Ableton Forum

Hi all. After being asked by a few producer and musician friends I know, I've decided to try my hand at a series of online video tutorials for using Live and Logic (my two main DAWs). So, for my first one I've done a tutorial on how to use external audio effect units with Live 7 during recording.

(Constructive) criticism is welcome, as is any positive feedback or suggestions for future video-blog topics. This is basic level as far as topics go, but hopefully some of you will find it useful.

You can find it at: http://www.innerdialog.com/innerDialog/ ... ive_7.html

Cheers!
-Mobius

Nicely done mate. It looks good and you're very thorough. My only criticism would be that the audio quality of the music was a little low and I couldn't always hear the difference between the dry and wet sound. Other than that, keep it up!

On another note - what's your opinion on the Focusrite interface?

Hi Andrew, thanks for the feedback! Glad you liked it.

The audio quality was a little less than I'd like and was due to the audio driver for the screen capture software I was using (ScreenFlow) not working well with a multi-channel audio interface. I've got a support call into them to look into it. So the audio you were hearing was what was being picked up by the mic I was narrating with. (Samson CO3U). Definitely will explore other ways of getting audio into there on a more mixable level.

As far as the Focusrite, I've been very happy with it. I had first purchased a PreSonus FireStudio but had nothing but problems (it was never more than a paperweight really) so sent it back to Sweetwater and got the Safire instead. I use a Mac Pro and initially had some slight timing issues when using the on-board Firewire when also having external Firewire drives, so I bought an add-on PCI-E Firewire card just for the Safire (only like $50) and it's worked flawlessly since.

My only real criticism isn't for the unit, but the mixer GUI that comes with it to control hardware monitoring. The SW doesn't show signal levels coming in which I think kind of blows. I previously used an Echo Layla 2496 for years and that was a feature on their SW mixer and I definitely miss it. The only way to tell levels are hot are either hearing clipping or seeing the overload LEDs on the Safire trigger which pretty much means it's already too late if you're in the middle of a take. And when you are dealing with external units that have filters you are sweeping, it is sometimes unfortunately very easy for levels to get away from you.

But the Safire is very clean and is a good deal at it's price ($499 US), so I'd recommend it.

Cheers!
-Mobius

bump on this thread. great video tutorial, helped me set up my KP3 with live! This should be on youtube.

Thx Mobius!

AVB

the video is not working for me.. a big "?" pops up after a while on top of the quicktime logo

Hi 4.33. Not sure what the problem is. Are you using the latest version of Quicktime? What browser/version are you using? Try all the usual stuff (clear cache, etc...)

You can also try it from my music site: http://www.mobiusb.com/visuals.html

Let me know if that's working for you or not.

Regards,
Mobius

interestingly, i've just updated both firefox and quicktime to their latest versions...

the weird thing is that i see the title frame, but as soon as hit "click to play" FF hangs up on me for a few seconds and then "?" appears... similar behaviour with IE... and the result is the same here http://www.mobiusb.com/visuals.html

Hi 4.33. I fired up my Windows XP VM and initially got what you got. Then I checked browser settings and turned off my proxy settings (which I need for my day job but don't need for home stuff) and then the videos worked in Firefox and IE7. Are you using anything similar or have a firewall or proxy on your router?

-Mobius

no proxy or firewall, actually
in fact i even tried a US proxy, as if it could work

maybe someone on XP can chime in here and tell if he can view the video?

thanks for the video dude. very very good. I dont need it just yet but I will do as I pick up some more equipment. Could you send me the file? Or do you think the video will stay up there for a while to come in which case I'll just bookmark it.

Thanks again

Hi Nikolai. I have no plans to take the vid down any time soon so you should be able to bookmark it.

Glad you found it useful!

Cheers!
-Mobius

For anyone that was having trouble getting to it on my site, it's now on YouTube. (Sorry for the delay, it's been a busy month.) javascript:emoticon('')

Part1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFrLEbu7JDc
Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVxNVvr9ROs

Cheers!
Mobius

I thought your tutorial was pretty good...nice work.

However...I would have much preferred hearing about how you deal with latency...i'm still using ver 6...but have wanted this feature for a long time...my only beef is that working with compressors and eq's (externally)...latency will most definitely have to be accounted for...for verbs and delays you can get away with some latency...but for effects that need to be processed serially...much more difficult.

You just briefly mention that latency 'might' be able to be adjusted within the new plug-in...a more in depth look at how to actually patch in a hardware compressor or eq and have it time adjusted to work (and sound) proper would provide me with information that would be much more beneficial.

anyways...nice intro tutorial.