Routing Issue With External Effects - What am I doing wrong?

MichaelJBrooker

New member
I'm currently trying to set up some external effects with Ableton, and I'm having a slight issue. I've read the official documentation, but it's possible I'm misunderstanding something.

I have a guitar pedal (Shallow Water) that I'd like to use on soft synths, direct lined guitars and mix buses within Ableton. There's a cable running from the pedal's "input" to my audio interface's output (Focusrite 18i8). The pedal's output is then running to the Focusrite's input number 1. Lastly my guitar is going in to Focusrite input number 2 for these testing purposes.

Within Ableton I'm using the "External Audio Effect" tool to route the effect back in to the DAW. The problem is that when I play live with the pedal on everything sounds fine, but once I turn the pedal off and play the recording back the effect isn't in place. Just dry guitar.

I also tried setting the External effect in it's own audio track, then setting the armed track as a send to it, but that gives me the same result (wet while pedal is on, dry recording after the fact).

I've attached screenshots of both setups.

Not really sure what I'm doing wrong. Should I be setting the Pedal Up in a return track? Or am I just routing wrong? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!
 

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If I change the input to channel 1 (where the pedal is) I get no sound unless I turn the gain up, which results in terrible feedback. I think it's creating some sort of loop? The way I have it set up in the screenshots above sounds perfect, Ableton just doesn't record the actual sound that's being produced.

Edit: I also just tried applying the pedal effect to a sample by dragging it in to the "Guitar/Audio" track (setup how it is in the second screenshot). Even with the pedal off I noticed the audio sounded distant and reverby, unless I changed the "audio to" in the external audio tool to "1/2". I feel like this is supposed to be really basic stuff, but I am so beyond confused :confused:
 
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The way your picture shows it is just a through input. That means it is bringing in and monitoring Live from your channel two.

If I am understanding you correctly, you just have a regular guitar pedal, not a MIDI pedal. Therefore you are manipulating the input signal from the guitar, not the sim. Unless you have a pedal that converts the signal to a MIDI send, it is not controlling the VST, it is manipulating the source signal.

Not sure of your routing, but if you are recording from channel 1 as you main source, then routing that signal back to your pedal for the effect, then back to the pedal and input (say, guitar in channel 1/track1, output from interface to pedal, then back in channel 2/track 2, ) then the first channel is the source for straight guitar and the second channel is the source for the pedal. No reason to route through Ableton like you are. You would just have two recording inputs. Channel 1 and channel 2. Then you use the sim amp on track 2 for the final output. Or you could use them both, slight pan, might have a cool sound.

The way you have it set up is, channel 2 is the source for both plus sending track 13 to 14, your going to get feedback for sure.

If you want to control your sim's effects, say foot pedal, you need a MIDI controller and then map that controller to the sim's effect. Then record the action of the pedal as you would a pitch/bend know.

If you want to use the analog pedal, then just go, guitar signal, pedal, input channel. If you want to have a dry signal and a manipulated signal, then guitar->channel x->track x->send to an output->to pedal->to channel y->track y. When recording, hit record on both. Have both set to external inputs and both routing to master.
 
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