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RENDERWAVERENDERWAVE

BPM and Tap Tempo

RENDERWAVE always has a current BPM, and the app tracks where that number came from. This page covers the four ways to set it and how the app decides which one is in control at any given moment.

Where tempo lives

Section titled “Where tempo lives”

The BPM widget sits in the top status bar and shows two things: the current tempo as a number, and a short label underneath it telling you where that tempo is coming from (LINK, AUDIO, TAP, or MANUAL). Click the widget, or press Cmd+T, to open the full tempo panel with all the controls described below.

Four sources, one active

Section titled “Four sources, one active”

You can have Link enabled, a confident audio read, a recent tap, and a manual BPM all “available” at the same time, but only one of them drives the app. RENDERWAVE picks in this order, highest priority first:

  1. Ableton Link, if it’s turned on and connected to at least one peer.
  2. Audio auto-detect, if the app has a confident tempo read from the music.
  3. Tap tempo, if you’ve tapped recently.
  4. Manual BPM, as the fallback that’s always there.

The source label on the widget tells you which one is in control. Turn Link on and connect, and the label flips to LINK even if you had just tapped in a tempo. If Link drops or audio confidence dips, control falls back down the list.

Section titled “Ableton Link”

Open the tempo panel and switch on the Ableton Link toggle. Once it’s on:

  • Connected • N peers with a green check means RENDERWAVE is locked to the same clock as everything else running Link on your network.
  • Waiting for peers… means Link is on but hasn’t found another Link-enabled app or device yet.

Link is the highest-priority source because it’s sample-accurate: a shared clock, not an estimate. Reach for it whenever you’re running alongside Ableton Live, other Link-enabled software, or Link-capable hardware.

Auto-detect from audio

Section titled “Auto-detect from audio”

With audio reactivity turned on and a signal coming in, RENDERWAVE also listens for the beat and estimates BPM from it in the background, with no separate switch to flip. It builds up a short history of the intervals between beats and uses that history (not just the last beat) to settle on a tempo. It needs a few beats of steady music before it commits to a number, so it can read the interval instead of guessing off the first hit.

A few things about how it behaves:

  • It only takes over as the active tempo source once it’s confident in the read. Until then, whatever source was already active (tap or manual) keeps driving the app.
  • If the track breaks down or goes quiet for a moment, RENDERWAVE briefly holds the last confident tempo instead of snapping to something else, then falls back to tap or manual if the beat doesn’t come back.
  • It guards against the classic half-time/double-time mistake, so a track’s estimate doesn’t jump to twice or half the tempo it was reading a moment ago.

Use auto-detect when you don’t have Link available but want RENDERWAVE tracking the tempo of the music instead of a number you set yourself.

Tap tempo

Section titled “Tap tempo”

In the tempo panel, tap the TAP TEMPO button along with the beat. You need at least two taps before it can read an interval, and the button shows a running tap count so you know it’s registering. Once you have a couple of taps in, RENDERWAVE uses the median of your recent taps (up to your last several) rather than just the last gap, so one off tap doesn’t throw the whole reading off.

If you stop tapping for more than a few seconds, the next tap starts a fresh read instead of blending in with old, stale taps. Tap tempo takes over as the active source the moment you get a valid reading, and it stays active for a short window after your last tap. After that, control hands back to whichever source is next in line. Tapping also sets the manual BPM slider, so the tempo doesn’t jump when the tap window expires and control falls to manual.

Tap tempo is the fastest way to get RENDERWAVE roughly on tempo when you don’t have Link and auto-detect hasn’t locked on yet: walking in, between tracks, or on a source the auto-detector doesn’t have a clean beat to read.

Manual BPM

Section titled “Manual BPM”

The MANUAL BPM slider in the tempo panel sets a fixed tempo by hand, with the current value shown next to it. It’s the lowest-priority source: RENDERWAVE falls back to it whenever Link isn’t connected, audio isn’t confident, and you haven’t tapped recently. It’s always available, which is what keeps a tempo on the app at all times.

Range

Section titled “Range”

Manual, tap, and audio-detected tempos are all clamped to the same range: 40–240 BPM. Link’s tempo comes through as reported by the Link session itself, uncapped, since it’s a shared external clock rather than a value RENDERWAVE is estimating.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”