If you want the Pyramid to line up on your DAW grid, sync it like everybody else on the planet does.
How? As USB slave I have a drift after 10-30 minutes and after 1 hour the drift is making me close the daw, restart everything and then have sync again.
Then you have an issue , possibly very high usb jitter? (near half clock resolution)
As posted above , I did a 90 minute test with sync over usb and there was no drift at all.
Thanks Mark, I am trying to solve this problem addressed in a different thread. you’re right - sync via USB with my macbook pro and ableton as master does not work properly (I experiencer midi drift with ableton being more and more laid back… but coming back to this topic - I think it’s a general misconception that you set a device’s tempo to 120,00 BPM and set another decvice to 120,00 BPM, record a 30 minute rhytmic thing on each and expect that both recordings are perfect in sync with each other.
what are your midi settings in ableton ? there are a number of options there. Are you also trying to record audio ?
the way ableton handles audio / midi sync is contentious due to warp being integral to the way that the audio is handled presented (it is impossible to completely disable warp).
It seems to me the original poster was basically under the misapprehension that “you set a device’s tempo to 120,00 BPM and set another device to 120,00 BPM, record a 30 minute rhythmic thing on each and expect that both recordings are perfect in sync” and the remainder of the post has been replies to try and clarify that fact ! (which ,may be the point you’re making)
Hey @Bambrose, I have to look at home cause at the daily studio I have different settings but will let you know. I once stumbled upon a picture of the midi settings in ableton which are suggested for syncing pyramid but cannot find it anymore. I think it is a common thing that 120BPM shown on a machine’s display are not 100% accurate to another machine’s “120 BPM”. Anyways thanks for the reply.
Yes, ableton live 10… with ableton as master.
On an iMac running latest high sierra release.
It’s my main music computer so I admit to ‘tinkering with’ quite a bit, particularly disabling non essential services.
Unfortunately, it’s pretty common for different users to have different experiences , it’s all down to setups, , software , hardware - everyone has something slightly different.
Mark, let’s exchange midi sync setups we use in Live. Will post a screenshot. Thank you!
Enough! As a master clock my squarp is flawless.I tried it at 40bpm…clocked a n orb,zillion,max49,EMX…end result I got this really cool tamborine sound out of the korg that sounds like a train passing by…YA that shit makes me happy.AND i can keep that tempo use the sound and have normal stuff at useable tempi to try to make music that somebody else may enjoy listening to.
Hi there
Someone sync pyramid with Logic Pro x ?
After adjusting logics “ delay “ to almost 100ms it seem to be pretty synced .
But have to start to play the sequencer from the beginning in logic and always .
Is there any way to sync them both anytime within the track / song ?
Thanks 
Paq
I’m slightly reluctant to post this, as it could be opening a can of worms.
My methodology is to have a wholly hardware setup with the Pyramid driving everything.
I use either a Tempest or AudioThingies Double Drummer . The former just synced from the Pyramid (i.e. timing slaved to pyramid, but sequences created in the Tempest itself) the latter sequenced entirely from the Pyramid.
I then record using my LIO8 console programme.
Once the files are recorded, i import them into Harrison Mix Bus.
From there I drag the grid to the beats by eye.
What I am finding in a very consistent way is that if I set the tempo to say 135bpm on the Pyramid, that the actual tempo according the Harrison Grid is 135.025bpm
The actual variance from the Pyramid tempo does vary slightly depending on the core tempo (e.g. 126bpm is 126.03 or something)
But the fact that there is a variance is definitely there. The beauty of it is that once I have established the bpm the Pyramid seems to be exceedingly accurate in terms of tempo. so the grid and audio stays aligned once i have worked out the correct bpm precisely.
I’ve not tested this exhaustively. I’ve not been wholly scientific in assessing this either. But it is something I’ve noticed.
Over the years I’ve just sort of come to accept that one device’s tempo is going to be different from another device’s tempo. Even between software programs using the same clock source.
It’s cool when using software that we are able to account for these differences and get some rock solid timing. It’s also interesting sometimes to have things slightly out of sync. I like this better of course for looping things than entire tracks, but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered two clock sources which were ever perfectly in time, and stayed that way for 10-20 minutes.
Accounting for, and adjusting for this is important when tracking or performing long compositions. But I don’t think that it’s a shortcoming of the pyramid per se… it’s the nature of comparing two clock sources.
Some are as tight as a drum, others are loose and sloppy. But when we compare them with one another, then we see that there are always discrepancies.
Midi sync is good. Din Sync is also good. These things mark time, and in theory maintain the tempo connections. If Pyramid is the master, it is sending that sync clock. If Ableton is the master, then it is responsible. Time, electricity, circuitry, software latency, and so many things play a role in the offsets. We’ve come such a long way… perfection remain elusive.
I spent the afternoon trying to figure out what was up between Reaper and my Pyramid.
TL;DR: Pyramid clock is locally rock-solid but globally gets slowly out of sync compared to Reaper.
I have Reaper setup to listen for SPP from the Pyramid, with both set the same BPM. I then record tracks one by one. The recorded tracks stay perfectly in sync with each other but gradually drift out of sync with Reaper’s beat markers. For example, if I record 30 bars of 4-on-the-floor kicks at 120 BPM (240 beats), Reaper’s final beat marker is at 60.000 seconds, but the last beat recorded has its onset at 59.986 seconds.
I did the math and, basically, if I set the Pyramid to 120BPM, and Reaper to 120.028 BPM, Reaper’s beat markers and Pyramid’s triggered beats stay perfectly in sync over a 60 second recording period. So that’s a solution for 120 BPM (unless you’re recording for >10 minutes, I guess). Unfortunately the BPM offset seems to be different depending on the Pyramid BPM - but at least it seems to be consistent and repeatable.
I’m going to dig a little deeper - hoping I can come up with a consistent solution that works across different BPMs.
USB MIDI in/out of a computer is prone to jitter in my understanding.
Check out
https://www.expert-sleepers.co.uk/usamo.html
Or nix the computer, perhaps.
what pants said
Hi, I’m completely new here, this is my 1st post, and I haven’t even ordered my Pyramid yet (will be doing so tomorrow, decision has been made). I just checked in to grab some info and stumbled directly upon this thread.
Reaper doesn’t sync to incoming midi clock. Two time-based devices freewheeling will inevitably drift apart. The only way I found to keep them sort-of together is the following workaround: I assign a CC to the tap tempo in Reaper, and send it that CC on every beat from the master sequencer. Now Reaper will follow the master tempo changes. It’s fairly accurate, not the panacea but better than nothing. I kept stuff together for over 15 minutes including slow-downw and speed-ups and experienced just some slight phasing coming in and out when mixing two identical audio sources, one from Reaper, and one from the master device (My Octatrack in this case). You might try this out and see if it works for you. Might be, might be not. The quality of your midi set-up (computer, interfaces) counts of course.
Looking forward to my new Pyramid !
Cheers!
