User guide

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 afte r 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.