)

Andrew J

That makes total sense, thank you so much for the graphic! I actually have everything working nice and smooth, grooving hard! I decided to run my RK-006, MPC, and Keystep Pro all off of different midi clock outputs in Ableton, and adjusting the clock delay worked wonders. My overall audio latency isn't too bad, so being able to monitor and record everything through Ableton is actually amazing. No more switching to "Off" and direct monitoring every time I record.