I'm using the Ableton Link package to sync 12 computers in my technology ensemble and it's working very well so far. However, I'm finding that changing the tempo of the shared clock is difficult, or at best inelegant, when there is more than one computer involved. My guess is that it's an issue of the computers checking in with each other over the Link and resetting each others' information.

To be clear, all the computers in this case are running Max, not Live or any other Link-enabled app.

It can be done (as shown in the package examples) using an attrui connected to a link.beat object. Clicking and dragging on the tempo shown will change it for all connected machines, but it's jumpy and unreliable. Sometimes it tracks the mouse well, but often it will reset or stop on intermediate values. More important, I have found no way to reliably control tempo via messages—it works when no other computers are connected, but with even one other machine on the network, if I send a tempo change to link.beat (e.g. via a "tempo $1" message box), it usually will not even register. It appears to be immediately overwritten by data coming back over the network from the other machine.

Has anyone out there encountered and (hopefully) solved this issue? One approach is to send a train of tempo messages until they stick, but it seems like there must be a better way.

Thanks, Eric Honour