Optimising settings for Playaudio1U redundant playback

Hello,

I was wondering if you could please advise on the optimal settings for playaudio1U redundant set up using two macbooks.

My main computer is a 2021 m1 Macbook pro running Sequoia, the back up is a 2019 intel Macbook pro running Ventura (this is the best i can do at the moment, the 2019 will die with new OS).

They are connected directly via ethernet using ethernet dongles and i have them connected through Midi Setup. I am controlling the transport buttons using a Novation Control xl through the Playaudio1u midi host.
I just installed the Beta version 3.0. but it is not working at all unfortunately, lags, freezes and won’t play at all, so maybe I’ll try to stick to 2.0 for now until 3.0 has been tested out a bit more?

Sometimes the system works flawlessly, sync is great and i can toggle between computers with no issue, but i have a few things that happen sometimes that i can’t quite figure out.

  1. Sometimes one of the computers doesn’t show up in ableset settings, but still works

  2. Sometimes they both connect and work, but when it switches from computer A to B, it sometimes glitches out when switching back to A and I have to reset from Auracle and mess around, sometimes restrating ableton until I can use the Sync function in Abletset.

  3. The sync now function doesn’t seem to sync perfectly, usually the computer being synced will be slightly behind the other

  4. Sometimes it randomly skips a song, but I think I have fixxed this by switching off Ablenet toggle on the Playaudio1u HST in midi settings. Does this sound right?

Thanks in advance for any advice !

Hey @TORI, welcome to the forum, and please excuse my late reply!

I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been experiencing issues with the AbleSet 3 beta. I’ve recently released a new beta that addresses the performance issues. If you’d like to try it out, you can download it here.

Regarding your questions:

By default, AbleSet tries to automatically detect and connect to other hosts on the same network, but in some setups this can be unreliable.

If your computers both have a static IP address, could you try entering the IP address of your B computer in your A computer’s “Connect to Custom IPs” setting and vice-versa and check if that helps? You can read more about this setting here.

I’m not sure if this is an AbleSet issue per se, but if you experience this again, could you send me a video so I can take a closer look at this behavior?

The sync function can sometimes lag by a few milliseconds as Live needs some time to process incoming commands. Adding the AbleSet Controller to your project file should improve this latency.

Additionally, you could try enabling Automatic Drift Correction which nudges your playback speed slightly to ensure both computers are perfectly synced.

That sounds correct. Since both computers already receive the same command via MIDI, sending it over the network via AbleNet as well can cause the command to be executed twice. AbleSet has a few measures in place that aim to counter this automatically, but disabling AbleNet is the best choice in your setup.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any further questions or feedback :slight_smile: