linear

I love the old black strings, and have a similar dislike of the standard white Thunderguts. I haven't tried them yet, but I think I would be giving the Aquila Thunderbrown a go when my Pahoehoes finally give up. Supposedly slippy enough to slide properly, and they sound decent in the demos I've listened to. Although, I note Aquila say they are higher tension - not sure if that would be an issue on a UBass without a truss rod.

You're definitely not the only one. No good deed goes unpunished.

Glad it was all resolved. But, I mean, it kind of has to be that way surely? They are different things. Maybe the NUX app pairs the bluetooth audio for you if it's available. That sounds like it would be a good thing.

I feel every gigging bass should also have a compartment in the back with a magnetic cover. Inside would be the truss rod tool, allen keys, a little spanner for tightening up the loose hex nut on the guitar player's jack socket, Rizla and filters for the drummer, emergency tramadol: all the essentials.

Speed holes

Apologies about sending you down a dead end with MME. There is a reason I mentioned it, but it's definitely not what you want here. That's what I get for posting late at night. If you can get OBS to recognise and capture three audio inputs on your interface, that sounds positive. Have you tried Recording a video to disk with OBS, and if so, are the audio channels all present and panned correctly? This would be my first step before testing a stream. If the audio is all correct on the video you've recorded you know that the issue lies elsewhere.

A couple of other notes: Simply using the default installation of OBS is not enough to solve your issue. To capture audio from more than the first two inputs on you interface with OBS, the plugin you need to install is here: https://github.com/Andersama/obs-asio/releases You then need to set up some ASIO sound sources; a mono one for your bass and a stereo one for your backing track. And finally, of course, you need to configure OBS to stream to Facebook Live https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/help/497386444253763 You may have seen YouTube videos suggesting that you use VoiceMeeter as a solution Voicemeeter is a software mixer that does support ASIO connection to your interface. As you can see from my screenshots, I do use it, but Voicemeeter brings a lot of issues of its own, and I only use it when I can't find any other way to do what I need. Also, for the scenario where you are streaming with an instrument, an external audio source like your record player, and perhaps even a microphone so you can talk - it is pretty common for people to use a small hardware mixer in front of their interface. I know it seems crazy when you have so many available inputs on your 1818, but it really does simplify things and you get easily accessible volume knobs for all of your sound sources. I'm not suggesting you go out and buy a mixer, but I mention it for completeness.

No worries. Lots of people have issues like this, which is why there are so many YouTube videos on the topic. For my suggestion about using the Desktop Audio as the sound source, you'll need to go into the sound settings on your computer. On mine it looked like this: Down at the bottom you can see the Stereo Mix input device. It might not be called Stereo Mix for you, but hopefully there will be something similar. It was disabled by default for me, so I enabled it. And then, in the Facebook Live settings: For the microphone, I would choose Stereo Mix. And then set up Ableton as you did before.

Streaming with an audio interface can be tricky. I think the problem here isn't so much with Facebook Live, but with the way your audio interface is being seen by the operating system, and thus by extension Facebook Live, OBS, etc. Just to clarify what I think is happening: Although you have an 18i8, it sounds like your OS is seeing it as a 2-in, 2-out device. This is standard behaviour when the interface is being used as a 'soundcard' by the OS. So, Facebook Live can't receive your audio from Input 3, as it doesn't know it exists. In addition, the 2 inputs it can see are actually considered a single stereo input, and that's why you're getting Input 1 panned to the left and Input 2 to the right. When you do multi-channel recording in your DAW it is usually accessing your intreface via ASIO, which gives it access to all on the ins and outs. Facebook Live does not support ASIO. OBS does support ASIO, but I think you have to install a plugin first. One way around this would be to set everything up in Ableton (using the MME/DirectX driver rather than ASIO) and set Facebook Live to stream your desktop audio. You'll need to have software monitoring turned on on your tracks. Only issue with this is that you'll either need to monitor your bass playing from Ableton's output with all of the latency that entails, or do a little bit of extra configuration so that you don't hear the desktop audio through your headphones/monitors, and then you can use the inbuilt monitoring of the interface. (Edit: the bit above about switching Ableton to MME/DirectX is wrong to the point of being the opposite of what we want. I'm an idiot) That's just one idea. There are other ways to do it. Ultimately, the best solution is to use something like OBS with ASIO support, but it's not the easiest thing to configure.

I haven't begun to start thinking about my entry for Basschat Post of the Year, and then this turns up. No point in even entering now

I play what I want. If that means I'm judged to be a bad bass player, that's fine. It just means my role has been to make the rest of you look good by comparison. No need to thank me. Financial contributions are however welcomed.

Some of us are late developers. I'm in my forties and just waiting for the right opportunity to present itself

My initial thought too, but, according to the manual, using the headphone out disables the monitor outs on the back.

I like puzzles like these, but I see that as I was typing it has now been solved However, in the theoretical case that there were no spare channels on the headphone mixer, my idea was to send all channels to one of the mix groups, and record from the outs for that group. This is a stereo-safe solution, as I wasn't sure if your outboard effects were stereo or mono. And, you'd only need that 3.5mm stereo to 1/4" mono cable that you already have. This does presuppose both mix groups aren't in use for something else, and the absence of obstinate rhythm guitarists.

You need to use a tungsten pan. If you use an aluminium or steel pan it's going to boil long before the strings do, obviously.