Beating a dead horse but....Ableton as slave?

Have you tried using something other then Live? If it works fine with Cubase or something similar, then you will at least know that the problem lies in the software.

But if you connect the Linn as a master, via midi on your sound card, where do you connect the keyboard then, usb? Or do you have multiple midi inputs or interfaces? I'm asking this because you will get different latency times from different midi interfaces, especially if one of them is firewire and the other usb.

Also, if you connect all your devices in a  series, there's a good chance that the ones at the end of the chain will be a bit late, so you have to compensate for  this in the sequencer, channel by channel.

And then, depending on the rythym machines you have, they may not all be 24 ppqn, maybe they use some other resolution..

I'm just guessing here, to give you ideas where to look, I'm no expert on this.. hope it helps.

or just use a standalone software arpeggiator like sweetmidi.

I had a lot of trouble when using my Novation Studio x25 as a midi out, nothing would sync properly.. When I changed to a Tc electronic Konnect 24. no problem at all..
What version of live are you using?

hmm I actually do have a lot of midi interfaces, more like a patchwork, but maybe i should invest in a single interface. as far as specs I'm using an echo mia midi and since it's so easy to program the linn using that to send master clock to ableton to sync other devices and the arp. i should try sonar or something it might just be ableton 6.

thanks for all your help!

oh and one more thing, the only device that is experiencing latency is the linn drum everything else syncs fine when i turn the linn's volume down.

hmm my experience is fantastic. mpc running ableton 4->5,6 and 7 ive synced from a dr660 (fantastic clock on that thingy).

I think you can offset the JL cooper midi addon a few midi clock offset, I haven't picked up mine yet and I don't know about the Forat one.

My Cr-8000  also does crazy numbers when slaved from Ableton, but it's still in sync with almost no jitter.

You should get Ableton 7 or  8 when it comes out and use that as a master clock.

you could set a tempo knob on a MIDI controller if you want to keep the immediacy of the Linn tempo knob.