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Re: Re: Xone and Ableton connectivity
Bah! Bad advice. 
You have a Xone 92/62? That'll be great with Ableton. Don't think that because the DJM-800 has extensive MIDI support it'll be better for Ableton, it really doesn't work QUITE like that. The more you start to set all of this stuff up, the more you'll figure out why.
You'll definitely want a sound card with as many outputs as you can get: 4-6 stereo pair out and 4 stereo inputs or more. Go Firewire if at all possible; although USB 2.0 has enough bandwidth, USB is super finicky at times and you'll have lots of other devices you'll probably end up using at some point (MIDI controllers, etc). Ask any Macbook user (myself included) how well USB audio interfaces work on certain USB ports... it's a nightmare!
This Motu interface is a very good one (pricey, but very good):
http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/ultralite
Another reason to go with a really, really good Firewire interface: LATENCY. Particularly since you want to do effects on decks, latency will be a big limiting factor. Firewire + Good Interface = Less Latency. No matter what you do, however, you won't even begin to approach the latency of a hardware effects unit like the EFX-1000.
As for connections, you will route individual outputs from the audio interface to your mixer. Two is the bare minimum...
You have two options here, within Ableton you can just use two channels, and route one to one of the mixer channel inputs, and the other to the second. This will let you play off the two Ableton "decks" (channels) only, but you will be able to mix on your mixer just as if they were cdj's or TT's. The EQ's will work the same, faders the same, filters, cueing, etc. If you want more than two decks, run more cables, up to the 4 mixer channels on the Xone. You can crack open the Xone's and disable the phono preamps if you want two lines on a single channel (see the manual and be careful if you try this, it's very easy though).
A more flexible option is to create as many channels in Ableton as you want, and route the master out of Ableton to one mixer channel, and the cue out to the other. This will give you better routing options for sends/returns within the software, but you'll need a MIDI controller to map eq's and channel faders and such.
For effecting real decks, utilize the sends of your mixer! Route the efx 1 and or efx 2 send to an input on your soundcard. Within Ableton, create an audio track that takes input from that sound card input, set monitoring to "in", and set the channel output to another sound card output. You'll then connect that up to the return on the Xone. Drag effects onto that channel in Ableton, and use the send/return mechanism on the Xone to control wet/dry just like an EFX unit. Once again, latency can really hurt you here.
Another completely different option is to go with something like Torq. It will come with a soundcard, and you can use it with your decks. It can also apply any of it's effects to an incoming source (playing a regular CD or vinyl, etc) as well as for playing out of Torq itself. With it's tight looping features, you can actually do a lot of what you would do in Ableton with what you have now. Just food for thought if you aren't planning on going nuts with Ableton just yet...
Ableton is definitely amazing, but it takes a LOT of adapting.
| quote: | Originally posted by RJT
You can't use your laptop to effect music coming from your decks.
And I'm no pro at this, but I think in order to use Ableton with your CDJ's, you'll need a soundcard with at least one output for each channel you want to run from Ableton, then you just assign that output to a channel in Ableton and run RCA cables to whichever channel you want to run it on in your mixer.
Get a MIDI controller to help with adjusting pitch among other things. |
Last edited by Ryan0751 on Aug-01-2007 at 14:43
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