Apologies if this has been asked before, but has anyone used Strymon’s Timeline and Blue Sky as outboard FX in Ableton? If so, how are you connecting to your audio interface?
I have a MOTU Ultralite MK4 and want to connect two analog outputs (line level, balanced) to the pedal inputs (unbalanced) and back into the interface inputs (line level, balanced/unbalanced).
Do I need a reamp and/or DI box or can I just use TS cables?
Thank you
There should be no problem to hook it up.
Check for latencies, if you are using it as an insert FX (DAW --> FX --> DAW).
In a clean electro-magnetic environment connecting balanced units to unbalanced often works fine. To use balanced conncetions becomes important, if the signal-to-noise ratio would suffer by external strong noisy signals. Gear like computers, unsufficiantly shielded electronic units, and cabling can cause electrical interferences, which can degrade the quality of audio signals. Sometimes it helps, to separate strong power lines and computers from weaker signal lines like audio.
The interface should have line-in and line-out level, as well as the FX units, which makes re-amplification unnecessary with respect to the audio-level. Re-amplification would make sense, if you want to add some additional analogue warmth to the signal, which can be achieved using a tube preamp, as an example. Or, if the re-amplification is part of the overall sound design approach.
Thank you! The strymon gear takes instrument, unbalanced signal, but in looking at Strymon’s website, it is able to take line level, so hopefully this should not create any issues:
I am having trouble getting audio out of the interface’s analog outs in Ableton. Is there something I’m missing? Do I need to activate the analog outs in the interface’s web browser?
Thank you
I don’t know how MOTU’s mixing works, but yeah, you probably have to route the signals somehow. So say that you want output 3 and 4 from Ableton to out through the outputs on your MOTU you need to configure this in your web based mixer I believe. Try and google your problem and see if someone else has been in your situation!
Typically Ableton should know all the outs of your interface. I suggest to check the audio settings in Ableton. All physical outs should be visible and activated.