Ableton Forum

Hi, everybody. I'm relatively new to Ableton and have been taught all I know by Youtube videos and my own exploration, so I'm pretty inexperienced with the ins and outs. Please excuse my ignorance if this is a silly topic:

I recently have been wanting to set up a rig where I can use my live guitar with outside hardware effects like guitar pedals. I have a Scarlett 4i4 and am using the external audio effects feature. I have my instrument plugged into instrument input 1, out line output 3, through my effects pedals, and into line input 3. It works. Sort of. I can hear my guitar with the effects and it sounds great but the effects are also being applied to my midi tracks, even the metronome. Is there a solution for this? It's become very frustrating. I even bought an interface with more than 2 outputs (had a Presonus before this) and nothing has changed.

Thanks for your patience with my long winded explanation, hope this isn't a silly question or an impossible endeavor.

Hiya, your set-up should work so there's probably something awry with the routing - could you post snapshots of your Live screen, showing ins/outs and also the guitar track specifically, showing the External Audio Effects set-up?

Thank you for your reply.
https://imgur.com/a/awVQqUX

Here's a link to the screenshot of my Ableton Live session and Focusrite routing. I've tried setting the master output to 1/2 and no effects come through. In Focusrite direct monitoring is muted and all output is going to the DAW.

Also new issue: When I record the effects come through, but then when I mute the track the dry guitar still plays.

Hi again, I'm no expert with Ext Audio Effects but I think the issue may be with the Master routing, as you have the guitar going out to 3/4, then the 100% wet signal comes back in to 3 and then out again to the Master on 3/4 (along with the midi). So because you have the Ext Effect and Master going out to 3/4, everything you send to the Master is going through the Effects Unit too. Try changing the Master to 1/2 in Ableton and the Focusrite. Keep the guitar as going out to 3/4 (or even 3 as it's a mono signal) and then back into 3, and use the dry/wet to blend the effect.

I hope that helps, if not I'll try to recreate it here and post a snapshot.

Just recreated your setup (using a sample rather than actual guitar) and got it to work so that FX were only applied to the guitar track. Focusrite was set to "Direct Routing" preset: DAW 1/2 to output 1/2; DAW 3/4 to output 3/4. Ext Audio Effect went out to 3/4 and back into 3/4. Both tracks went out to Master which was set to 1/2. Use the dry/wet control on the Ext Audio Effect to blend the guitar and FX.

https://imgur.com/a/rrMuwrl

Good luck!

Works beautifully! Thank you so much. The only issue now is that it doesn't work through my headphones. Looking at the Focusrite software, looks like headphones are associated with outputs 3/4. If you don't have an answer to that I'm still satisfied, you've helped a ton.

You're welcome, I'm glad it works for you! If you want to hear the main output through the headphones instead of monitors, you can set gtr to come into channel 1 as before, out of 1 into FX, back into 3 (or 3/4 for stereo) and then out to Master 3/4 and listen on headphones. That also frees up an output 2 which you could potentially use for metronome.

I've got the 6i4 which has two headphone outputs which you can assign independently - sounds like you have to be a bit more creative with the 4i4!

Happy recording.