hey! these are helpful data points – tbh, I was always primarily attracted to external sync for live pad tapping and not pattern rec/playback, so this is super helpful to know!
nb. the bpm “matching” in PARAMS is just informational – it affects delay clocking + the blinking rate of the pattern button only. but, that was the smoking gun!
taking a look this morning, I see how things can be optimized. right now, external MIDI clock syncing is a flat 24ppq, which means 24 pulses per quarter note. that resolution is wicked nice to keep automated clocks synced – but the patterns you’re recording are entered manually. at 120bpm, that means finger presses are quantized to roughly the nearest 0.02 seconds – this will introduce super tiny offsets that may sound totally fine while they’re grooving on their own, but play it against a steady beat and it quickly becomes apparent how far off they’re drifting. even if the pattern recording end point was pushed by 20ms, that will have a drastic effect.
so, i’m gonna “dumb” things down a bit and give the pads a more generous quantization resolution.
I should have these improvements rolled in soon 
also:
this is part of the pattern linearization for v1.2!
it actually makes sense for patterns to linearize when an external clock is present, like earthsea + teletype – each clock event will just move to the next sequence in the pattern. this would mean that all presses would play at 1/16’s or whatever your clock-in rate is, for example.
