whoa you can actually get through to Roland customer service? jk, here’s some helpful starting points (I can’t check the video due to being at work right now but I’ll scope it at home.)

Have you tried swapping out midi cables to see if there’s a short or something?

Can you get the your korg unit to slave to the MC505? (this would point to a damaged midi out jack on the MC505)

Can you disable any song position pointers in the MC505 and see if the problem persists?

Have you tried changing channels to an unused one on the 2880? Looks like the MC505 transmits polyphonic aftertouch which could bog down the 2880.

Did you try changing the 2880’s midi channel? I think out of the box it’s midi channel 16/omni on

And there’s a bit of speculation as to why the 2880 got the axe – maybe there wasn’t enough of a market for a $400 looper, maybe the CF cards in smaller sizes are becoming more difficult to source [or maybe they wanted to redo the architecture so it could record on larger cards], maybe they’re discontinuing everything in the sheetmetal enclosures in favor of redoing everything in the diecast xo boxes.

The 2880 can sync to Reason fine?

Someone from Roland contacted us and we looked into this problem. I happened to have both an MC-505 and 2880 at home. Here is what we found:

In summary the 2880 and MC-505 don’t get along too well as far as MIDI Clock syncing goes. The MC-505’s MIDI Clock tempo is too erratic for the 2880 to properly follow it. I don’t know what version of the MC-505 software I have, for some reason when I tried to check the software version on power up, it wouldn’t work, it went straight to the first pattern.

Here are the tests I performed:

LISTENING TESTS
1. Connected the MIDI OUT from the MC-505 to the MIDI IN on the 2880. Set the MC-505 to output MIDI Clock. Enabled MIDI Clock on the 2880.
2. Attempted to record a loop on the 2880 with the MC-505 providing the tempo, it wouldn’t work, the 2880 would stop recording after a couple beats.
3. Instead I recorded a loop on the 2880 using its own internal clock, then I allowed it to sync to the MC-505’s MIDI Clock for playback of the loop. It seemed to work fine but then I started noticing that the speed of the 2880’s loop kept changing. The loop would go out of tune somewhat randomly. This is a sign that the MIDI Clock master’s tempo is changing.
4. I then took out my X0X B0X which has MIDI Clock out and connected it to the 2880. I was able to both record and playback loops on the 2880 using the X0X B0X as the MIDI Clock master. When I listened back to the loop with the X0X B0X as the MIDI Clock master, the speed of the loop did not waver at all.

COMPUTER TESTS
1. I used Logic 7 to see the MIDI Clock reading in real-time.
2. First I connected the MC-505 to my computer and set its tempo to 130BPM. When I pressed play, and let the MC-505 play for four or five bars, I started observing the BPM read out in Logic. The MC-505 wavered from a maximum of 131.6 BOM to 129.5 BPM.
3. Then I changed the tempo on the MC-505 to 108 BPM and observed a range of 109.2 BPM to 107.0 BPM.
4. I connected the MIDI Out of the X0X B0X to the computer and observed its BPM range first at a tempo of 105 BPM. The hundredth digit was the only one to waver. So the range was 105.28 BPM to 105.21 BPM.
5. I turned the tempo up to around 130 BPM (the X0X B0X does not have a tempo read out, you have to guess). Again, only the hundredth digit wavered. The readings were 129.69 to 129.63.
6. I then connected the 2880’s MIDI output to the computer. First at a tempo of 131 BPM (the 2880 also does not have a tempo read out). The MIDI clock wavered from 131.8 BPM to 131.4 BPM.
7. Moving the tempo down on the 2880 to 110 BPM, the tempo wavered from 110.2 to 109.9.

I have a similar problem, except it’s the esx-1 I can not seem to synchronize with the 2880. How you configure your esx-1 so that it works?