TC-Helicon VoiceLive 3 - Firmware 1.2 Manual Addendum (MIDI Sync) - Manual (Page 5)

MIDI Sync
VoiceLive 3 Reference manual – firmware 1.2 addendum – 2015-03-17 3
Basic user interface/
menu structure changes
First, there has been a small user interface
change to clean up some of the menus, now that
there’s a lot more things to control externally with
VoiceLive 3.
The SETUP > BUTTONMAP tab has been re-
moved. We replaced it with separate MIC CON-
TROL and FOOTSWITCH tabs.
The options you’ll see on each tab are dynamic
based on what selections you’ve made.
For example, if you choose “MP-75” or “e835FX”
(i.e., a one button Mic Control™ microphone)
from the INPUT menu, you will only see “Mic
Switch Function” and “Mic Switch Mode” op-
tions on the Mic Control tab.
If you choose “MP-76” instead, you will see op-
tions for each of the four buttons (with Latched/
Momentary controls for each button).
MIDI Sync
MIDI sync allows you to send tempo information
from an external device (computer, keyboard,
sampler etc.) to VoiceLive 3 and have it maintain
the same tempo as the Master device.
To enable MIDI Tempo, navigate to the SETUP –
MIDI menu and turn MIDI Tempo ON.
VoiceLive 3 can act as a MIDI Tempo slave only.
It cannot generate or send MIDI Tempo.
When sending MIDI Tempo to VoiceLive 3, it is
advisable to offset your Tempo or Audio informa-
tion by roughly 70 milliseconds.
In programs such as Ableton Live, Tempo offset
is available in the Sync menu. You can “line up”
the tempo and audio as follows:
► Turn MIDI Sync in VoiceLive 3 ON.
► Turn MET in VoiceLive 3 ON.
► Activate the audio metronome in your DAW
(Ableton etc.).
► Activate MIDI Tempo output in your DAW.
► Listen to the sounds of the audio metronomes
from your DAW and from VoiceLive 3.
► Adjust the Tempo offset until the audio metro-
nome sound from your DAW aligns with Voice-
Live 3’s MET.
Looping and MIDI Sync
The easy question is: “Will VoiceLive 3’s looper
stay in time with MIDI Tempo I send to it?”
The answer is a bit more complex – but essen-
tially „yes“.
If you have not yet recorded a loop and are feed-
ing MIDI Tempo to VoiceLive 3, the MET will be
set to the incoming tempo, and the loop will be
recorded at that tempo.
If you change tempo after recording your loop,
the loop will not time-stretch or otherwise trans-
form to stay on time. This is consistent with
VoiceLive 3’s existing looper behavior. Tempo
gets “locked” after you record your first loop.
The exception to the above is at the end of a
loop. When the end of a loop comes around, it
will attempt to restart the loop on the next MIDI
Tempo beat. This allows for minor drift in the in-
coming MIDI Tempo value. Again, it’s not intend-
ed for changing tempo during the performance
with the looper running, but can adjust to slight
variations.
Additionally, the looper will respond to MIDI
Tempo values with precision higher than 1 beat
per minute. So if you send a tempo such as
118.4 BPM from Ableton, VoiceLive 3 will follow
that tempo, although the display will show 118.