Urgh ... audio interface woes

[ChrisFFTA]

So I bought a new Focusrite 2i2 generation three and I’ve been trying to get Abelton Live Lite to work.

Mo matter what I do, what driver i select I just can’t get any volume to come out on the monitors. The meters are recognising sound and I can get YouTube videos through the monitors but I can’t get a signal. Any help would be really appreciated

[BearBoy]

Does the 2i2 use Focusrite's Scarlett Mix Control application? I seem to recall having a similar issue when I first got my 8i6. I needed to set the routing in Mix Control so that the L & R channels of the mix were routing to the monitor outputs.

Not sure if they still use that software though - I've had my interface for over 5 years so suspect things may well have moved on.

[BearBoy]

Actually, I re-read your post and if you're getting sound from YouTube videos then I suspect it's a different issue. Maybe it's something in Ableton?

[Larry Mal]

Are the monitors connected to the interface?

[ChrisFFTA]

Monitors connected to laptop

There are two driver options. One works however but it is incredibly glitchy and skippy. The other driver has no volume from monitors at all but registers in ableton that signal is hitting

[BearBoy]

Monitors connected to laptop

Ah, my answer was based on the assumption the monitors were connected to the 2i2. Have you tried connecting them to the outputs on the back of the 2i2?

[somanytoys]

Some possible help from someone who isn’t overly savvy on all of this.

I don’t have real monitors, but when I use headphones or any other speakers for playback, they are plugged to the “out” of the interface, not the computer.

YouTube is set to go through the computer speakers, but the sound from the software should be set to the interface.

Once the interface is recognized by the computer and recording software, and set to be used, I think the interface is the default setting for inbound and outbound sound.

[Larry Mal]

yes, this is what I was heading towards. Be sure to plug the monitors into your audio interface.

Go into your system preferences and set the output of your computer to be the audio interface- are you currently hearing Youtube from the interface or the monitors?

Go to Live and find your Preferences there, mine is on the Mac platform as seen here. Set the audio input and output to be the audio interface, you can see that mine is set to being a Clarett USB device.



Let us know if you have your system set up like this and how it works.

[Embenny]

Just to clarify, you're trying to get an input that is being fed into the interface to come out monitors that are connected to the laptop's built in audio output?

I dont just Ableton, but to do this, you have to have your input hardware and your output hardware to be different. In the I/O settings, you'd need to select the name of your computer's built in sound card (it will have a random name like "Realtek HD audio") for the output, but your Focusrite as the input device. Some software/hardware combos may not allow this. You'll then need to arm a track for recording with direct monitoring enabled in the software. What you can nearly certainly do is connect your monitors to your focusrite and select it as your computer's output device to run everything through there.

[Larry Mal]

Also under "Driver Type" you see that mine is set to being Core Audio, which is Mac only. If you have a Mac you have Core Audio, it's built into every Mac since OS X was a thing, no need to do anything else.

On the Windows side, you will want it to say ASIO, which should have been included with your audio device.



If not, then you might need to go to the manufacturer's site and download a specific driver for that device, which should include ASIO, or maybe you'll need a generic ASIO driver. I could look into that if you are actually on Windows and not seeing ASIO.

[somanytoys]

That’s exactly how I did it, with a lot of (much appreciated) advice & help from Larry, setting up 2 interfaces in a Mac.

It may seem like a pain in the ass, but once that’s done, it should be good from there on out.

Just make sure you save those changes to the software (if necessary), so it doesn’t default back the next time you boot up.

[ChrisFFTA]

Thanks guys, thanks a lot

So set up is:

JBL powered monitors connected to laptop headphone input as I don’t have TRS cables to connect to the outputs of the 2i2, I only have RCA to headphone.

Driver type: ASIO

When playing guitar and listening through the cans there’s no latency and everything works just fine. However if I try and play through powered monitors it feeds back quite dramatically

[Larry Mal]

You gotta get those monitors running out of the Scarlett. Make sure all your inputs and outputs are the Scarlett unless you say otherwise.

I'll bet that from the feedback you are discussing that you have the microphone live on your computer. You say it's a laptop? You say that the monitor speakers broadcast sound? I'll bet that they are broadcasting into the microphone on your laptop which is then sending signal into the speakers, etc.

[ChrisFFTA]

Genius! Disabled mics and it’s good

However I can get playback volume from a recorded piece.

And overall volume is quite low

I should add however that I’m plugging the monitor directly into the head phone input on the interface not into the appropriate inputs on the back

[somanytoys]

Cool! That’s a good start.

Once you get the correct cables that you need, it seems like you should be all set.

Larry ‘s really good at that stuff. I think we should make him an honorary doctor. Maybe throw in a free Fisher-Price stethoscope on the deal, to make it legit.