Ableton Forum

I'm having a hard time making the output volume of apple itunes and ableton corralate to one another through the motu ultralite.

if i set live to be at an acceptable level
the itunes is insanely loud, even if it's basicly set to 1. on the vol. level.

I have found that this is the same case for youtube

with so many people using the motu ultralite how are you all dealing with this?

What are you trying to play with Live?

just regular stuff, softsynths, samples.

it's like this, if I have the ultralites main vol. at 12'clock and itunes vol. at 12'clock, I tunes would blast my speakers apart.

I have no such problem. Live and other computer-audio are the same level more or less. I also have a little mixer behind the ultralite, so there is a volume knob that is turned up and down easily.

Strange... I have no problem either. I assume that *all* of your pc/mac audio output is going out via firewire to the ultralite? You don't have Live routed out some other way? How is it if you don't use the ultralite, e.g with the built-in soundcard? When you play stuff in Live is the master out coming up to 0dB on the meter?

You could try playing with the Audio Midi Setup in OSX:

o0o wrote:I'm having a hard time making the output volume of apple itunes and ableton corralate to one another through the motu ultralite.

if i set live to be at an acceptable level
the itunes is insanely loud, even if it's basicly set to 1. on the vol. level.

I have found that this is the same case for youtube

with so many people using the motu ultralite how are you all dealing with this?

your not crazy, I get this too. very annoying.

is Live the only app that has a relatively big difference in volume? i.e. youtube, itunes, etc. all have even sound levels but Live is radically different?

i've never had that problem. i'd try to play iTunes at an acceptable level then match that level within Live with the master fader.

when you do that, is the sound really distorted or really weak?

actually i use an Ultralite with a MacBook Pro running 10.4.11, and i have a similar issue...

i've never really bothered to look into it before, and simply keep my iTunes fader down...

but this thread has inspired me! i'll do some proper tests tomorrow and see if i can track down the weirdness...

o0o wrote:I'm having a hard time making the output volume of apple itunes and ableton corralate to one another through the motu ultralite.

if i set live to be at an acceptable level
the itunes is insanely loud, even if it's basicly set to 1. on the vol. level.

I have found that this is the same case for youtube

with so many people using the motu ultralite how are you all dealing with this?

You may want to look at the way your MOTU Cuemix console is set up.
Open it up and make sure that all 4 instances/buses have been disabled. Then close it and see if this helps.

will try these gifts.

umm, well i just did a proper quick check of this whole loudness disparity bizo, and i have to say that actually there is no inherent difference in the signal gain between Live and iTunes...

it's not that i was expecting a difference, but the whole Ultralite/Live/iTunes combo sparked a thought that maybe there was a bug in the system somewhere...

but no! as experienced people in the other related thread ("Adjusting LIVE Output Volume") have rather bluntly suggested, it's all a matter of apparent loudness...

to prove this to yourself:

1. go into the iTunes prefs, and make sure that Sound Check and Sound Enhancer are off... also make sure the iTunes preamp and EQ are off...

2. choose a track and start it playing, and adjust your monitoring so that you can have the iTunes master at maximum without your eyeballs exploding out of the back of your head... now stop the track...

3. now open a new Live set (make sure the master and track faders are at 0db), and drop the track you chose from iTunes onto an audio clip... if you now start the clip playing you will probably find that the apparent loudness is pretty similar to what you were hearing from iTunes... flipping between the two should make it pretty obvious...

if you have the CueMix console open you should also be able to see from the meters that the signal peaks are pretty much the same...