Problem with external effect plugin

[soundtechdan]

hi

ok I have finally got around and bought ableton live fully professional version. So I decided to try some of the new features out. I have to say I love ableton live new features. There is only one problem I tried out the external Fx plugin. I could get it going out of my computer using my presonus firepod and then into my effect just a basic guitar stomp box effect pedal and even back into the presonus firepod and back into ableton live. I was very pleased with my self. I then tried to record the effect but for some strange reason when I listened back to the recording only the loop was recorded and not the effect. Can anyone help and try and explain to me what is going on?

bit more info if you can help.

I used just one audio track playing a simple drum loop over again. This was so I had something constantly playing.

I had the signal coming out of output 1 and back in on input 1. I made sure they were right one the firepod and on the plugin. I even tried changing the channels both in/out on channel 2 and output on 1/input on 2. Still the effect did not turn up.

I could hear the effect all through the recording and just to make sure I varied the effect, turning it on and off and then to one extreme and then the other. Still nothing.

I also varied the dry/wet on the plugin and still nothing.

Where am I going wrong? To me it seem like for some reason ableton live is just recording the loop rather than any inputs or outputs its told to record.

cheers

dan

[jok]

Hi Dan,

how exactly did you do you record the signal? The External Audio Effect device works just like any other Audio Effect in Live: if you record something to a track holding an effect, the effect won´t be recorded to the track itself.

If you want to record the signal together with the external audio effect, simply route the track´s output to another track record it there.

Jörg

[soundtechdan]

cheers for that I will give it a try

[atmosdriven]

When you drag an effect into live, it is neutral, that is, it is temporary. That's why you can switch it on and off. IF you use the "external effect" device chain, (which isn't really anything new, you could do it in live 6 too by setting up a device chain using multiple tracks and virtual routing), the signal recorded is still dry. If you want the signal to be wet with no effect, you can do one of 2 things.

1: Record the track/clip/whatever into live, but put your hardware device PRE firepod. no device chain involved.

---or---

2. Have the track set up w/ external Device inserted, and no other effects.
Create a new audio track, set it's monitor to "in" as opposed to "auto". The mute button should turn orange. under your I/Os, change your input to read the name of the track your drum loop and external device are on. now click record on your new track, and play the first track. You should have a raw waveform, but with the wet sound of the old track. Zoom in on the new track, and if you examine it closely, the siloscopic graphic should be slightly different (id est more even if the effect was compression)

Do not delete your old track though, because now the effect is irrreversible on the new track.

Change the monitor setting back from "in" to "auto" (yellow mute button)

hope that helped.