mr.noisy Posted December 18, 2015 Share Posted December 18, 2015 Hey guys, I am using Ableton Live for music production for a while now (I am using Push 2 with it) but I never realised that it can be a powerful fx processor too, and I have recently seen Matt Garrison on youtube playing a gig and I noticed he had Ableton set up with SoftStep etc. Now I realised that probably I can save myself quite a bit of money and use my laptop instead of buying another bunch of pedals. I hooked my bass and tried few things and it sounds great. Then I started thinking how I am going to hook it up to my bass amp? That's the advice I need. If any of you are using that kind of setup can you please share with me how you connect it to the amp? I got focusrite scarlett 2i2 and I thought it will be as simple as connecting one of the outs to the amp input (I got Markbass mini CMD121) after setting out the master out in ableton just to that one single out on the scarlett, but when I connected the jack to the amp I can just hear a massive hiss, so obviously there is something I am missing and I guess these outs are different than signal coming from the instruments. Any help would be much appreciated because I want to have it all set asap and google doesn't help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ambient Posted December 18, 2015 Share Posted December 18, 2015 I was talking to a guy last week, he does a similar thing, using Ableton. You should just be able to use your 2i2. There's a guy on here with the user name Urb. Maybe message him ? I'm friends with him on Facebook, he's friends in real life with Matt Garrison. He was at the gig, and posted photos on Facebook. I'm sure he'll be able to tell you what the set-up was. In fact I'm pretty certain that he does a similar thing himself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr.noisy Posted December 18, 2015 Author Share Posted December 18, 2015 [quote name='ambient' timestamp='1450440499' post='2932819'] I was talking to a guy last week, he does a similar thing, using Ableton. You should just be able to use your 2i2. There's a guy on here with the user name Urb. Maybe message him ? I'm friends with him on Facebook, he's friends in real life with Matt Garrison. He was at the gig, and posted photos on Facebook. I'm sure he'll be able to tell you what the set-up was. In fact I'm pretty certain that he does a similar thing himself. [/quote] Many thanks Ambient, I searched for the user you recommended and noticed it's Mike Flynn, I don't know him personally but we have few friends in common and I have already sent him a message on Facebook right after I posted this thread but I am not sure if he will be able to see the message as the non-friends messages usually go to the 'others' folder unnoticed. I am not sure if I can use just the Scarlett itself, as I said, when I plug the output to the amp, there is just a huge hiss, but it works just fine with the studio monitor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ambient Posted December 18, 2015 Share Posted December 18, 2015 Try experimenting with the gain levels. The 2i2 is already a preamp, so it may just be the fact you're plugging a preamp into a preamp ? There's a very long thread that started a year or so ago here - [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/230948-ios-for-the-gigging-bassist/page__st__270__p__2911852__hl__ios__fromsearch__1#entry2911852"]http://basschat.co.uk/topic/230948-ios-for-the-gigging-bassist/page__st__270__p__2911852__hl__ios__fromsearch__1#entry2911852[/url]. Put your feet up and have a read through, it may answer some of your questions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr.noisy Posted December 18, 2015 Author Share Posted December 18, 2015 Thanks for the link, I went through the whole topic looking for an answer but it is mostly talking about iPad and things related to it. Then I saw your post and I was hoping that someone answered it, but no one did. Did you manage to sort it out? Do you plug your Focusrite straight to your amp? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r16ktx Posted December 18, 2015 Share Posted December 18, 2015 [quote name='mr.noisy' timestamp='1450449262' post='2932959'] Do you plug your Focusrite straight to your amp? [/quote] Possibly you might have luck connecting the focusrite straight to the power amp (usually effects return) or if you need some eq from the bass amp pre try unity gain on the focusrite. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr.noisy Posted December 19, 2015 Author Share Posted December 19, 2015 Tried connecting Focusrite to effects return on my Markbass today, both from the speakers and headphones out on the interface with the same buzz/hiss. I am sailing the google but no luck, but as far as I have seen, some people are doing it this way and it works fine, so it is a possibility that the Focusrite just acts like that and I am thinking if I would connect it to DI and then from DI to the amp then maybe this could work, but I don't have my own DI and don't want to spend money on something that won't make any difference. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr.noisy Posted December 19, 2015 Author Share Posted December 19, 2015 God, seems like problem sorted and it's not the Focusrite and not the Markbass. I was trying to connect it to my amp while it was plugged to my desktop Mac, and just to make sure I plugged it to my Macbook and then right to the Markbass instrument input and it works fine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
urb Posted December 28, 2015 Share Posted December 28, 2015 Dudes - so sorry to be late to this party - sorry I didn't get your original message - perhaps it went to my 'music' page on Facebook and not my personal one... yes Matt's recent gig at the Vortex got me inspired big time as well - but in other ways - which I'll post here and in the recordings forum soon. The quick answer to your output question is I've sometimes run a jack straight out of the headphone socket on my Babyface or Audient soundcard, not ideal as the signal is very hot so you need to watch the volume levels - but it does work fine. You can also use one of the speaker outputs on your souncard and plug it straight into your amp, it all depends on how many outputs you have on the soundcard - Ableton has a load of routing options and you can select output 3 or 4 for example and then send the signal from your bass to one of those - assuming outputs one and two are going to the main speakers of your set up. I like to run the main speakers (monitors) to get the full stereo sound of the 'system' and then take a third output, either from an extra line out or the headphone jack and run that into my amp - so you get a much fuller bass-heavy mix running... I've successfully used Ableton as my bass FX rig on quite a few gigs now - and am beginning to get to grips with the looper and some more fancy signal processing by using my iPod touch as a controller - here's a recent video with some looping going on with all effects (reverb and pitch shifter) triggered via softstep and running through Ableton http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25VQSG7IPlc PM me if you have any more questions - I'm hoping to do a couple of videos on how my set up works soon Cheers Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.