Professional musicians don't really "lose" the beat. A pro drummer stays on beat, while making small, predictable variations to the timing and the sound that make the music more interesting. That's not the original marble machine though, which played like a sloppy beginner.

I'm pretty sure he understand how all this works because I've heard him explain it before. If at some point he thought he could achieve precise timing down to the millisecond, I must have missed those videos, cause he seems to understand now that's not realistic.