[PD] tempo midi syncing...?

Anybody have any tips or ideas about midi syncing between Pd and a host (like ableton live, etc) on OSX? I started using a nice monome drum sequencer patch and there seemed to be a lot timing jitter with its original [metro 150]. You could audibly tell that the time between each beat wasn't always identical (not sure why this would be?). So I set it up to be controlled by a midi loop in the host, but oddly enough it doesn't seem to have gotten any better, plus there's a bit of added latency between the host's metronome and Pd.

So what's the best way to do this? Ideally the Pd patch would be precisely in time with the host... and MIDI through OSX's IAC bus is the only approach that I know of yet.

Thanks everyone!

±tedb0t