do I need a external soundcard to complete this setup?

[oculairus]

hello everyone, I hope your day is going well!

ive searched through the forums and haven't found anything that suits my situation, so im sorry if this sort of thing has been gone over before, I'd just like personal type responces that are directly dealing with me and my setup and whatnot, so i hope theres no qualms about me making a new thread and it not being in the new members area seeing that this is my first post.

yeesh, now that that is all out of the way... ill try to keep this very short and to the point.

i have a macbook pro17inch, with the most up to date version of ableton with all the extras and bells and whistles.

now, in my behringer xenyx x1222usb mixer's manual the implied idea that i got from the pictures and literature that i could hook a 3.5mm cord going from my headphones audio out jack on my macbook to the RCA in on the mixer. thusly giving me the ability to play a beat ive created on my korg emx drum machine and have the 1/4" jack out connected to the 1/4" jack in on the mixer, then having that sound go through the usb cable into my laptop then into ableton and through the effects, then out the 3.5mm headphone jack through the cable which has an RCA cable converter jack which is plugged into the RCA in on the mixer, then out through the main XLR into my speakers.

sadly, once iver gotten the converter to hook up the 3.5 mm to the rca hookup on the mixer, i discovered thats not how it works.

can anyone give me any insight to me on if i need an external soundcard or something of that nature to be able to get this setup to work? I would really love to be able to play music on my nady fwa speakers after i have routed the sound into ableton and through its effects...constantly wearing my headphones is beginning to become a bit tedious and i'd love to shake this house a bit with my speakers.

thank you soooo very much to anyone that takes the time to read this and help me out.

 

[Ellipsis]

It sounds like your mixer is an audio interface, you would need to connect it to your macbook with a usb cable, and download drivers cos the sound needs to go in and out via usb. Sorry if I'm wrong, hope I've helped though.

 

[oculairus]

man......okay imagine this scenario....

you know of a fence you jump over every day to get through to the other side of the fence to get wherever it is youre going. then after about a year and a half of you doing this, one day some wise person sitting there watching you scramble over simply asks "why not use the gate?" as they point at the gate right adjacent to the area of fence which you have been just simply not noticing this whole time..

seriously, Ellipsis, you are the hero of the day! i realy can not think of a way to describe how grateful i am for you telling me this!

after reading your response i sat here and thought of the preferences tab on ableton and how i could set the output to the usb setting which is set for the audio in portion. so i went to check it out and im just amazed by this! a whole year of thinking i couldn't place the effects on my drum machines and synths before sending them out to the speakers.

thank you so much for your help!

now if i can only figure out why the signal seems to be recording in ableton quieter than how it plays while playing live.
meaning while i place my finger on the kaossilator pro it makes sounds and sounds great, then when i hit a record button on my apc40 and record whatever is playing through the kopro and then play the recorded loop the volume has been reduced a lot.. would you happen to have any ideas on why the signal is lowered and how i could bring the quality and volume up of the audio signals without just recording it and trying to boost the clip gain on the sample? ...ive already tried raising the clip gain slider on the drum sample and it raises the volume but drastically lowers the quality of the audio, so i can't go with that route as it't not much of a good option for retaining optimum sound quality.

thanks a million times over again for your help!

 

[lostnthesound]

now if i can only figure out why the signal seems to be recording in ableton quieter than how it plays while playing live.
meaning while i place my finger on the kaossilator pro it makes sounds and sounds great, then when i hit a record button on my apc40 and record whatever is playing through the kopro and then play the recorded loop the volume has been reduced a lot.. would you happen to have any ideas on why the signal is lowered and how i could bring the quality and volume up of the audio signals without just recording it and trying to boost the clip gain on the sample? ...ive already tried raising the clip gain slider on the drum sample and it raises the volume but drastically lowers the quality of the audio, so i can't go with that route as it't not much of a good option for retaining optimum sound quality.

thanks a million times over again for your help!

Check the input levels of your audio interface vs. any recording levels that are presented to you within your DAW or software where you're trying to do the recording. Also, check to see if there is any type of "auto gain" or "auto limiting" function enabled. In terms optimum sound quality, shoot for 88.1kHz @ 24-bit resolution.

 

[oculairus]

hi lostnthesound! well i cant recall exactly what it said word for word but i found in the manual that when im recording and playing that certain way, i just need to have the the usb return slider turned all the way up because it is the channel that gets recorded at whatever that volume is set at despite what the main mix channels are at.
thanks for the tip on the sound quality!