oh yea.. with the Ableton problem, its more of a problem in Live than anything else. the clock on the machinedrum is rock steady. im personally happy enough to just press play and keep it time. u can nudge the MD like a record, so its easy enough.

when i tried to midi sync it with the MD as a master... things got a bit strange in Live.....basically anything with an internal sequencer (eg: the arpeggiator in fm8) was out of time.

with Live as the master things were grand. but in general, Live's clock leaves alot to be desired