Master Slave Connection

General
1

Hi,

Our music setup is as follows:

2 playback options: keyboard or Ableton

2 MacBooks with Ableton/Ableset/Logic

MacBook 1 = instrument station for additional keyboard and guitar sounds

MacBook 2 = connected to the mixing console, combines playback (Ableton or keyboard) + guitar + additional keyboards in Logic and sends the signal to the mixing console

The playlist is controlled from the MacBooks or tablets.

Current problem:

MacBooks 1 and 2 are connected. MacBook 1 has the same song names and locators, but not the exact same complete projects. MacBook 1 is only used for plugin sounds for keys and guitar. If they’re running in sync and I make a change in one of the plugins, the connection usually breaks and they run out of sync.

So my question is: Is there a good solution, or is there a way to set up a master-slave relationship between the MacBooks so that on MacBook 1 (slave), the plugins are still editable, but positions, projects, etc., all align with MacBook 2 (master)?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Best regards,

Florian

2

Hey @Flo, as far as I know, there’s no way to only synchronize just the locators between projects.

However, if you’re only using the first MacBook to run plugins, you could try mapping your locators in that project file to incoming MIDI notes or CC and send those MIDI messages from your second MacBook to trigger the respective locators.

This would also mean that you didn’t have to run AbleSet on your first computer. To send MIDI from one computer to the other, take a look at this tutorial: How to Send MIDI Between 2 Macs via Ethernet

Let me know if this helps! :slight_smile:

3

Hi, thanks for your reply.

So, would you use CC instead of Ableset to select the Ableton projects on MacBook 1?

Isn’t that actually a standard scenario, which is why Ableset is usually the standard solution? We thought that Ableset offered the option to connect two hosts.

Best regards,

Flo

4

AbleSet’s redundancy features are more geared towards two computers running the exact same project file so if one crashes, the other one can take over without any audio dropouts.

You can also make changes between the two projects as long as all locators are the same and keep using AbleSet for synchronizing them, but for your setup, it might be easier to go with the MIDI route so you’re more flexible in how you set up your keys computer.

You can then still keep using AbleSet on your main computer for managing the setlist and jumping between songs.

5

Hi,

All right. We’ve now solved this by setting up an OSC connection and using a script to send the song name to the “master” MacBook. It generally works, but sometimes it doesn’t work with long names or those containing umlauts. However, if you manually send the command via OSC with the song title, it always works. Does Ableset occasionally recognize the wrong information?

Here’s the script:

// Song select
onOscChange("/setlist/activeSongName", (songName) => {
  if (!songName) return;

  sendOsc(
    ":MacBook2/setlist/jumpToSong",
    songName[0]
  );
});

// Play sync
onOscChange("/global/isPlaying", (isPlaying) => {
  if (isPlaying) {
    sendOsc(":MacBook2/global/play");
  }
});
1 Like