KP3 Sync Failure

[dayuri]

I feel the pain. I totally gave up on MIDI syncing a week after I got the thing. I still like it a lot, and I do use it occasionally, but rarely for anything much more than an effects box and for when I'm producing.

If the MIDI issue was a software one I'm sure Korg would have fixed it by now. The best we can do is wait for the KP4, or just look for alternatives. When I get the money I'm going to upgrade to an MPC.

The USB method is a nifty one.

[m4m]

given that the kp3 was not made in 2009, i don't see your point.
what piece of hardware do you have that has pitch accurate tempo shifting just out of curiosity? and was it developed at the same time as the kp3?

my 1999 ef 303 understood MIDI start

you mean like the RC 20/50?
or my esx?

[salamanderanagram]

??
you wrote

(changing tempo ahnages pitch, how lame is that for 2009?)

i responded

given that the kp3 was not made in 2009, i don't see your point.

i'm not talking about MIDI start, clearly.
but if you want it to start at the same time as you hit play, there are MIDI messages that can be sent to do so very easily. use loop type 3 and you can toggle the a, b, c, and d buttons to start the loops with note on/off messages. if you think about it, it's a lot more useful and cool than just midi start/stop.

as for tempo shifting, looks like there are some things out there that do what you want, you should use those instead of ragging on the kp3.

[m4m]

no you don't get my point
the midi start is primordial because if i recorded live loops in the KP3 and press stop on the main clock to do a break/etc, i want the loops to stop or at least re sync when i press play again otherwise there is no way it would be perfectly locked, no matter how tight i am, at least if the loop reset was assignable to a midi CC or note# it would help(i used to do a lot of stop for 1 beat then start back, which is totally impossible with the current KP3 implementation)

but i went past that already anyway, never using stop, just muting all tracks, pretty unfortunate for the 1 beat breaks, but i can live with it, adaptation i guess

the note workaround is lame IMOHO (i used to do that with my boss dr sample) and it will mess things up when sampling
and thinking about it, i'd have(and had to) to sacrifice notes on the electribe to do so anyway as you can't put all 4 samples on the same note IIRC, so 4 parts would need to be wasted (1 ok, the crash can do it, but 4, no thanks)

anyway the kp4 is probably just on the corner and i guess that will have been taken care of, hence the lack of update on the KP3

[salamanderanagram]

loop type 3 retriggers the loop from the start does it not?
it should not be hard to use this essentially the same way as midi start.

edit, yep looked it up. loop type 3 will re-trigger the loop whenever the appropriate pad or midi is received. i think this is awesome and way better than just midi start starting all tracks at once or whatever.

[m4m]

last reply to this as you don't seem to get my point and i don't want to hijack the thread
mode 3 ok, but then i need to rewrite all my songs to 4 bars and waste 4 parts on the tribe to trigger them, not practical

it should be just normal behavior to reset loops on midi start, be it with a computer sequencer or hardware, the loopers should also be set to obey this

talking about the loopers, why are the mini kp loopers algo better? like restarting from the top when on hold and touched at another length instead of just weirdly change the loop lenght as it does on the KP3, but i guess it's another thread by itself

anyway my point is, they should at LEAST have the midi sync start/stop/continue optional for us who don't have the luxury of unlimited tracks (electribe users in particular)

it's not because it works for you that it works for everybody, i sell music gear in a store and i took back many KP3 for this and got many more complaints about this, seen as a bug by most users, this and the pitch change with tempo change which is something people expect to be live/acid like in a device that new)

[salamanderanagram]

the kp3 does what you need it to. the fact that you don't want to waste the drum pads to actually do it (BTW it would be one pad if you thought for a minute, not 4, but whatever, and there's no reason things would need to be 4 bars either, but hey...) is your own thing. and as a seller of the device it's not like you were taken by surprise by this so quit complaining.

[Ianofslippers]

Jrizzo, I'm having the exact same problems as you and I'm equally frustrated.

Xmlguy, I came to the same understanding as you already and currently use my KP3 in the manner that you have ascribed above.

Anyone else? The thing that is really getting to me is that I feel like even though my sound loops are not MIDI loops I should still be able to bump them into perfect alignment with an external drum machine (or whatever) right? BUT, the way the KP3 allows you to bump your beats into place is by using increments of ".1" right? I'm finding this to be not a fine enough method of shifting the loop on to the beat.
So for example, my machines BPM's have been synced, no problem, I grab a sample loop from my external drum machine, but I can here that the loop and the drum machine are slightly out of sync. it sounds pretty cool, BUT I know that in a minute or to my bass drums are gonna start sounding sloppy as hell, fine sometimes, not fine all the time. So I go to bump the KP3 back on time, BUT, on time is somewhere between "0.0" and "0.1", so I'm stuck, am I screwed or does anyone know a way around this?

[Ianofslippers]

I'd like to add that I don't have a computer that use to connect via USB. So if anyone has some awesome advice for me, please take that into account.

Thanks
!

P>S> Anyone know if it's possible to adjust the volume of one of the loop backs without the KP3 muting everything else? finding this awkward in that I'm trying to jam live loops together and when everything drops it sounds not so good.

[Ianofslippers]

Jrizzo, I'm having the exact same problems as you and I'm equally frustrated.

Xmlguy, I came to the same understanding as you already and currently use my KP3 in the manner that you have ascribed above.

Anyone else? The thing that is really getting to me is that I feel like even though my sound loops are not MIDI loops I should still be able to bump them into perfect alignment with an external drum machine (or whatever) right? BUT, the way the KP3 allows you to bump your beats into place is by using increments of ".1" right? I'm finding this to be not a fine enough method of shifting the loop on to the beat.
So for example, my machines BPM's have been synced, no problem, I grab a sample loop from my external drum machine, but I can here that the loop and the drum machine are slightly out of sync. it sounds pretty cool, BUT I know that in a minute or to my bass drums are gonna start sounding sloppy as hell, fine sometimes, not fine all the time. So I go to bump the KP3 back on time, BUT, on time is somewhere between "0.0" and "0.1", so I'm stuck, am I screwed or does anyone know a way around this?

[jrizzo]

I'd like to add that I don't have a computer that use to connect via USB. So if anyone has some awesome advice for me, please take that into account.

I don't use a computer either. It's part of the band ethos: All hardware, no software. (Yes, most hardware runs software even if it isn't a computer -- bite me.) To re-sync, just stop and restart the loop. It will stay in sync for 5 minutes or so if your timing's halfway decent. Don't worry, the interruptions will keep your music interesting.

P>S> Anyone know if it's possible to adjust the volume of one of the loop backs without the KP3 muting everything else? finding this awkward in that I'm trying to jam live loops together and when everything drops it sounds not so good.

If this is a troll, RTFM. If not, hold Shift and press the loop of your choice. The touchpad is now four virtual sliders that control the volume of each loop. Beware, you must disable HOLD first. Doing this when HOLD is active will stop your loops and cause everyone on the dance floor to suddenly spill their Tequizas.

[didjeko]

There is one thing I don't understand here, because I went playing the KP with other musicians or machines and my loops stood in sync all the time ???
Case 1 : I was jammin with a friend, he was playing some synths or rythm boxes on the PC, just with the mouse, and I was able to be in sync and even to resample my loops
Case 2 : I lauch a loop in soundForge or Protools, then I play over the loop with the Kaoss and there are no sync problems.

[Pastor-of-Muppets]

P>S> Anyone know if it's possible to adjust the volume of one of the loop backs without the KP3 muting everything else? finding this awkward in that I'm trying to jam live loops together and when everything drops it sounds not so good.

If this is a troll, RTFM. If not, hold Shift and press the loop of your choice. The touchpad is now four virtual sliders that control the volume of each loop.

I think you need the v2.0 update for this to work

[mitspats]

I'll buy one of your KP3 for $200.

The loop is not synced to midi AT ALL. Midi is used to set the BPM. The BPM is used to set the exact sample length for the number of bars you select. Then when you hit play - the sample is audio looped.

If you sample/resample different audio into the 4 different pads at the same BPM, they will keep in sync forever - WITHIN THE KP3. They are unsynced with the outside world.

I think the real problem is that you apparently don't know the difference between audio looping and midi looping. Buy the 2880 if you wish, but it won't work the way you expect either. That's because what you expect of audio looping seems to be the problem. Audio loopers are like a circular piece of magnetic tape. You can speed up or slow down the tape - but the machine doesn't really "know" what's on the tape or how to keep the recording in sync with anything else. Imagine that the tape is halfway in the middle of playing a huge bass whole note of the sample. What's it supposed to do if it gets a midi sync? Jump to the beginning of the loop? Speed up? Slow down? It doesn't even "know" what it's playing - it's just a stream of bits that are different than what came before and follows. All it can do is play the bits faster or slower based on what you tell it to do.

The KP3 can set the length of the loop based on what it receives via midi, or somewhat unreliably on what it "hears" with the AutoBPM function, but once the loop is running - the contents are not synced to anything but other loops inside the KP3. It's like having four loops of tape driven by a single motor - the tapes will keep in good physical sync - but the content will not be in sync unless they were recorded in sync too. The aligning functions only adjust the position of the tapes relative to each other, so that they will stay in sync if the contents are also in sync. (although some of the functions allow each tape to be start playing independent of each other).

Tape isn't a perfect analogy/metaphor, but it's the closest I can come up with. The KP3 doesn't really "know" the content of the sample at all. It does not slice up the samples and then trigger the samples with midi - that is midi looping. The KP3 slicing functions are just equally divided sections of the sample - regardless of the content.

To do what you want requires that you slice the samples and trigger them with midi. That will keep in perfect sync forever. The difference is that the individual samples are just small snippets that are played - and the contents of the samples themselves are not sync'ed to anything - they are over and done with in a fraction of a second. The music you hear when the snippets are repeatedly triggered using midi is in perfect sync, so long as the samples don't overlap each other if you increase the BPM. That is midi looping of audio samples. The KP3 doesn't do that. It does audio looping of audio samples. If you sample one-shots/slices onto the 4 pads, then you can midi loop them with another sequencer. That would be midi looping on an external sequencer of the KP3 audio samples.

nope.....that proved wrong.....

[mitspats]

"If you sample/resample different audio into the 4 different pads at the same BPM, they will keep in sync forever - WITHIN THE KP3. They are unsynced with the outside world. "

that actually doesn t happen...and its wrong.