syncing H9 and H90 with tap tempo

[d.talma]

Hi,

when I bought my H90, I first thought I’d sell my H9, but they are actually ‘three of a perfect pair’ (to use a King Crimson title)

There is only one thing I am stuck with. My idea was to use the H90 as clock master with tap tempo enabled, and that the H9 would always follow the tempo tapped on the H90. I cannot get it to work. Is this not possible, or do I miss a setting?

What I did: connect midi out of H90 to midi in of H9.

On the H90 tempo is set to global, and mid to ‘transmit’. I cannot find separate clock transmit settings

On the H9: enable midi input clock: yes, midi filter: no, midi output clock: no.

Then I load a delay preset on the H90 with tap tempo enabled, and on the H9 also a delay preset which is tempo enabled. When I tap the H90, the tempo of the H90 changes, but the H9 doesn’t change. When I try to tap the tempo on the H9 it is doesn’t respond, which indicates that it is indeed ‘listening’ to the midi clock input. When I check the tempo displays I can also see that the H90 follows what I tap, but the H9 is fixed in the tempo that was set when midi clock input was enabled.

Any help or tips are appreciated,

Daniel

 

[brock]

In the H9 system settings -> [MIDI] -> [OUTPUT], check the entry for THRU (not XMIT).

[d.talma]

Hi, thanks for the suggestion! Checked this, but doesn’t seem to make a difference. Any idea if this should work from tap tempo?

Thanks, Daniel

 

[tbskoglund]

It sounds like you have set everything up correctly. Just to be sure, when you load a Preset on the H9, you are selecting the TEMPO ON box in H9 control? Once you do this, it should display the BPM of the MIDI clock that the H9 is receiving. A few other things you can try:

• Use a different MIDI cable
• If you have another device that generates MIDI clock, see if you can get the H9 to sync to that
• If you have another device that receives MIDI clock, see if you can sync it to the H90

[d.talma]

Hi

thanks for these very good suggestions… Tried 3 different cables, no difference. But then I hooked up ProTools with a midi interface and enabled send midi clock to midi interface, and connected that to the H9. (midi out mac -> midi in on H9) The activity led on the midi interface flickers very quickly when I press play, indicating that midi clock is being sent. (i checked the right ports etc.)

Still no luck. Then I decided to connect the H9 through USB to ProTools, and choose the H9 directly as the midi output for midi clock. Now it synced immediately… As you said, the display shows the incoming clock tempo. Good to see that, at least I now know what it looks like when it works.

But for some reason it doesn’t want to sync to the midi input, only to USB And that baffles me, because I cannot find any other settings which can control this.

So, a lot wiser, but still not a working system…

[tbskoglund]

Ok, glad to hear some progress is being.

Does the MIDI input on the H9 work when you send a PC message from the H90?

Make sure the MIDI channels are the same on both devices and that the H90 has transmit ON. If you load any Program on the H90, this will send send a PC message and should change the preset on the H9.

 

[d.talma]

Hi again, well, it seems that the midi input of the H9 is simply not working. I sent some PC from ProTools, if I send them over USB they H9 responds, if I send the same PC over MIDI, the H9 does not respond. So… I did a reset the H9 to factory, re-did all the settings, and wow, now it is working!

Thanks for all your help!

[brock]

d.talma wrote:

… if I send them over USB they H9 responds, if I send the same PC over MIDI, the H9 does not respond. So… I did a reset the H9 to factory, re-did all the settings, and wow, now it is working! …

Excellent.  And baffling, because it seemed like you were taking all the right steps.  It was working here, so what could be different?

One thing to look out for, and this gets everybody at one point or another:  The H9 USB will override the MIDI DIN input, when USB is physically plugged in.

In other words, DIN can stay plugged in & active as long as it’s by itself.  Plug in USB, and it takes over the duties of MIDI DIN.

[d.talma]

Thanks for the heads up, that was something I indeed discovered along the way, while I was testing the PC. That is a bit confusing, and unexpected, but on the other hand maybe logical… The funny thing was that I don’t want the PC to work, and those never worked when I was setting up the clock, so the midi input was apparently in a ‘confused’ state.

I now switched receive omni off on the H9, and set PC to receive on channel 16, while the H90 sends them on channel 1. So the PC do not arrive, and the clock does, so now I can use them independent, but at the same time have all time based effects in the same tempo, which is really cool.

Very kind of you to help diagnosing the problem.

 

Daniel

[tbskoglund]

Glad to hear you got this working!

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