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Hooking up a turntable

Posted: Sat May 08, 2010 9:57 pm
by wanger
Okay...so I installed Ableton Live 8, no problems. Got my midi controller synced up okay too. But I've just hit a wall with getting my turntable up and running in line.

The turntable itself is a Technics 1210 mk3, running into the laptop through a Citronic AC-1USB. The laptop I'm using is an ASUS N61JV.

So, having hooked it up, and changed the preferences within Live to reflect the USB device, I thought I was good to go. However, when I put the needle down on the record, all I hear through the speakers is the tune, badly distorted. The channel levels within Ableton are maxing out too, way up in the red.

The Citronic has a pre-amp built in, so I know that's (probably) not the problem. The Citronic device also has an in-build volume control - however, this seems to have no bearing on the sound coming from the laptop - it's at a constant distort. The Citronic is also earthed, so I guess that's not the issue either.

I tried sticking my mixer in between the Citronic and my laptop too, but that didn't seem to make any difference. Have been reading up on latency, so wondered if that could be it? Or maybe it's soundcard issues? Again, not sure. I'm pretty new to Ableton, so might just be being a dumbass and missing something simple. :oops:

If anyone's got any ideas or suggestions on what I could try to get things working, I'd be really grateful to hear them!

Thanks.

Re: Hooking up a turntable

Posted: Sat May 08, 2010 10:11 pm
by wanger
Also, it's probably worth mentioning that I've downloaded ASIO4ALL too. I went through the lesson to set up audio preferences, and my ASIO buffer is set at 256 samples. The buffer offset is at 4ms.

Re: Hooking up a turntable

Posted: Tue May 11, 2010 8:35 am
by androgene Collective
Try putting a new live set together, one audio track only, play your LP player, slowly increase the buffer size and see if the maxing out disappears, 2nd advice, buy a cheap usb interface for vinyl. Max 50 euro then you have proper ASIO drivers, asio 4 all is hit and miss for some people though its a great alternative for most people, 3rd plug the lp player into a normal hi-fi, same problem as before ?? Then you know its the lp player that has a problem.

Good luck
Mark Smith

Re: Hooking up a turntable

Posted: Tue May 11, 2010 10:15 pm
by td6d
If you hear the tune (without delay) there is nothing wrong with your drivers.. Its badly distorted because the signal is amplified way to much. Did you try to just put the volume sliders down in Live? Or turn any (pre-)amps down?