UPDATE: I have really solid syncing using the Ableton CV Clock Out device. Put it through alot of hours. It just works and I wanted to share incase anyone deals with this. Here are the settings:
1/16 Normal NOT PPQN , AMP 100, 5.8% LENGTH, Transport none (handled by the auto feature on hapax), and Trigger. just make sure when you use the hapax auto feature you wait the 2 seconds in between start and stops.
I got dominated last night for like 5 hours trying to get a good clock going with ableton as host. I do tests by sending clock to hapax, then sending step data off hapax to a synth, and recording the synths audio in ableton.
My experience with doing this usually is sending midi straight from ableton to the synths, and that is not that hard to compensate for using compensation tools built into ableton. generally i’ll do a 14 milisecond or so offset and it will be almost exactly on consistently.
however this is my first time sending clock to a sequencer and then sending notes from the sequencer to the synths instead of from ableton.
it is proving much more varied and inconsistent. i know how to adjust midi sync clock start from ableton and how to test it using test notes and test sounds to measure for consistency. but every time i adjust, and retest, it still randomly will be 20 milliseconds off or something like that. sometimes far worse. i will try again and get similar results.
i am already considering a usamo sleeper because i don’t currently have a DC coupled interface.
questions: since i have never really sent clock to a sequencer and then notes from the sequencer to a synth and then recorded the output, i am unsure if this is even a viable setup? is this a problem specific to hapax or would this occur with any sequencer - problem being that the variability is too large and random to competently compensate for. is there a solution for this with the current routing? will a usamo sleeper fix this?
notes: this is all over midi din by the way. not usb midi. i tried usb midi and got the same results. i am using a good sample rate and 64 buffer. so it should be fast and consistent. also, i am not expecting perfection, id be comfortable with like a consistent 5ms space.
Yes midi clock from a DAW (in general, not only Ableton) is known for being instable.
On top of that, I also had problems with Ableton where sometimes the latency was bigger than other times. It seemed that Ableton’s timing for sending the start message can be very sloppy. I don’t remember having this particular issue with FL Studio, but that’s years ago, so not sure anymore.
I eventually fixed it by purchasing an USAMO. This did a great job, except when your moving your playhead around in the arranger of Ableton. It would then freak out: it temporaroly doubles the midi clock to “keep up” with the position change. So the best thing to do is stop Ableton, change the position of the playhead and then press start again.
For this issue I had with USAMO, I eventually bought a Midronome (which is fairly new). This handles playhead jumps perfectly. It doesn’t use a plugin (as opposed to USAMO), but an audio sync file, but you can warp it (with the repitch algo) so it will perfectly follow any tempo changes. The only downside the Midronome has currently: when you press start in your DAW, it will first listen to a full bar of audio pulses before it actually starts the clock output. So there is always a bar (4 beats) delay when you start Ableton.
Simon (the developer) did say he will look into it and try to make it start immediately after it receives the first pulse. Hopefully that will be implemented soon. He did improve the firmware quite a bit since its launch, so I have high hopes.
But now comes the best part:
Hapax can actually do a similar thing now: it will sync to an audio signal using one of the cv inputs. You don’t need a dc coupled audio interface. I tried it with my focusrite octopre dynamic and if works great. They added a few features in 1.14(beta) to make it much better: it can now auto reset when no pulse is received for 2 seconds (so when you press Stop in Ableton) and it will start from the beginning again when you press play again.
The only downside is that Hapax doesn’t know the time signature, so it will always start from the beginning of the bar, even when you start halfway a bar in Ableton. So you always have to start from the beginning of a bar in Ableton to sync the bar correctly.
See the beta manual for more info about audio synchronization:
Oh I tried this briefly last night without having a clue what I was doing. I used the CV tools in ableton. It seemed to sort of work but also not. But that was before I read that guide.
Have you gotten it to work? can you send your exact settings. Should I sent 64th notes from ableton CV took to match the setting in that guide?
thanks for letting me know. I thought a DC coupled interface was needed here.
also…does this is cord work?
That cable should do the trick. Not in the studio, but on top of my head: set CV reset to Auto. Clock input = cv 1/2.
Yeah the higher the number of pulses, the better. Hapax will not automatically change its internal bpm. So when the number of pulses are too few, all notes in between will potentially be played at the wrong tempo. This is not an issue if the number of pulses is high enough.
Hopefully Hapax will add BPM detection via audio sync in the future as well though.
For some reason, Ableton’s cv tool didn’t work well for me. I just used an audio sample of a pulse. You can download one from the beta manual.
You do need to press play on Hapax the first time btw. After that, you can use Ableton to start and stop if you have CV Reset = auto.
You’re welcome! Let us know if you succeed 
@Maarten
ok better than last night. but a few questions.
warp is not working for me? I have the clip on warp, but it is not changing bpms. when i change bpms in ableton, it does not change on the hapax. so I cannot do anything except 120 bpm. I must be missing something. I understand how to warp tracks and tested it with a drum pattern to ensure it was warping as expected.
I am getting about 9-11 ms of lag when doing the ableton>hapax>synth sequence. It is about 3 second variable, so anywhere between -9 and -12. Does that sound about what to expect? And then I should just compensate using ableton, about 10ms offset and then ill always be within 1-2 ms which is acceptable.
also, are you using the track delay for that final compensation? I dont see any other way to do it. It will be annoying to try to remember that track delay is set for -10 each time but I’ll do it obviously if needed.
if i could figure out why its not warping, id probably be all set.
i tried CV tools just for fun. I am getting it to work decently setting CV tools to 1/16 out and setting the hapax to 1/16 (4ppq). when I used the ppqn setting in cv tools out, it did not work at all really because the clock pulse from ableton would not stop sending the pulse no matter what I did. I was monitoring my digital output I was using and it kept going after I stopped ableton. the only thing that stopped it was turning off the cv tool in ableton. definitely not viable. i am getting better results from CV tools I think though since i switched from the ppq option. I am reguarly getting 9 to 12 ms and now I do not need a audio track. Maybe this is the best fit for me.
note: when entering chords on the hapax the lag seems to be about -25. when entering a single note it was -9. now I have went back to single notes and it is still showing -20. which would make the lag pretty much impossible to manage since it would jump 10 ms. i am not sure if this is ableton, hapax, or hydrasynth. I am guessing ableton is getting jacked up sending clock.
I had near zero jitter when clocking Hapax to an audio signal from Ableton.
I do know Hydrasynth is known for introducing extra latency when using some specific mutants. It is even variable as lower notes will have more latency than higher notes, so it is hard to compensate/correct this.
Maybe try another synth for testing the Hapax audio sync? Or just a plugin?
I use the hardware latency parameter inside the External Instrument to compensate for the (instrument specific) latency. This is more convenient than the track delay. Also, you can save a preset with the correct latency for each hardware instrument, so you don’t have to worry about it every time you start a new project.
Oh and another very important detail: you need to use the External Audio Effect device to send the sync signal to Hapax to prevent Ableton from delaying the audio when it compensates for latency. By using the External Audio Effect, Ableton will always send the signal without latency.
how are you adjusting BPM @Maarten ? That did not seem to work for me. I have the clip warped, but changing BPM in ableton did not make the BPM in hapax change.
Yeah Hapax does not change the BPM. But if you use enough pulses, it will advance its sequencer according to the rate of the pulses it receives. Hopefully Squarp will consider automatic BPM detection/synchronisation when using the cv input as sync source in a future update. But, as I said, it doesn’t really matter as long as you use enough pulses per bar.
Oh I know that it does not change the BPM value on the hapax but it should change the actual BPM rate regardless of the stated BPM (which im pretty sure that is what you are saying). I am able to do it with the CV tools but when I use the audio clip with the pulses, and change BPM in ableton (which should change the rate of the audio clip and therefore change the hapax rate), it does not change. So I am assuming I am warping the clip wrong or something.
Can you make some screenshots?
hey. I got into a decent place with it using the CV tools and I am just going to run with it. Thanks for all your help.
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