Hi,
I’m looking cor the way to synchronise cubase with an external sequencer, for exemple Arturia keystep. Ok it’s esasy to have Cubase as master and the keystep as a slave so the tempo are sync but, what i’m looking for is to synchronise the start of the sequencer on a beat. A little bit like in Ableton when you start a scene or a clip, it start on the bit and ends also at the end of the mesure.
But I’m a cubase user and i’d like to have the same behevior with external sequencer. Is there a way to do so?
Thx
Hi @JOEL_MITARD,
I don’t know about the sequencer but I use drum machines and hardware sequencers a lot. I understand your need, in order to do so, your hardware must be able to start on the beat by itself.
Cubase (or any daw) sends MIDI Clock, Start/Stop and Song Position Pointer to machines whenever it starts and plays. If these machines can translate them correctly, they can start on the beat but it can only be done on the machine side and sadly, most machines do not offer such a function. Although it must be possible to build a VST plugin that sends MIDI clock to an exclusive MIDI port and does that, but I don’t think there any exist. If you’ve found such, please let me know. Also it is possible to alter Cubase itself to let users send start/stop from pre-programmed events, but since such demand is so low (until people realize how great it is), I don’t think they will implement such.
2 decades ago, I really wanted such a function for live gigs, I wanted to cut sync from e.g. a 303 or an 808, do some editing then re-sync on the fly. I had asked my hardware engineer friends to build a synchronizer machine, that starts/stops slaves on the beat. It took only a few months to realize, had 2 outputs and could drive them separately. I had used that for some years, and it was great. We were planning to upgrade the machine to get clock from DAW, more channels etc, but then this unit came out from a German company,
This one is perfect, you can start/stop 4 MIDI clocks at any quantized timing you want, can also shift earlier or later, apply shuffle, 1/2 tempo, etc all separately. So we abandoned the project 
and I bought the machine straight away. However this one is a bit pricy, maybe you are not so serious (yet) about the function.
Then I have another smaller one from an Australian company that does the essential function and this one is much more affordable,
http://mungo.com.au/syncZ.html
Hope this helps. Which ever route you take, please tell me updates, I am curious to know. Gl. 
Thanks for all I’ll keep you advised!