[Question] Midi Time Clock sync

[EclectickMedia]

Im in love with the software so far, but ive found no mention of MTC sync. Im hoping to use carla instances as "rack mounted" synths to extend a hardware synth/groovebox setup, but this becomes less useful if i cant modify tempo/transport over MTC.

its use across the hardware world really makes me want to lean on it. Having to update arpegiators and synced Leos manually is not ideal...

Is MTC sync a supported (or upcoming) feature? If it is, where would I find docs for setting it up?

[falkTX]

There is a project which I have worked on that support MIDI Clock, and shared similar code regarding time to carla (since I coded both parts) called mod-host.
When using carla with jack transport, other applications (like mod-host or ardour) can be the transport master and be slaved to midi clock. It is not the simplest setup though.

In any case, I definitely see the usefulness of this request.
Once things stabilize on the mod-host side (mostly just need to get the jitter reduction algorithm right) I can import its code into Carla.
Expect this for Carla v2.2

[SpotlightKid]

I think there are two features that need to talked about separately:

1. Syncing the tempo of arps, LFOs, delays, etc. to an external clock or the host tempo.

2. Controlling the transport state (start / stop / pause etc.) and position via MIDI.

For 1. MIDI Clock (status byte 0xF8) is usually sufficient. If an external device should provide the MIDI clock, some means of syncing the host tempo is needed. It sounds like the mod-host solution falktx is talking about does that?

In th meanwhile, I suggest that Carla takes the role of the jack transport timebase master. I.e. you set the tempo in Carla's transport settings. You can then use the mclk.l2 plugin to generate the MIDI clock, synced to the host tempo, and send it to your MIDI outputs.

2. To control the JACK transport state via MIDI, there are several solutions; one is a simple JACK client, which translates specific MIDI commands into JACK transport commands, such as this one.

This could be expanded to also control the JACK transport position via further MMC or MTC Cueing commands.