Beat alignment means any integral beat value on one Link participant maps to an integral beat on all others

Tempo synchronization alone — all timelines advancing at the same rate — is insufficient for musical cohesion. If participants’ beat timelines are offset by a non-integer amount (e.g., one is at beat 3.5 when another is at beat 3.0), patterns won’t align at loop boundaries. Link’s beat alignment property guarantees that all integral beat values are shared: beat 1 on one participant’s timeline corresponds to some integral beat on all others (e.g., beat 3 or beat 4, but not beat 3.5). The actual beat magnitudes can differ — their timelines may count differently — but the offset between them is always integral. Beat alignment requires tempo synchronization as a prerequisite.

Examples

Live plays an 8-bar loop; Strudel plays a 4-bar loop. With beat alignment, both loops always start on a shared beat boundary. Without beat alignment, Strudel’s downbeats would land at arbitrary positions within Live’s loop — rhythmically coherent tempo but structurally misaligned.

Assessment

Distinguish between ‘tempo synchronization’ and ‘beat alignment’ in one sentence each. What property of the beat timelines does beat alignment NOT constrain?