# LiveMTC 'drop outs' with Ableton Live

**URL:** <https://forum.showsync.com/t/livemtc-drop-outs-with-ableton-live/2680>\
**Category:** Sync tools\
**Created:** [February 2, 2026, 1:48pm UTC](https://forum.showsync.com/t/livemtc-drop-outs-with-ableton-live/2680 "2026-02-02T13:48:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![johyde](https://forum.showsync.com/user_avatar/forum.showsync.com/johyde/32/1700_2.png) [@johyde](https://forum.showsync.com/u/johyde)\
**Post date:** [February 2, 2026, 1:48pm UTC](https://forum.showsync.com/t/livemtc-drop-outs-with-ableton-live/2680/1 "2026-02-02T13:48:17Z")

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Hi. LiveMTC has been super useful for a project I’m working on, so thanks guys. However, I am having an issue. It seems to ‘drop out’ every now and again, usually in the same parts of the track. What I mean by this is all the numbers disappear and ‘waiting for MTC device’ appears, for anything between say .1 of a sec to 2 secs. Unfortunately this really messes things up with the software I’m syncing with so I really need to sort it it out. So if anyone has ideas I’d love to hear them.

Couple of things:

1. It is a fairly complex track in Ableton and I’m using lots of complex automation (some of it controlling lights). However, it looks OK - Live’s CPU meter never goes above about 45%, and everything looks OK in the Activity monitor (says around 7-8% system and 18-20% user). So it doesn’t look like it’s a CPU load thing (but maybe I’m missing something?)

2. It’s quite a long track with a few tempo changes, and I’ve got around those by doing a ‘manual reset’ of the timecode via automation to compensate for the ‘jumps’ you get in the timecode when the tempo changes. But I should say that the places where I’m getting these dropouts are NOT the places where I’m making the tempo changes, so it might be related but I don’t think directly.

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**Author:** ![Jean-Paul](https://forum.showsync.com/user_avatar/forum.showsync.com/jean-paul/32/1898_2.png) [@Jean-Paul](https://forum.showsync.com/u/Jean-Paul)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2026, 5:13pm UTC](https://forum.showsync.com/t/livemtc-drop-outs-with-ableton-live/2680/2 "2026-02-03T17:13:39Z")

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Hi there, and welcome to the forum!

I’m leaning towards assuming that tempo automation is the culprit here. Please take a look at [this topic](https://forum.showsync.com/t/about-livemtc-and-tempo-automation/736), where @Mattijs breaks down why tempo automation can cause glitches for LiveMTC.