John Bowen Synth Design

thanks for your clear explanation. To me if I have the keyboard synced to an external clock then well, that's what i what to match to bpm wise. I would welcome that delay (at slow speeds), because that means my stroke was off beat. It's the same with many arp's in vst's too.
If i want to time it manually I will match the clock by hand and turn off external sync, meaning I want to sync it myself.
Also, even if i time my first chord dead on the beat, I must keep doing so with every new stroke (or play legato), or i'm still off beat. And you keep hearing that error until you release the keys since it is synced to the external clock.. Other users might feel different, so as always, a user option would be best. E.g. shift+Tempo to set the arp to beat matching.

We have had many discussions regarding this timing issue. The question has been, should the note-on event start right away, and clocks are then being counted, or should we wait to play the note so that it is on a correct beat boundary. We consulted with Tony at DSI to see what they were doing, and he told us that they are starting the note immediately upon playing (which is what the Solaris has been doing as well). this way, the user can play the keyboard to match with whatever else is playing, however, he agreed that this means the person has to be fairly accurate in timing. He said that they also have had feedback complaining about this, and the alternative is called sync'ing to beat clock, where the note played doesn't sound until a proper beat (i.e., quarter-, eighth- or 16-note division) as occurred. Evidently, there's been a bit of work on this issue among several manufacturers, so we will see if the demand is to change everything to work with beat clock sync, instead of the way it is now.
One thing you discover is that, at slower tempos, you get a noticeable delay with beat sync, since you don't hear the note right when you play it.
But we shall see what the feedback is. Your post helps to initiate this discussion!

Doesn't sound like your solaris is actually sync'd to external clock. Have you changed that in midi settings?

In the new version sync is much better although I still noticed some drift and getting out of sync. Have to investigate further what causes this. More important though is I would like the arp to be synced completely , meaning also reset/location. The bpm is the same as the source, but I have to press the keys exactly in time with the running clock for them to play in sync. This takes away the possibility to play around freely with arp variations, because every time I hit the key slightly off beat I lose the flow. Is ther a setting I'm missing?