Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 with Ableton Live - Review

I recently picked up the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 for recording audio from my Roland Synth and also my EV dynamic vocal mike. Amazon had it on sale for 137$ and i could not resist!...Read a bunch of reviews online, and it has got raving reviews compared to other interfaces in the price range. I have been running my home studio with a mix of m-audio interface and a small pre amp for a long time and wanted to move to something that gives me a little better quality in pre amps and also lower noise levels on my recordings.

I run a mid 2011 iMAC with 12GB of memory. I am sure this review can be applied to folks using PCs since the drivers are available for Win 7 too. I have not tested this on Win7 so if you are coming from the PC camp...read reviews on websites such as Amazon.com, zzounds.com or musiciansfriend.com....there are many on Win 7.

Install -- The install was very quick....pop in the provided CD....install the drivers and the plug in suite. Once that is done, connect the device to your usb port using the supplied USB cable. You should get a green led showing that power is on. And the cable supplied is around 3 feet in length. Once connected, the device should show up on your sound devices in the system preferences menu.

 Setting the device up in Ableton Live

Open Ableton Live and follow the steps shown in the recording tutorial.

Once you find Scarlett 2i2 as the device, set it up as shown in the figure below. Important thing is to understand how the channel mapping works in ableton for the audio device. On any Audio track if you set the device up to be both channel1/2 then you are getting audio from both the inputs on the Scarlett 2i2. I saw many people have written down the device saying that audio comes only from one channel when they are recording their guitar. This is because they did not set up their channel and inputs properly.

Use the Following set up for recording a single Guitar or external Instrument. Make sure your guitar or external instrument is connected to Channel 1 of the interface and make sure the selector is set to INST. Set your gain to get the green light for the signal. In Ableton on the audio track choose the following setting for I/O.

Use the following set up for Recording a Mike and a Guitar at the same time. Connect your mike to channel 1 and set the selector to line input. Connect your guitar or other instrument to channel 2 and select Inst. Set the gain levels using the green indicator around the gain knobs.

Add two audio tracks and make sure to set each input for the vocals and instrument as shown below.

Sound Quality

The sound quality is crystal clear..the recordings come in without any noise. Just wrote a simple track to showcase the recording quality of the device. I recorded all instruments on separate tracks using the interface in Ableton. Some of the sounds are coming in directly from my Roland Juno DI
into the Focusrite on Input 2 with it set to Instr level. I will not say what they are :)..you can guess.

Drums - Scarlett Compressor Plugin Maximizer preset
Bass- Scarlett Compressor Plugin Maximizer preset
Hats - Scarlett EQ plugin
Guitar Right Channel - Compressor maximizer preset with a cement stadium reverb
Guitar Left channel - Compressor maximizer preset with a Medium Jam room reverb
Guitar Center - Scarlett Compressor Plugin Maximixer preset

As always I recommend using balanced XLR cables for sending the signals into the interface.






Issues

I have had this happen a couple of times so far. Get popping noises on the audio track after a long session of use, the popping dies in about 10sec and the interface goes silent again. I will keep tweaking the bit rate settings and provide an update if the behavior changes. I also keep looking for new drivers on Focusrite website. I am using latest Mountain Lion OS X 10.8.1.

Conclusion

For a beginner or an intermediate home studio owner or a traveling musician this device is a no brainer. Very highly recommended....Kudos to Focusrite for putting out such a great device!

Studio Monitors - Why you need them in your home studio

This is an interesting and much debated topic with about a million sites telling people what studio monitors are great to use in home studios and why. If all those were not enough to convince you.......I hope I can add the last bit of information that might sway you to purchasing a good studio monitor.

Are Studio Monitors Needed?

The answer, is a resounding yes. If you are remotely thinking of producing good music, studio monitors are a must.

There are multiple reasons for using studio monitors.

• Getting Stereo Imaging done right.
• Getting a good reference mix-down of your production
• Fine tuning your master mix

Why are some speakers termed studio monitors while normal home audio speakers are not?

This is a tricky subject to tackle and irks many audiophiles and expensive system owners if one says a studio monitor plays material better than their 25,000$ system :)!

• A studio monitor is specifically made to listen to music critically in a Studio environment. Here is the catch. By studio environment I mean a room that is acoustically close to dead, provides no unwanted reflections and has the user listening near field....around 2-5 feet or less from the speakers, most good sound engineers mix their song at a very low level. The speaker design is no frills and employs very good to excellent woofers, tweeters and amplifiers and the less is spent by the manufacturers on the exterior design of the box. The primary duty of the design is to provide as flat a response as possible from 20-20000hz for a near field listener so that he can mix down and master an audio track to the best effect.

• A home audio speaker on the other hand, is designed to be more of an all-rounder. A lot of money goes into the cabinet, the wood used on the cabinet, the shape of the box, the finish etc. The drivers used are generally tweaked to provide optimal listener experience from 20-20000 in a non studio environment, example living room at a high level of volume and wide dispersion for covering a large listening area. The key here is non Studio environment, smaller home speakers and those of a HTIB (home theater in a box) use ported enclosures to deliver bass that the speaker cannot reproduce due to physical size. This ends up affecting the frequency curve and it is not very flat at the lower end. The bigger speakers have the opposite issue, there is too much going on in mid range and lower end, that some manufacturers employ very high quality crossovers and tweeters that can cut through and balance out the lower end and get the high end clarity that most of us crave.

Can you use a home speaker for mixing and creating your track? 

The answer is yes, they are speakers that produce audio aren't they! but wait.....there are a few gotchas you need to be worried about.

Home audio speakers end up tweaking certain frequencies due to their design for non studio use. When you mix using a home speaker, the mix is going to be affected by the design of the speaker, for example...

• I use a brand X HTIB fronts for mixing an audio track. Since the speakers are physically small they have an exaggerated low end using ports, medium to very little top end due to low cost tweeters and pronounced mids.
• When I do my mix, I will end up giving very little low end, comparatively more middle and provide even more highs to compensate for the speaker and get the sound I want from the song.
• Guess what happens once I master the track and listen it on Brand Y, a large floor standing speaker with 8inch woofers. The track is going to sound shrill and have absolutely no body in it.

How do you avoid this?

Once you mix down on your speaker, listen to it using multiple set of speakers and compare how the sound translates on different systems against reference tracks.
During my early days as a producer, I did not have the money to spend on expensive speakers and I used to mix all the time using my Polk Audio R300speakers that i picked up for $49 each! 
One thing I did make sure was to have reference tracks. Listing a few of the finest music recording efforts done from all over the world in the recent times. I am sure there are many more recordings that you love and know the songs inside out, if so use them. They are priceless since they give you Tracks that have mixed using the best engineers and equipment out there.

1. Come Away With Me - Norah Jones (Jazz bass, vocals, Piano, balance)
2. Greatest Hits - Queen Greatest Hits (1992) (Rock guitars, Acoustic Drums, Vocals especially harmonies, Bass Guitar,  Balance)
3. The Dark Knight - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - Hans Zimmer - Original Soundtracks (Orchestral Balancing, huge mixes with large dynamic ranges)
4. Imagine - Armin Van Buuren (Dance/Trance music)
5. Vande Mataram - Ar Rahman (Pop, Folk instruments, Percussion, Vocals, Ambience)
6. Rhythm & Romance - Kenny G (Jazz Instruments, Percussion mixing, Bass Guitar)

The Idea is to do an A&B comparison between your mix and a reference mix. just focus on one area at a time. Drums, Bass, Guitars and so on. using this method, you know you are comparing a very well mixed song on your speakers. And by doing this...you take on instrument at a time...example... your drums have the same impact/sound as the reference song at the same level then you are on the right track.


How to do it the right way

Invest in pair of decent monitors, I currently own M-Audio Studiophile AV40 powered monitors. Nothing fancy. I also run Bose Companion 2 Series II Multimedia Speaker System to quickly listen to my mix on a normal system and also do AB comparison with reference tracks. If my track does not have the same presence or impact as the reference tracks listed above on the Bose Companion 2..then I go back to the drawing board and mix down using my monitors again.

Invest in a good pair of Studio Headphones. In most cases the studio headphones are incredibly useful. My monitors have 4 inch woofers and can get only to a certain point in the bass. I will not get the full extent of the precise bass presence using the small sized woofers. I run Sony MDR-V6 Monitor Series Headphones with CCAW Voice Coil and Audio-Technica ATHM40FS Precision Studio Headphones for making fine tunes to the bass and the highs.


Master List

Ending this article by providing links to the top Monitors that are being used at studios all over the world, ranking them from bigger to smaller size. I am leaving out Genelec, Equator, Dynaudio and Adam Audio due to the very high cost of entry for these systems (750-1000$ minimum). If you have the money and also have an extremely well set up studio then go ahead and look at these brands.

8 inch woofer

1. M-Audio BX8 D2
2. KRK VXT8 Activ
3. KRK RP8G2 Rokit G2 8In Powered Studio Monitor
4. Yamaha HS80M Studio Reference Monitor 
5. Behringer Truth B3031A 2-Way Active Ribbon Studio Reference Monitor with Kevlar Woofer, Single Speaker

5-6.5 inch Woofer

1. KRK RP5G2 Rokit G2 5In Powered Studio Monitor
2. Behringer Truth B1030a High-Resolution, Active 2-Way Reference Studio Monitor  
3. M-Audio BX5 D2 
4. JBL LSR2325P Two-Way 5" Bi-Amplified Studio Monitor 

4 Inch Woofer

1. M-Audio Studiophile AV 40 Powered Speakers 
2. Fostex PM0.4 Powered Studio Monitors 
3. Behringer MS16 Powered Studio Desktop Monitors

Midi Routing for External Instrument Audio - Ableton

There is a ton of people out there that have a good sounding keyboard/Synth with great sounds, but when they record it on Ableton, they have issues with audio timing and quality. Unless you are a professional it is very difficult to stick to tempo and get all the nuances right in a single take. Multiple takes and warping audio for tempo will result in degraded sound for the user who is not experienced in warping audio to tempo. 


There is an easy fix for this, all you need is to follow the tutorial below for getting great sounds from existing keyboard into Ableton and not invest more in expensive VST instrument packages. Example, I use a Roland Juno Di keyboard, that has both USB and the normal midi ins and outs and has an insane amount (over 1000 patches) of good sounding Strings, piano, guitars and synths etc.

I am going to use the existing midi in and out ports on the keyboard for this tutorial. Make sure you a midi interface to USB connector for your instrument hooked up to your PC/MAC with all the drivers installed.

Please check the tutorial on home studio setup using Ableton for the interface that I currently use. Once you have your existing Keyboard Workstation/Synth/Digital Piano connected to the PC/MAC using the midi to USB cable follow the steps below.

• In Ableton open the following 3 channels. 1 audio, 2 midi channels.
• On the first midi channel select any instrument of your choice from the Ableton Instrument rack. Acoustic piano patch for example.
• Drag and drop the external midi instrument from the instrument rack into the 2nd midi channel. 
• Set up the midi out for the external midi channel and enable audio in through your audio interface. The external instruments audio needs to be routed to your audio interface either through mono or stereo. In my case it is stereo.
• In my Audio track I set my audio to receive inputs from my audio interface through the I/O menu.

This following image shows how the routing works.

Once the routing has been done, and Ableton set up the way the instructions are provided in the steps above, you should be ready to record high quality audio from your instrument.

The best part about this method is that you can play using the same keyboard/synth on midi channel 1 and use the instrument patch in Ableton to tweak the velocity, sustain and also the timing on the midi track.

Then you should copy and paste the recorded midi track onto your external midi channel, hit play and arm/record audio on audio channel 1. The midi notes will be sent out from Ableton at whatever tempo you desire, and the audio from the external device should come back on time with the same tempo and with all the playing nuances such as sustain and velocity edits that you made.

Check my Tutorial on how to Record audio into Ableton.

Hope this tutorial helps those of you who cannot afford a professional/Session Artist to play your master composition!

Ableton Basics - Tweaking Instruments in Ableton Live

In the last tutorial I talked about to how to record midi into Ableton. In this tutorial we shall focus more on what settings you can use to tweak a sound of an instrument inside Ableton.

One of the first things you will need to understand is the concept of frequency and how sounds occupy a particular frequency space. A human ear in theory can distinguish sounds from 20-20000 Hz, that is the general guidance. I think with age, hearing abilities and difference in hearing between people most of the frequency above 15-16Khz is very difficult to discern for the majority of the worlds population. For example, take the bass drum. It has got tons of energy in the lower edge of the frequency spectrum (around 100hz and below depending on the kick used) and the drum also has harmonics present which have a very weak presence in the higher end of the spectrum (100-20000 Hz). Similarly the cymbals and hats occupy space starting from mid range around 4000-15000 and above. Vocals occupy most of the mid range, depending on the voice and the ability of the person to sing it can be as wide as 50-10000Hz.

The fact is for any track the kick in most cases provides the low end punch needed to drive the track. To make this tutorial easy. I am using the Classic 606 kit with a very flat sounding kick drum. how do you take this Kick drum and turn it into something punchy with a great low end presence.

For a more in depth explanation continue reading below.

When you add a drum kit inside Ableton, on top of the track view you will see a small triangle. If you click on this triangle (shown in the image below) the kit is expanded to the instruments that are present inside of it. This is needed since you will be dropping certain effects on some instruments but might not want the effect to be present on the entire kit.

Once the triangle has been clicked the kit will be expanded and you will see individual instruments in the kit as separate channels. This is shown below.

Now that you have separate channels, this becomes like any other midi channel with each one able to get separate effects apart from the sends and returns. Gives you an immense amount of options to tweak the sound.

An example of adding an EQ to the Main Kick-606 is shown below. You can then tweak the EQ and the mixer levels to get the right sound for your kick drums and the other instruments in the entire kit.

The same workflow can also be applied to other instruments. Say you have a bunch of string instruments, both audio samples and midi instruments. You can select all the tracks and group them together into a single master track called Strings and then redo the mix internally by expanding them. This whole method helps a lot when you are dealing with a lot of tracks in your productions.

Hope this tutorial helped. The next tutorial will deal with getting good sounding audio from your existing midi enabled instruments, keyboards, synthesizers, workstations etc into Ableton.

MIDI Instrument Recording in Ableton Live

In my previous tutorial I talked about the basics of what MIDI is and the various instrument choices available in MIDI that one can buy and use as a vst inside Ableton.

In this tutorial I will provide a short overview of how to invoke an instrument into ableton live, attach a midi controller for it and start recording. For the overview of the recording method please check out the video I have posted below.

 

Guide to setting up MIDI tracks

• Open Ableton and you should have an audio and a midi track by default.  Go ahead and right click on the audio track and delete it. 
• Now go to the empty space next to the midi track and right click and add another midi track. 
• Go to your Ableton instrument folder. this menu will be located on the left hand side and the icon will look like a folder and will not be numbered.
• In this folder depending upon the version of Ableton you have, there will be options to choose multiple instruments.
• With the instrument panel open, scroll down to instrument rack and pianos, Highlight the first midi track (just click on it so that it is active).
• With the first track highlighted, just double click on the piano patch that you want and it will get assigned to the first track.
• For the second track do the same process and select a drum kit from your instrument list.
• Once both the instruments are assigned, the name of the channel will change from midi to the name of the instrument.
• On the mixer controls panel of each track there will be an arm button, this is small circle under the S(solo) button. This needs to be turned on, press it will turn RED indicating that the track has been armed for recording your inputs.
• Now, make sure that you have your midi instrument connected to the system and it is functioning. If you do not hear any sound, then the midi options have not been set up right.
• To get to the midi screen on Ableton go to preferences section of Ableton. On the PC this is in the Edit menu. On the MAC it is in the Live menu as shown below.

• Make sure that you MIDI instrument shows on the panel and the input is turned on. My M-Audio Oxygen 49 and APC 20 controllers show up on the drop down menu of the device list. Once I choose them, Ableton picks the best default settings for the controller. Check this page on ableton for debugging controller issues. An example setup is shown below.

Recording MIDI

Follow the video above on recording and quantizing the recorded notes to your tempo and beat pattern.

Recording can be done in two ways, either record by hitting the master record button and the recorded pattern will directly be in the arrangement view on the tracked that you armed. I prefer the second method of recording in the session view. Just press the circle on the first clip slot of the instrument you wish to record. This will start recording and you will have this clip in the session view. Always have the metronome turned on to give you an idea of the tempo.

You can also do multiple takes here and then mix and match them on the arrangement view. I will cover this in a later tutorial. 

Quantizing your recorded notes is an important step since it aligns the notes to the closest bar based on the beat pattern. Unless you are a professional who has been playing forever, it is guaranteed that many of your notes will fall either too fast (more often) or slower than the beat. To correct these the feature called quantize is used to move the notes over to the closest beat bar. In most cases quantization will correct the notes perfectly based on the settings you use.

Example if you are playing at 4/4 with 1bar resolution then you could have all your notes quantized to 1/4 to have then line up with each bar of the beat. If you are playing faster say eighth notes then change your quantize settings to 1/8 beat.

There is also an option to turn on Record quantization, using this method Ableton quantize the notes as soon as it receives them to the nearest beat based on the quantize settings that you have. I use this a lot for songs that I record using straight 4/4 beats. If you are doing any other time signature like 3/4, 6/8 or 7/8 then you might need to change the grid to triplets and/or do a little more tweaking to get the notes aligned right.

Adjusting Recorded Notes/ Overdubbing

Once the notes are recorded, the OVR button on the top of the screen is turned on, it should be yellow, you can keep playing and the notes you play will continue to be recorded over the previous clip. this is a very useful feature for..say a drum kit. I have used this feature in the video above. A simple example is, on a multiple instrument drum patch you can play the kick drums first, turn on Overdub and layer the snares next, quantize and make sure everything is good and then turn on Overdub again and go on to the hats and cymbals.

A word of caution, if your instrument is a single patch like a guitar or a piano, do not have OVR turned on unless you want to change a part of the notes. Having overdub turned on in this case will record over your previous recording and you will lose all the notes from the first take. If you want to play multiple piano segments, then just trigger the next clip in the session view and record a new take.

You can draw a section around the notes you recorded and highlight all of them, after which you can use the left, right,up and down arrow keys to move them wherever you want to adjust the sound or the position of the notes. You can do this for single notes too by just clicking on one note and highlighting it.

Editing Velocity of Notes

Another useful feature in Ableton is to edit notes for velocity and panning. If you are using a hammer action keyboard or a velocity based midi controller then this will be done while you are inputting the notes. But if you have a normal keyboard which does not have velocity profiles in it, then all the notes will be recorded at the same velocity. When you listen to the recording, it will sound mechanical and will not have the human touch. So to edit velocity as soon as your notes are recorded, double click on the clip to bring up the notes view. At the bottom of the screen you will see a section with sticks with a circle on top. You can hold the circles and drag the sticks just like a normal volume control and set the velocity you would like each note to have. 

This is also shown in the video above where I edit the velocity of the Hats that are recorded as part of the drum loop. there are many more advanced editing techniques in Ableton which I will handle in later tutorials. 

With that, this Ableton Basics tutorial for Midi is done! Check out my next tutorial soon, the next one will include instructions on how to tweak an instrument to get the sound you need.

Ableton Live Basics - Midi and Virtual Instruments

In my previous tutorials I talked about the setup of a basic home studio, and how to record vocals using Ableton live. You can find the posts in the archives on the menu or follow the link below.

Midi Input - Please check my tutorial on home studio basic set up and I would have provided some midi solutions. Go with whatever instrument you are comfortable with - Example... If you are a drummer and have an electronic kit, you can hook it to the PC/MAC  through the midi in/outs and trigger any virtual drum kit (option provided below)

In this tutorial, I will be explaining the basics of midi and options for good virtual instruments to use in Ableton. MIDI or the Musical Instrument Digital Interface is the industry standard spec of capturing musical notes with almost all of the human variations during playing such as pitch, velocity, volume, vibrato etc digitally. Once captured digitally these can then be changed to whatever you feel like. This high level of freedom is what gives midi a unique strength.

Note - However the one drawback is the notes you get in are only as powerful as the digital instrument you can use to play them on.

Example - you recorded yourself or a session artist playing on a Yamaha Baby Grand or a Motif and once the recording was captured into Ableton you sliced the notes into midi (this is an excellent feature which i will deal in later tutorials)......if the last sentence does not make any sense, just visualize that all the notes that were played on the piano are now available for you to transpose, swap around and use on a different instrument inside your system. You pick a free vst available online and push the notes on it. Guess what happens, the sound you get might be horrible compared to the sweet sound of the Yamaha Grand or a Moti.


To counter this, you will need to spend and buy yourself some of the excellent Virtual Synths or Virutal Instrument Packages out there on the market. From what I have used so far I would rate the following as the best options out there for a home studio where there is not enough space for all the instruments in the world.

• Full Instruments - Komplete from Native Instruments. If there is one complete package that I would recommend going for, it would be this software. It is mind blowing how good the sounds of the instruments are on this package. If you are beginner I would suggest to use Komplete Elements to get your feet wet. It has close to 3GB of great quality instruments. If you are a more seasoned user then go with the second option, Komplete 8 full suite. It has a massive 110GB of music samples :O!

 

• Pianos - there are many options for VST pianos. Below are the ones that are not too expensive. The pianos included in Ableton sound alright, but if you want great grand piano sound, then invest in any of the following. Check out Torleys review of Alicia keys on YouTube video below, I am a subscriber to his channel since he has some very in depth videos of virtual instruments, thanks Mr.Torley!

• Drums - EZdrummer is a staple in many recording studios. So would recommend it without any hesitation. The drums in ableton do not sound bad either, you could EQ them to get different sounding kits each time.

•  Guitars and Bass - If you took the first option and decided to go with a suite of instruments, then all the basic instruments will be packaged. But if you are looking for stand alone rigs since you are a guitarist go with the choice below, they provide you an interface and loads of amps for recording your guitar. And the good thing is this device comes bundled with a version Ableton Live which can record up to 8 tracks at one time and for a home studio user 8 tracks is a lot!

With all of that out of the way....my next tutorial will feature the method of recording midi into Ableton Live and also some tweaks. Check back soon!

Recording Vocals/Instruments using Ableton Live

If you read the previous post of setting up a great starter home studio then continue reading this post. If not I highly recommend you read the previous post here, that will give you basics and equipment choices to set up a small home studio based around the Ableton Live DAW.

Before we get into the actual method of capturing an instrument or vocals into your system you will need to make sure that following things are working. It is better to complete this check before you have a singer or a session artist come into your studio. If you are going to be charging them for studio time, it is imperative that your stuff works right in the first place.

Pre Recording checks needed for Recording Vocals/Instrument into Ableton.

• Make sure your Mike, cables and or instrument cables and connectors are working. The mike that professionals swear by is the Shure SM58, It is legendary in performance and some say it makes a complete novice sound like a pro...:)...well kidding apart..this is the best mike you could purchase and I highly recommend you spend the money since it will make your recordings sound that much better. 

Other options would be

1. Behringer XM8500 - It is touted to be as good as the SM58 and is about 1/4 the price...:)
2. MXL 990 Condenser Microphone - this is an extremely good mike, and can also be used for miking instruments. But since its a condenser microphone you need to make sure that your audio interface or mixer has the phantom power option on it. Simple explanation of why this mike differs from previous ones is that it needs power to operate as a mike, whereas the previous ones pick up sound waves without need of external power

I could go on with a huge list of mikes from my fantasy list....but I will refrain from doing so and will let you research to find the best mike that suits your needs. The first two mikes specified above will work for almost all applications except recording a full drum kit, the 3rd option...condenser mike might be able to pull it off, but you will need to spend a lot more to cover an entire drum kit.

One more addition to have on your mike is the extremely useful POP filter. This filter supresses, the S and P sounds when the vocalist starts singing certain phrases. One of the cheap and good ones is highlighted below.

Finally

•  Check your audio interface and or the mixer where you are patching the cables and make sure that you are getting a signal into the board from the your device or Mike.
• This step is needed for folks with an external mixer, if you have only an audio interface skip this step. Zero out the mike/instrument gain using the PFL or test button so that most of the normal playing comes in at 0 db into the board or mixer, this is great way of getting a good signal into the system.

Now please Check Part 2 of the tutorial which will guide you on the recording flow in Ableton.

Recording Vocals/Instruments- Part 2

Read Part 1 of the article here

Setting up Ableton Live for Recording

There is a bunch of methods our there and people swear by certain methods. I am providing a simple step version of how I do it on my system

• Open Ableton Live and you should be greeted with the two tracks, an audio and a midi track.
• You will have an audio channel and a midi channel. You can delete the midi channel for now. More on midi in other tutorials.
• In the Ableton Live preferences, make sure that the device is selected. In my case a USB device as shown below.

• Highly recommend you stay in session view for making overall channel setting adjustments and then move into the arrangement view once the recording starts. you can switch between the two views using the  TAB key on the MAC and PC.
• On the Audio channel Session view there is going to be a I/O panel as shown below.

• If you do not see this view make sure you have turned on I-O visibility on the bottom right hand corner of the interface. This is located under the scroll bar on the right hand side.
• You need to make sure that the inputs for the channel are set to the device you are using to get the sound in. If you have installed the audio interface drivers on a PC, or plugged it into a MAC. Ableton will automatically populate it as one of the default choices available for choosing. Go ahead and pick that device as input. You can leave the output to Master as is. I will deal with sending audio to other channels such as sends or other tracks on a later post.
• Once the above steps are complete, if you go ahead and arm the track you should be able to hear the sound from the mike or instrument. If this is not happening, it is most likely that you have not set your audio in device correctly.
• Now would be a good time to hit the TAB key and go into the arrangement view. Hit the master record button to arm Ableton for recording.
• Set the tempo using the master tempo on the top left of the screen and when you hit play button you should be able to record the incoming signals as shown below.

Ableton Live Basics - Setting up a Basic Home Studio around Ableton

Ableton Live is one of the best tools (DAW) available for home studio owners or live performers. I started my studio work with FL studio, which is another powerful program when it comes to midi and sequencing. I still use that a lot to begin my projects and arrange virtual instruments. However when you really want to record and do everything on the audio or take apart a original sounding track and respin it with a new sound there is no other tool that can come close to Ableton. Your creativity has no boundaries...literally!!

However when it came to setting up my music studio I did not have a whole lot of places to get advice from, spent months talking to people and researching online on how to set up the ideal home studio. Even on youtube there would be videos, but people would not want to give clear directions on how to set up a home studio.

So for all of you out there that want to set up a good home studio, hope to help you avoid all the hard work and frustrations I went through by providing information through this article.

To get started using Ableton for your studio. Here are the basic tools you will need for sure.

1. A good PC/MAC can be desktop/laptop - anything with at least 1.5-1.8Ghz of speed with at least 4GB of RAM will work. I have run ableton live with just audio tracks on an Atom based netbook :) and have got no lags even on that system. If you use a lot of VSTs and effects then read on.
2. My iMAC runs on 2.5Ghz Intel Core i5. It came with 4GB of memory, since I use a lot of VSTs when I compose I recently upgraded the RAM with an 8GB kit giving a total of 12GB...dont think i will ever need more. The system is a lot more faster after the upgrade.
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3. Ableton Live -- whichever version you can afford is good, the version shown below is great starting point and is powerful enough for you to make stunning tracks. I downloaded their tool online and once I used it...had to have the full version.
4. If you have a laptop/desktop and do not have the space to put studio monitors I highly recommend investing money to get any one of the headphones listed below.
1. Audio Technica Monitor headphones - ATH m40fs - I own these, swear by them, many of my youtube videos have been mixed using them. For example check the following songs out. Song 1 and Song 2.  
2. Audio Technica has also released an M35 headphones and looking at the specs for the headphone, they should work well too.
 
1. Sony MDR-V6 - I own these too and they are industry standard along with the little more expensive Sony- MDR7506. The following songs were mixed using these Song 1 and Song 2
2. Shure SRH 440 Pro - Heard it at my friends home and was very impressed.

Studio Monitors - No matter who tells you what,a good pair of studio monitors are a must in any home studio. It does not matter the size of the monitors you get, mostly depends on your ear and what feels good for you in the mid range and higher frequencies, mixing bass is a difficult thing in a home studio and you are better off using the headphones for that.

M-Audio AV40 - I own these and do all my rough mixes on them, around 60 videos on my channel originated on these. They are very good with mid range and highs, but when it comes to mixing lows, you will need to use your headphones or get a subwoofer.

Stepping up further, M-Audio B5 - don't own them...but have heard good things about
them

The next piece of equipment that you will need will be an audio interface. For the longest time I used one of the Behringer usb based audio interfaces along with a 2 channel mixer. As time progressed I upgraded to a Tascam interface and a 10 channel mixer. I record Drums sometimes and need more than 6 channels. This will depend on you are set up and how much of recording you do. If you are just doing single channel of vocals, or instrument you could always go with the following products.

My very first setup which I highly recommend would be the combination of the following. A usb interface that will plug into the tape outs of a small mixer using a normal 2 channel RCA cable.

For the small mixer my choice would be the following product.

That should get you going very quickly, plus you will have good preamp on the mixer so the signal strength should be more than enough to the system.
For a one stop solution, you will need to spend a bit more and I can recommend the following devices.

Best - USB based entry level choices
Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 - Reviewed here. One of the best interfaces that I have used. Completely stable and has much better pre amps and plugins than the competition in the price range.

Good -M-Audio Fast Track - Entry level audio interface, they are excellent for smaller bands who can record tracks seperately.

Good - Tascam US-100 - Another Entry level interface that has got great reviews. Again this will be one track at a time, or a vocal and an instrument together.

Final piece is a midi controller.

If you are a Drum programmer, then go with a pad type interface. I own an APC 20 which is specifially made for Ableton. It is a fantastic product for doing everything from playing to mixing to DJing.

If you are a DJ, then go with a usb DJ interface. I am not an expert on those, so use the amazon search above and have fun finding the products that will fit your needs.
If you are more of a piano player then get yourself one of the midi keyboards. I own an M-Audio Oxygen 49 and it has been working great for over 5 years now.

If you already own a entry level piano at home, good news you save some money.....I would suggest picking up the following device to hook your piano to the pc/mac. I run my entry level Yamaha PSR keyboard to my system using the EMU midi interface. There are other cheaper options available if you choose to go the non branded way.

Ableton live has great support and the install should go on both pc/mac without any hiccups. Once installed you should be able to play around with the software and follow the inbuilt help and templates to get you up and running.

My follow up post in the Ableton Basics will be how to record vocals into your PC.

Thanks for Reading!

You can check out my work here. I mostly do instrumental covers/ remixes of major songs from all around the world.
 Disclaimer - These are products that I have used, am using or have seen in action. Just like any other review site, please read about the products before you purchase them. I am in no way affiliated to any of the product companies above or bear no responsibility if one of them does not work for you.