Trouble Getting Asheville Pattern to Run in Sync with External MIDI Clock

[martinvilleneuve]

Hi all,

I'm having issues getting Asheville Pattern to play in tempo with an external MIDI clock being sent from Ableton Live via USB. The tap tempo switch LED does turn blue - however, I'm perceiving two issues:

 

1) I believe the tempo drifts over time;

2) The "start" of the Asheville Pattern sequence doesn't line up with the tempo, but rather somewhere between beats 1 and 2, seemingly at random.

 

Based on my research on this, I understand that MIDI clock isn't the most stable to begin with, which may explain issue #1, above. I also understand that the Helix's internal LFO doesn't start/stop with Ableton, it just continues endlessly and adjusts its tempo based on the incoming MIDI clock (or tries to, anyways), which may explain issue #2, above. I've tried pressing the tap tempo switch once on the Helix to reset the LFO in time, I hear that it does something (resetting? sounds like an audio "hiccup"), but it doesn't really help much. Instead of sending a MIDI clock, I've also tried sending the Helix a recurring CC64 MIDI message from Ableton at the correct tempo, and that also works (adjusting the tempo in Ableton causes the Helix tempo to change), but my issues above still seem to remain valid.

 

I'm wondering if anyone can help me. Is this a limitation of the Asheville Pattern effect? I'm assuming the same issues would also happen with a tremolo effect, but I haven't tried yet. Is there a way to override the Helix's LFO to have it "completely slave" to Ableton's tempo?

 

Thanks!