Ableton Link
More info
- Creator
- Ableton
- Released
- 2016
- Type
- Tempo sync protocol
- License
- GPLv2 (or commercial licence)
- Source
- github.com/Ableton/link
Tempo sync over the local network with no master: every device agrees on the beat among themselves.
MIDI clock needs one device in charge and a cable to every follower. Link, released by Ableton in 2016, flips that around. Apps on the same network find each other via multicast and share tempo, beat and phase, and whoever changes the tempo changes it for everyone. Join mid-song and you land on the right beat instead of starting over.
Each peer keeps its own timeline against a shared reference, so a dropped packet on wifi doesn't immediately show. The library is open source and has spread far beyond Ableton Live, into iOS apps, hardware samplers and rival DAWs. It doesn't carry audio, mind you; that's what Dante and AES67 are for.