Tempest Clock Timing

[Polysix]

Hi Everyone,

New to the Tempest here. I noticed something funny with the Tempest drifting so I've recorded a 70BPM kick drum track of 4 bars for about 30 seconds, nothing synced and the Tempest is set to master.

Recording into Reaper and again to Ableton, after not even 2 bars, the kick drums are drifting off time in the DAW by an audible amount.

My Tascam 234 4 track is more accurate than this when recording back into the DAW.

Any idea what's up? The internal clock cannot be this far off can it? My MPC does not have this issue.

Lastest OS with calibrations done. This is from the main outs, with only the kick drum recorded into the beat.

https://postimg.cc/gallery/2uarc4v3i/

The photos are for 1 bar, 2 bars then 4 bars zoomed out.

Tested with Tempest as slave to MPC master clock, timing is magnitudes tighter.

[muleskinner]

Ironically for a drum machine from the supposed 'father of midi' the Tempest's internal clock is notorious for drifting all over the place.

I always run it as a slave when recording or running in tandem with other gear.

[Yorgos Arabatzis]

Which MPC do you have?I have an MPC Live and this is exactly how i use it..MPC Master -> Tempest Slave..

[John the Savage]

Hi Everyone,

New to the Tempest here. I noticed something funny with the Tempest drifting so I've recorded a 70BPM kick drum track of 4 bars for about 30 seconds, nothing synced and the Tempest is set to master.

Recording into Reaper and again to Ableton, after not even 2 bars, the kick drums are drifting off time in the DAW by an audible amount.

My Tascam 234 4 track is more accurate than this when recording back into the DAW.

Any idea what's up? The internal clock cannot be this far off can it? My MPC does not have this issue.

Lastest OS with calibrations done. This is from the main outs, with only the kick drum recorded into the beat.

https://postimg.cc/gallery/2uarc4v3i/

The photos are for 1 bar, 2 bars then 4 bars zoomed out.

Tested with Tempest as slave to MPC master clock, timing is magnitudes tighter.

I'm afraid your suspicions about the Tempest's timing are absoluting spot on.  Unfortunately, the Tempest's internal clock really is as "far off" as you've observed.  It's a problem to be sure.  What's worse is, it used to be so much more accurate in the early days of the operating system, but now it's practically unusable as a master clock.  At any rate, it's a well-documented issue, and you'll find lots of commiseration about it in this thread here:

https://forum.sequential.com/index.php/topic,1645.0.html

The only solution, as you've already discovered, is to slave the Tempest to a more stable clock source.  Believe it or not, I use a lowly Alesis SR-18 drum machine to clock my Tempest, because the SR-18 (all $200.xx of it) can go for hours unsynced without drifting.  It's a sad state of affairs (sigh).

Cheers!