syncing external drum machine
 

Hey guys ....new to pro tools and having a hell of a time syncing protools to my drum machine. I'm using windows....

I've done this with Ableton and it was easy....no so here. The drum machine accepts "clock" or I guess it is referred to as MMC...I think.
I have the cable midi out from the scarlett to the in of the drum machine...
I tried following help in PT but it still didn't work... What can I possibly be missing? Help

This is from the help but I don't see that option in the peripheral window?
4 Deselect Enable SYNC Peripheral if it is selected.

Re: syncing external drum machine
 

I think you want MTC(midi time code). You need to either tell Pro Tools to sync to incoming midi, or tell the drum machine to follow MTC(which means you need midi going in both directions. Since a drum machine is rock steady for tempo, you could also simply record the drum machine to AUDIO tracks, and then set the tempo in Pro Tools to match it. This is another lesson in itself and I am not the one to teach it, but its a valuable one, to say the least. Hopefully someone with more experience on this will chime in soon:o

Re: syncing external drum machine
 

Hi

Here are some things to look into :

Enabling MIDI Machine Control in Pro Tools
Pro Tools as MMC Master

When Pro Tools is the Master, it sends MMC commands to the slave device and receives MTC information back from the slave device.

To slave an external device to Pro Tools using MIDI Machine Control:

1 Connect a MIDI Out port on your Pro Tools MIDI interface to an appropriate port on the slave device.
2 Connect the MTC out from the slave device to a MIDI In port on your Pro Tools MIDI Inter- face.
3 In Pro Tools, choose Setup > Peripherals and click the Synchronization tab.
4 Deselect Enable SYNC Peripheral if it is se- lected.
5 From the MTC Reader Port pop-up menu, se- lect the MIDI In port to which the slave device is connected (the source of MTC information from the slave device).
6 Click the Machine Control tab in the Peripherals dialog.
7 In the MIDI Machine Control (Master) section, select Enable.
8 In the MIDI Machine Control (Master) section, select the MIDI Out port to which the slave de- vice is connected from the pop-up menu.
9 Set the MMC ID number for which this information will be sent in the “ID” field.

MMC commands contain an ID number to iden- tify which machine should respond to the MMC command. There are 128 MMC ID numbers, from 0–127. The default of ID #127 is a special setting that transmits to all 128 MMC IDs. With a setting of 127, Pro Tools will transmit MMC commands to all MMC IDs.

10 Set a pre-roll time for your MMC slave device. Pre-roll is needed to provide the device with sufficient time to lock to the timecode transmitted by Pro Tools. This value will vary depending on the external device. If the pre-roll time is insuf- ficient, the device may not be ready to lock until after the current timecode position has passed.
11 Click OK to close the Peripherals dialog.
12 In the Pro Tools Transport window, choose
Transport = MMC.

Pro Tools will now be able to control the se- lected device’s transport and act as the clock master.

13 To have the Pro Tools transport chase the playback location of the slave device, click the Online button in the Transport window.

From Tools Reference Guide: Chapter 50: Working with Synchronization Page 1155

Hope this helps out somewhat.

Best Regards
Christopher