[LAU] MTC syncing Ardour to hardware sequencer as a slave

[Brent Busby]

This is my first attempt at getting Ardour to receive MTC.  I am syncing 
it to an Akai MPC2000.  I have set 160bpm on both ends, with Ardour set 
to receive MTC and MMC, and have left fps set to 30.  Sync to MTC is on, 
and QJackCtl has been setup to connect Ardour's virtual port with the 
USB MIDI port that the MTC is coming in through.  The MPC2000 is setup 
to output MTC and MMC, and its frame rate is set to 30fps.

If it completely didn't work, that would be easier to troubleshoot than 
what it is doing:  It works only when seeking forward and back with the 
transport controls, but not when I press record or play on the MPC2000. 
Very strange.

I can move forward and back a bar at a time with the [<] and [>] buttons 
on the Akai, and Ardour will move along perfectly in sync on each 
keypress, keeping to the same point in the timeline.  If I make the Akai 
"Play From Start", it will even jump back to the beginning.

But under no circumstances I have been able to find will it actually 
play.  It knows that a "Play From Start" command requires jumping to the 
beginning, but then that's all it does.  If I arm tracks to record and 
set the system record light flashing, pressing play on the Akai does not 
make Ardour start recording; it just sits there waiting while the Akai 
plays.

I'm probably missing something dumb here.  Is there anything that could 
cause Ardour to track forward and backward seeks through the timeline 
but not start and stop?  It sounds like it's not getting MMC to me, 
except it should be -- it's enabled at both ends.  I'm puzzled.

-- 
+ Brent A. Busby	 + "We've all heard that a million monkeys
+ UNIX Systems Admin	 +  banging on a million typewriters will
+ University of Chicago	 +  eventually reproduce the entire works of
+ Physical Sciences Div. +  Shakespeare.  Now, thanks to the Internet,
+ James Franck Institute +  we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky