Ableton Forum

I would like Ableton to be able to recognize when a sound card (USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt, whatever) is disconnected from the computer and automatically switch the sound output to the built-in sound card.

And when Ableton is re-connected to a sound card it will automatically re-connect to that sound card, or at least open a dialog box and ask if it should.

This seems so obvious to me, but maybe it's difficult to achieve.

Thank you,

RYKR

I'm genuinely curious why you would need this feature? In general, I would never remove the audio interface that I'm using while I'm running a program like Ableton... but even then, if I were to do so, it doesn't take long (10 seconds) to go into preferences and toggle it to the internal sound card.

Would you want this to be a failsafe in case your audio interface broke or came unplugged in a live setting?

I know this is an old thread, but I would also love to be able to switch audio outputs automatically or with a trigger. Logic Pro X does this now in 2020. Would be nice to be able to use Alfred to switch the outputs in Ableton. If anyone knows a way, please let me know. Was exploring with the Accessibility Inspector, but couldn't figure it out yet. Managed to write an AppleScript to open preferences, but that's about it so far.

I'm on a laptop (and I'm not alone), I do not close any software before I unplug my deck/sound card...

I do not understand why Ableton is the only one that has this strange behavior: asking you to reconfigure your sound card if you unplugged it while using the soft, even if it is already connected while starting the soft.

Just come on!

I would really like this feature, too.

With Push 3, this has become a must-have IMO. I use an undocked laptop and have gotten into the habit of closing Live before I unplug my interface, but switching from Controller to Standalone disconnects the audio interface and you can only transfer data when Live is open. This means that every time I want to sync anything to or from Standalone, I have to go into preferences and reset my audio configuration afterwards.

It’s a small complaint but it seems easy enough to fix — just let us set a preferred device and automatically switch to it when it’s connected. Not sure if there’s something at the system level that prevents this, though.