Dear PD Forum,

I used this patch to make a connection to Logic Pro X via the IAC Bus on MACOSX :

Unfortunately, it contains latency around 150ms, making it necessary to manually correct it with some offset in the Sync Preferences in Logic Pro X.

I was amazed about 20 years ago, what impact it can have to layer sounds perfectly in phase on a ms level with zero latency. Especially drums and the transients of attack heavy instruments I would not hesitate to apply it here, really (!!) dehumanizing.

Now, being newbie I am sure, I did not use the proper method of synchronizing my DAW to PD by far.
For some recording musicians, for instance, the tolerance is around 10ms, which already is regarded being a kind of acceptable compromise using Native Systems.
I am one of those, who would like to dig in here for a more professional basic setup. Glad about some tip and tricks for really striving to a 0 latency project.

Thank you!

Have you tried running plugdata in your DAW instead? -> https://plugdata.org/

@JOHN_SIX Not my subject, but does your metronome consider a start (250) message to be the first beat or are you using it only to reset the metronome?
If not then [counter] has already counted 5 (message 248) pulses before it bangs the counter on the 6th pulse.

There will be some latency in the Pd Gui because control rate messages are processed and displayed between audio blocks.... so if Pd audio is running at 44.1K there will be 1.45ms approx. between blocks.

If you want to pulse the metronome from the first 248 message then use [select 1] instead of [select 0] after [counter].... as counter prints 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 0 for six pulses.

However, @ddw_music has done some great work syncing to a DAW...... https://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/topic/14244/video-tutorial-pd-sync-with-ableton-link-and-with-daw-plugdata .... and that will be the best solution.
David.

Very kind and quick answers!!

I got it out of a tutorial and can´t answer on a professional level. It seems (!) to me that there is no easy Plug and play to achieve this foundational problem and I will dig into your hints, to get into the workarounds.
If possible I would avoid going the plugIn approach, as I would tend to control a DAW from outside of it accessing the MIDI INPut on a superior level, not from inside the DAW and its restrictions here in distributing MIDI and so on. It kind of houses a certain danger complicating things, not strictly dividing the functionality to my experience at the basic level. (Here: Generating MIDI vs Audio Processing/Recording)

If plugData would allow the feature of a mere synchronisation chance (PD vs DAW) while still being able to send MIDI from outside the DAW, it could be a shot.

Thanks for the video Link, too

Would you consider Ableton Link for this? Pd has an abl_link~ external. Especially on the same machine, this would be much, much better than MIDI clock.

In SuperCollider, I've used MIDI clock out to hardware (e.g. Digitakt) and that worked fine because the Digitakt's latency is practically zero. Receiving MIDI clock in software is tricky because it assumes zero latency, but there is no such thing as zero latency for audio on general-purpose computers. Using MIDI clock to sync Pd to a master clock from other software would be my last choice.

hjh

Does Ableton Link provide the sync of the song position?
For the moment I managed to start Logic via {abl_link~} in pd, change the tempo, which is all fine so far.
Hopefully, what is the proper way to let pd and logic know the same song position? Would be fine for hybrid settings and recording a performance using both...

Thank you

@JOHN_SIX said:

Does Ableton Link provide the sync of the song position?

No. Ableton documentation explains it better than I could.

https://ableton.github.io/link/

Link Concepts
Link is different from other approaches to synchronizing electronic instruments that you may be familiar with. It is not designed to orchestrate multiple instruments so that they play together in lock-step along a shared timeline. In fact, Link-enabled apps each have their own independent timelines. The Link library maintains a temporal relationship between these independent timelines that provides the experience of playing in time without the timelines being identical.
Playing “in time” is an intentionally vague term that might have different meanings for different musical contexts and different applications. As a developer, you must decide the most natural way to map your application’s musical concepts onto Link’s synchronization model. For this reason, it’s important to gain an intuitive understanding of how Link synchronizes tempo, beat, and phase. Version 3 of Link makes it possible to share start and stop commands.

Your other question:

Hopefully, what is the proper way to let pd and logic know the same song position?

Perhaps use plugdata as a VST in Logic, to send OSC messages containing song position to your standalone Pd.

hjh

...this is very kind! There are helpful video links also in your recommendation. Great

The setup could become Ableton-Link/PD/ Logic Pro. The only issue I have at the moment is to sync Logic and pure data to full measure sync, as the beats alignment already works perfectly fine.
If I start Logic Pro PD does not start. Is it possible at all this way around?
Thank you!