Ableton Forum

i've dripped my toes into production in ableton over the past few months, and now i want to try mixing/DJing. maybe i'm crazy, but in order to mix well (unless you just mix everything in live and hope it sounds good), i feel like you should be able to have sound outputted to both headphones and (at least in my case) my external speakers. that way you can preview what you're mixing via your headphones before you put it into the final mix outputted to the speakers.

how can i do this with my macbook pro? do i need some extra hardware? maybe i'm thinking about it all wrong, but it seems like it makes sense to me.

As far as i'm aware you just need an audio interface. Ive never actualy used ableton for a live set though so maybee someone else can give you better advice.

yeah that's i'm thinking now. is there any basic external interface out there that would let me do this?

If you warp correctly and know what your doing, you don't need headphones. Just practice your liveset and u r good to go.

ohaiwill wrote:yeah that's i'm thinking now. is there any basic external interface out there that would let me do this?

Anything with 2 or more outputs. One for your speakers, one for headphones. I got an apogee duet, which only has one output, preventing me from using headphones. But like i said before, when it comes down to it, you aren't beatmatching, so you don't necesarily need headphones to play live.

On sale at the moment. Stupid price.
http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/ ... kontrol-1/

thanks for the info guys. i'm trying to figure out a cheap way to get started at the moment, before i drop a few hundred bucks into something i don't have too much experience in.

i think i have a cheap usb audio adapter, with one input and output on it, similar to this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

will this work for monitoring with headphones while having the master mix play out through the speakers connected to my default macbook output? if anything i'm thinking it might not be the best quality sound, but for what i'm using it for at the moment hopefully it'll work.

and how the hell do you even work with speakers and headphones in ableton? are you constantly changing the output on the tracks or is there a more efficient way to do this?

Dunno if that adapter will help you.

I only just got the AK1 and before that I just made sure my tracks were perfectly warped and I knew them really well.

Now, I send audio out to 1/2 and monitor on 3/4. The interface has a button telling it which channels to use as a cue, and you tell ableton to send cue to 3/4. It's really much nicer.

you could always check ebay for a second hand interface, remember you want 4 outs.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Numark-DJ-iO-Multi- ... 3a5fd60f10

looks like it might do the job.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Mixvibes-UMix-44-US ... 588a0fd5bf


these ones are brand new, and also looks like they might do the job.


http://cgi.ebay.com/Novation-NIO-2-4-US ... 3cb1df8236

The Pick of the bunch
http://cgi.ebay.com/NATIVE-INSTRUMENTS- ... 4cf0d1b27b

Obviously research them yourself first, I am just sneakily on the internet at work.

If you're serious about production or mixing, you will want an audio interface eventually.

The NI audio interfaces are a really cheap way to get a great sounding card for DJing. Very impressed with my Audio4DJ for this, I'd recommend any of the range.

I did read something on this forum a long time ago about splitting the output of your computer with a Y cable and having 2 different outputs so you can use headphones. Granted everything has to be mono but it works.

if you want to use headphones for what you want to do....use them.....not everyone prepares there live set to play like an itunes playlist and cueing different sounds,instruments, and samples on the fly can be a necessity as well as more interesting and fun. $0.02