Ableton Forum

Hi,

I am facing an issue when I plug my guitar into the scarlett 2i2 (2nd gen) and try to listen/record via Ableton Live on my Mac. The direct monitoring from scarlett is fine. However, despite setting the right input source (mono input channel 1) in the Ableton Live settings as well as on the track, I am unable to clearly hear my guitar. The audio is either non existant or just very faint or glitchy. I tried adding a utility with input gain but the audi is still glitchy. I tried setting different buffer samples but its still the same issues. I have tried both in mode as well as Auto.

To debug this I also tried the same input in Audacity as well as Logic Pro and it works perfectly fine there without any additional setup from my end. I also tried to completely clear the old ableton preferences but that did not help either.

I am on:
Ableton 11.3.43
Scarlett 2i2 2nd Gen
Macbook Pro M1 Max
MacOS 15.6.1
CoreAudio
Mono Input 1

I am not sure if I am missing something obvious from my end. Would appreciate any pointers or help here.

Cheers,

Might sound like a stupid question, but since you didn't mention:
is your Scarlett up-to-date?

Thank you for trying to help. On Mac, it actually doesn’t need any drivers and there aren’t any updates available officially since it works with core audio in macOS.

You can still get the drivers and that gives you graphical interface for adjusting various parameters of the audio interface that aren’t accessible on the device panel.

I’m not sure if the zero latency monitoring is a ‘mix’ of wet vs dry or if you get to adjust levels for wet / dry independently. If you have monitoring very high, I’d imagine you’d get very low DAW audio

The downloaded drivers / interface should also have the latest most updated device drivers which might inadvertently help.

Unfortunately, the scarlett software is only for 3rd gen and higher units. My interface is 2nd gen and the control software does not recognize it. Also the focusrite website officially does state that 2nd gen devices do not need the control software.

I think this may have something to do with how Ableton is interpreting the INST switch on the old 2i2 and maybe something is broken there. Ableton needs that button on for instruments. I also tried to set the INST button to OFF and Logic Pro still picked it up via the Line In mode automatically. I will raise a support ticket with Ableton and check. Or maybe I just need to upgrade my hardware as 2nd gen is a bit log in the tooth now.

yur2die4 wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 15, 2025 2:22 am

You can still get the drivers and that gives you graphical interface for adjusting various parameters of the audio interface that aren’t accessible on the device panel.

I’m not sure if the zero latency monitoring is a ‘mix’ of wet vs dry or if you get to adjust levels for wet / dry independently. If you have monitoring very high, I’d imagine you’d get very low DAW audio

The downloaded drivers / interface should also have the latest most updated device drivers which might inadvertently help.

Thanks to a user on the aturia forums, this turned out to be an issue with the Voice Isolation mode in MacOS! Turning that OFF finally made everything work as expected within Ableton. I guess there should be a warning in the docs for Mac users (or maybe there is and I did not do a careful RTFM).

Cheers,
Sachin