Connecting Cross DJ to Ableton

[Stormcaller]

OK, so I have come over from being an Ableton DJ to using Cross, as it means I don't need to spend every waking minute warping tracks to use with Ableton and lets me scratch and use jogwheels, which are crap in Ableton, however, Ableton's effects are both more versatile and chainable so I am testing a setup where I route audio from Cross, to Soundflower, to Ableton, to my interface.

In my initial testing this works perfectly, however, if I want to switch from a 2/4 deck workflow to an Ableton workflow mid performance, or I want to use effects that are dependant on tempo such as beat repeats and phasers, I need to tap tempo Ableton to get it to sync with whatever is playing in Cross.

Is it possible to get Cross to output MIDI sync data from the beatgrid to a MIDI port? This means I could just route it to Ableton and let it sync up with that, meaning all I might need to do is define the downbeat by tap-tempoing once in Ableton.

At the moment I am using the mid-tier Cross DJ, if this is something that needs the next tier up (Cross... Really Cross... Furious?) then I will upgrade.

I currently don't have a decent jogwheel controller but I have a second hand VCI 300 being shipped to me right now. I was using the iPad remote and a Twister to control Cross on my last set, and once the VCI shows up make an edited MIDI map so the VCI is mapped to Cross, the mixer on the VCI is mapped in Ableton and the Twister/Launchpad I was using before to handle everything else in Ableton.

[daniel clark]

not to familiar with all you are asking ,,but have a little bit of info

think you are wanting to use the MIDI beat clock ,, check the search function for such ,,or search postings by lillian ,, he was championing this issue a while back ,, will search also and try to post a link ,,
not shure how far you want to expand your set up ,,Cross supports hid and time code,,plus has full vid section ,ie vid sampler ,, so upgrading is a choice if you want to use thease features
the vci300 i think is supported in Cross DJ software and altering the mappings is relevity easy ,,and some MIDI monsters still take the challenge to help with users issues and help ,
so welcome to mixvibes ,and till more informed users give better info search the topic pages for realvent answers

[daniel clark]

first link ,, sorry bout mis speeling nilian name
viewtopic.php?f=359&t=27399
:cool:

second link ,,might be old but might give some insight ,
viewtopic.php?f=359&t=11091

[Stormcaller]

Thanks for that, your link is pretty much how i'm doing it, except i'm running on a mac so I'm using Soundflower instead of Jack (Jack on Mac is in beta so I'm sticking with Soundflower as its a bit more tried and tested). I want to thoroughly test it before I go live with it.

MIDI beat clock/crossclock sounds exactly like what I'm asking for. Hopefully it will be available natively in a future version. I'm experimenting with it now but having some issues getting it to work...

The VCI 300 is definitely supported natively, it was one of the reasons why I shortlisted it. Its both old enough to be supported by everything and popular enough to be plentiful so I would get a good deal on one. I will experiment with VJing so I might upgrade for that reason.

[daniel clark]

any in your endevors feel free

[Stormcaller]

Well, so far I've had no joy getting the MIDI mapping and Cross clock to speak to each other. Here was no instruction to create a MIDI loopback on Mac and it seemed to create 2 virtual MIDI ports, so I'm assuming that those are the loopbacks. This might be why. I am gonna PM the guy that wrote Cross clock about it.

[daniel clark]

sounds like a plan

[Stormcaller]

Bumping, Anyone else got this to work on mac? It refuses to work for me and the dev never responded to PM...

[P_Jean]

No MIDI Clock in Cross ... so , No work with another software ...
Go here if you want to see a process , very good work ....
http://danlin.de/projekte/crossclock/

[daniel clark]

this might make a lot of user happy ,