Routing audio to Ableton

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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jeffcrouse
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Nov 09, 2018 9:52 pm

Routing audio to Ableton

Post by jeffcrouse » Wed Nov 24, 2021 11:12 pm

I would like to send individual channels of audio (6 in total) from Ableton to Unity. After some research, I found Jack Router, which seems like it could do the job. All I have to do is launch JACK and then select it as my Audio Device. Someone was awesome enough to make a receiver for Unity. So everything works as expected so far. The only problem is that Ableton shows up in the Jack Router having only 4 outputs. I want many more. How can I tell Jack that Ableton has more than 4 outputs? Since they are virtual outputs, I assume it's an arbitrary setting in some config file?

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I realize that this is probably more of a Jack Audio question than an Ableton question, but there is no Jack Forum, so I thought I'd ask here first. The Jack Audio configuration settings are very confusing, but I think I've tried changing all of the things that might be relevant to my problem with no success.

Or perhaps this is a really dumb way to go about this and someone can suggest another way. Even if it's not an answer, just pointing me in the right direction would be super helpful. I do have an external sound card (MOTU UltraLitemk4) and it seems like using the loopback from the device would be easiest, but I haven't found a good solution for reading from audio devices with >2 channels.

- Windows 11
- Ableton Live 11 Suite
- Unity 2020.3.23f1 (there is a bit of discussion here)

Thanks in advance!

silentio246
Posts: 82
Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2017 2:31 pm
Location: Germany NRW

Re: Routing audio to Ableton

Post by silentio246 » Thu Nov 25, 2021 6:04 pm

Hi,
i am no expert, but i can say that i got 16 working channels between ableton live and plogue bidule with JACK. Indeed, it is not that easy to configure.
I found this about the channels: https://jackaudio.org/faq/jack_on_windows.html
"By default, JACK-Router is set to provide 4 Input and 4 Output connections. This setting can be customized to suite your needs by editing the JackRouter.ini file within your C:\Program Files\JACK\jack-router\win32 (or C:\Program Files\JACK\jack-router\win64 folder depending of the JACK 32 or 64-bit version). In Windows Explorer, right click on the file and choose the ‘Edit’ option. Change the settings in the [IO] portion of the file."
The ini-file in my system is something like that:
[IO]
input=16
output=16
float - sample=1

[AUTO CONNECT]
input=1
output=1
alias=0

This is on win10, live 9.7, plogue bidule 0.975, focusrite scarlett solo (3rd gen)
I experienced JACK needs some cpu power, especially with 16 channels on an old core i5 quad 2,5 ghz laptop.
Of course it depends on the power of the system. Good luck!

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