MIDI Clock Sync: Keep Your Gear in Time

MIDI Clock Basics

MIDI clock sends 24 pulses per quarter note (PPQN), letting devices share tempo. When you press play on your master, Start and Clock messages tell slaves when to begin and at what speed. Stop and Continue messages handle pausing and resuming. This keeps drum machines, sequencers, and effects in sync.

Best Practices

• Designate one master: Your DAW, a drum machine, or MIDI Lab's Infinite Engine. Everything else follows.
• Use MIDI thru boxes: Daisy-chaining MIDI thru ports can add latency. A thru box splits the signal without delay.
• Allow lock time: Some devices need a few beats to lock to clock. Start playback a bar or two before you need perfect sync in live setups.

MIDI Lab as Clock Master

The Infinite Engine can act as master when streaming to hardware. Set the tempo, and MIDI clock flows to your devices along with the note data. Useful for syncing hardware sequencers, arpeggiators, or LFOs to the AI-generated patterns. See Web MIDI for setup.