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Syncing with your DAW

A NINJAM room has a tempo, and so does your project. They have to agree, and the plugin cannot make that happen by itself.

Matching tempo, then syncing​

  1. Insert Antiphon on your master bus.
  2. Connect. The header turns amber and tells you the tempo does not match.
  3. Set your DAW project tempo to the server's BPM, shown in the header.
  4. The warning clears. The status now reads "Tempo matches. Press Sync, then start the DAW transport."
  5. Click Sync.
  6. Start your DAW transport. The plugin locks the interval grid to that moment.
  7. You are in -- header navy, phase bar moving, transmitting and receiving.

Why can the plugin not just set the tempo?​

Because there is no reliable, host-agnostic way for a plugin to set a DAW's tempo. One other NINJAM client does it by sending OSC to localhost, which works for one DAW in one configuration and is a support burden disguised as a feature.

So Antiphon shows you a warning that clears itself when you match, and leaves the tempo to you. If a standard for this ever appears, the decision gets revisited.

Why is Sync a separate button?​

Because re-syncing mid-jam cuts short the interval you are currently transmitting, and everyone else hears that as a glitch.

Sync only ever happens when you ask for it. An accidental stop and start of your transport will not re-phase a jam in progress. If you do want to re-sync -- you moved something, you want to realign -- press Sync again and restart the transport.

Note that Antiphon locks to the transport start, not to a position on the timeline. In a clip-launching session the timeline advances but is musically meaningless, and jogging the playhead mid-jam is not a real use case. Transport-start covers both common setups without needing to know anything about your arrangement.

tip

Set your DAW's loop to exactly one interval's length. Then the jam and the session agree about where "one" is, and everything you record lands on a bar line.

When the room votes to change tempo​

A passed vote changes the tempo for everyone at the next interval -- including you. In a DAW that means changing your project tempo again and pressing Sync again. There is no way around this; the room moved, and your session has to follow.

Practising alone​

You can run the interval clock without being in a jam. The practice echo plays your own previous interval back to you, one interval late, exactly as the room would hear it -- so you can get the feel of playing to a delay before inflicting it on strangers.

Nothing you play in practice is ever transmitted. That is true at every layer of the plugin, not merely as a UI state, and it is deliberately tested to stay true.

Offline, with no server to define the grid, the interval is derived from the host's own tempo and position, so practising in a project at 120 BPM gives you the interval you would get in a 120 BPM room.