question about HD metronome or bar/beat

[Haniel Trisna]

Hi Digi,
My HD3 system is my first PT setup and I noticed something strange (btw, this is the initial 5.3 release and I have not updated it to the CS2 or the newest 5.3.1 due to fear of downtime)

Since I don't have the MIDI I/O, or SYNC I/O or any MIDI interfaces, I have been recording my externally sequenced (Triton) tracks without it being slaved by PT. After they're in, I set PT's tempo map to whatever bpm settings on the Triton sequencer and line up the first transient to the first grid. The sound is just fine with no distinguishable drift but after a while (2-3 measures), the audio would drift from the grid.

I didn't pay too much attention to this at first but tonight I imported some tracks for a rap artist to be mixed, and he wrote down the bpm on the data CDs that the songs came in.

I did a straight import audio to tracks from those data CDs and I'm pretty sure he uses an AKAI MPC to sequence all his songs. I can not for the life of me set a correct tempo map in PT HD that will let the audio stay synced to the grid. They sound fine, and the first 2 bars will loop just fine, but after that, the drift.

Questions:
Is this a problem with HD ? If it is, is it fixed with 5.3.1 ?
Is this because my PT system is lacking SYNC I/O ?
(I did check that the internal clock is set to INTERNAL)

I tried to use beat detective to extract a tempo map from 2 bars of the hihats, but even that generates variable speeds from a 16th beat to the next.

Has anyone run into this ?

thanks y'all

[Allan Speers]

You are correct, you MUST sync one device to the other with mtc. -or you could slave both to house sync/ mmc, etc. .

Also, be aware that MPC's are notorious for syncing badly.

Once you THINK you have it worked-out, record a hats pattern from the MPC into protools, but do it three seperate times. See if they line up well or not.

good luck! -Sync drives us all crazy.