ASIO Issues with Ableton Live

  • Thread starter Thread starter Meltbrain
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Meltbrain

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Hey guys,
I'm new here and I've got a pretty specific issue I was wondering if anybody could shed some light on?

Basically, I got a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 recently for recording my bass with Ableton Live. All is well, except my old onboard sound (Realtek) wouldn't handle ASIO, so either I had to deal with horrible delay when using my PC speakers as a monitor (Which is what I'm looking to do), or deal with having to plug in some headphones into the unit itself and listen to my Ableton mix that way. I tried using ASIO4ALL and it did work, but eventually after 30 seconds or so the input would go out of sync and distort horribly.

Anyway, jump forward a bit and I decided to get a sound card that has ASIO support to avoid all this nonsense. I select the ASIO device as my soundcard and it works great. This is where I may have been very stupid, and what is confusing me. My soundcard does ASIO as does my recording interface but they don't seem to be able to interact? So when I have the output set as my soundcard I can't record input from my Scarlett and when the output is through the Scarlett I can't have it coming though the soundcard.

Have I been an idiot in thinking this would solve my issue? If so, what would you guys recommend?
 
So, basically you're looking to use the Scarlett as input and computer speakers as output, then?

If so, that's not really possible.
Perhaps with some creative routing if you're computer has an aux in you could run a 1/8 cable from your interface into that. but that too will probably depend on whether or not your computer has the ability to split your ableton soundcard from your system sound soundcard.
 
Yeah, that's exactly what I was hoping to do. :(

I've gone back to using ASIO4ALL at the minute which with two devices that both support ASIO seems to be okay on the whole not-going-horribly-out-of-sync thing, but I really thought this would be a solution. Oh well, that's a bummer.

I wonder if I could do something cheeky like get a RCA to 3.5mm jack and connect that to the monitor DI from the Scarlett and then run that into the computer as a mic input? Something daft like that?
 
asio = ONE device driver at a time.

Stop using the 40-cents-worth-of-parts onboard beep/boop card and use the Focusrite for in AND out.
The whole point of the interface is to REPLACE the crap onboard card.
 
But I don't have anything I can use as a monitor. My hifi is hooked up to the computer and constantly having to unplug it to connect it to the focusrite would be hellish. I can use headphones but it really isn't ideal for my setup hence why I'm trying to find a way to use the computer speakers as monitors. Also, I'm not using onboard anymore. I mentioned that in my post.
 
If your computer speakers are external, powered, and connected to the computer, can you not connect them to the headphone output of the Scarlet? If you're using a laptop with integrated speakers then, yeah, you're screwed.

I paid $10 for a quite decent pair of Logitech speakers off of Amazon.
 
wheelema said:
If your computer speakers are external, powered, and connected to the computer, can you not connect them to the headphone output of the Scarlet? If you're using a laptop with integrated speakers then, yeah, you're screwed.

I paid $10 for a quite decent pair of Logitech speakers off of Amazon.
Click to expand...

The speakers are external, it's just a micro hifi system. The aux input is taken up by the computer so if I were to connect the headphone output of the Scarlett to them I might aswell just use the Monitor DI from the back of the Scarlett.

I may look into getting some kind of switch or something that doesn't cause too much resistance (an issue I've encountered before) and mess with the sound. That, or maybe try my cheeky idea of running the headphone out of the Scarlett back into the computer as a mic input and "listen" to the mic. That will probably come with its own set of problems though.

Ah well, I'm sure I'll figure something out :guitar:
 
Meltbrain said:
I may look into getting some kind of switch or something that doesn't cause too much resistance (an issue I've encountered before) and mess with the sound. That, or maybe try my cheeky idea of running the headphone out of the Scarlett back into the computer as a mic input and "listen" to the mic. That will probably come with its own set of problems though.
Click to expand...

Not sure that'll work.
I know on my Mac I'm able to have system sounds running though the computer and have my DAW sounds running through my interace. But as has been mentioned - with ASIO it's one at a time. So your computers mic input might be useless if you run back into it.
 
Meltbrain said:
Yeah, that's exactly what I was hoping to do. :(

I've gone back to using ASIO4ALL at the minute which with two devices that both support ASIO seems to be okay on the whole not-going-horribly-out-of-sync thing, but I really thought this would be a solution. Oh well, that's a bummer.
Click to expand...

With ASIO4ALL that's exactly what you can do. I have a terrible onboard Realteak soundcard, and mainly use the USB Audio Interface (ASIO) in my mixer to record, but monitor on my pc speakers. You just enable both audio devices in ASIO4ALL and set your DAW's mixer in- and outs right. For FL studio (which I use) this means setting the Main output to the realtek device (through ASIO4ALL) and the first and second channel inputs as the audio interface outputs (I pan my mics left and right to record instruments apart from vocals, essentially using a stereo channel for 2 track recording). It works fine. You might want to update ASIO4ALL and look at your sample settings. 512 samples (12ms latency) should do. If not, crank it up to 1024, and see if that solves any distortions..
 
Why don't you just connect the output of the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 to your hifi and set the Scarlett as your main soundcard in your sound options and bypass the onboard soundcard altogether.

All you need is a couple of TS > RCA cables and your problem is solved.

Or am I completely missing something?
 
Mr Clean said:
Why don't you just connect the output of the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 to your hifi and set the Scarlett as your main soundcard in your sound options and bypass the onboard soundcard altogether.

All you need is a couple of TS > RCA cables and your problem is solved.

Or am I completely missing something?
Click to expand...

Uhm, yeah. I think you're right there looking at his first post and a picture of his audio interface again... Anyhow, his issues with ASIO still stand. And it doesn't sound like ASIO4ALL is working like it should at all on his computer.
 
If the OP did it the way I mentioned he would only need to use the ASIO driver that came with the Scarlett for all his audio needs and he'd need not use ASIO4ALL, which is just a wrap around for the WDM Driver and is, the majority of the time, buggy.
 
You're right there. I'm pretty limited since I don't have a decent audio interface yet, so I rely on 'fusing' my onboard soundcard and my mixer's audio interface with ASIO4ALL, haven't had any problems with it so far. Still waiting for the new Firepower audio interfaces from Behringer to come out in July.
 
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