Automatic Sound card Switching

[rchrdnsh]

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

[Eventful]

That's difficult if not impossible to program.
I've had some success by clicking the CPU usage indicator to turn on/off the sound card attached.

[Jinsai]

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?

[antandra]

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.

[kantum]

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!

[tdgme]

I would really like this feature, too.

[jrjulius]

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.