I’m working on some music with a friend, and we’re both running Ableton Live on our computers. I’ve got SP running within Ableton on my laptop, and the output goes from the Portal to a Focusrite Scarlett 18i8, which is connected to my friend’s laptop. My friend is running a full project in Ableton with a connected Push, plus a guitar and my drum overheads going through the Scarlett as well.
For monitoring, we’re both using the headphone outs on the Scarlett so we can hear the full mix.
This works fine for sending audio, but I’m interested in using the more in-depth features of SP to interact with and control the full Ableton session on my friend’s laptop, and I was wondering whether it’s possible to achieve this given that the current setup only allows for one-way audio flow.
The barrier that prevents us from running SP on his computer is that we would be forced into using the Portal as the interface, which means we wouldn’t have enough inputs to run everything we’re currently using on the Scarlett. Does anyone have any suggestions for ways to condense this into a single session that both of us can interact with? It would be great to be able to use Sensory Percussion within Ableton without having to sacrifice the other inputs that we need.
Hey @rrv24 sounds like a cool project! How many overheads are you running? if you could get everything plugged into the portal, that would certainly be the easiest way.
Otherwise, you can use two interfaces on the same computer as long as you run SP in standalone mode. You’d still be running cables from the back of the portal into the scarlett. But you’d only have a single computer and Ableton session.
You can see a diagram of this setup here:
You would lose out on recording sensor audio via the SP plugin – but if you really need that, you could probably route it with loopback or something. Hope you have a powerful computer!
Thanks for this! We have two drum overheads, one guitar, and were considering adding a vocal mic too. I’ll try the Portal next time and see if we can get by with just one overhead and the guitar though!
I’m interested in MIDI controls, so using the standalone app in conjunction with Ableton on the same laptop may be a step up from our current setup.
Sensor audio and the ability to separate tracks within Ableton itself would be really nice though, so I’m still curious to see if that’s possible.
Wouldn’t routing with Loopback have the same issues as using a second interface? If I’m running the SP plugin, the Portal needs to be the active interface, which means I wouldn’t be able to choose Loopback as an input option to get the audio back in(?)
I’m curious if there are any other SP users who use the software in collaborative projects that require more inputs in the same session than the Portal can provide, and what methods they use if so. I imagine this is one thing that was possibly a bit simpler with V1 given those could connect to regular interfaces (though of course they would lose all the extra integrations and functionality that I’m currently enjoying with v2!)
You could also try feeding the guitar into one of the line-level inputs on the back. You’d need a separate preamp pedal or active DI box. I’m not a guitarist, so don’t take my word on the details, but it’s possible in theory. That would free up another combo jack for the vocal mic or another overhead.
You can separate up to 6 SP tracks by using the 4 outputs on the back of the portal and the headphone outs on the front (with a splitter). You can get more by connecting the Portal to the18i8 with ADAT. That gives an additional 8 channels. Or you could just record a stereo track in Ableton for syncing and use SPs built-in recording for track separation.
Recording the sensor audio with the plugin allows for changing your set after the performance and running it back through. Kind of like a MIDI workflow. Like if you want to change the samples in the recording later.
Would love to hear other users’ collaborative setups. There are so many ways you can go!
Just wanted to chime in with a couple things as well:
You do get a lot more flexibility when sending MIDI from SP standalone → Ableton than you do with SP plugin → Ableton. This is because Ableton strips outgoing MIDI channel information from plugins. Here is a an old thread on that topic. It’s talking about the v1 plugin, but the same applies for v2.
If you’re on a Mac, you might consider creating an aggregate device with your Scarlett 18i8 + EVANS Portal. I do this occasionally if I want to run my vocal mic through the converters of another interface while also recording sensor audio from the Portal. Aggregate devices can be a bit finicky and I wouldn’t recommend using them live on stage, but it might solve your problem of limited inputs.
I haven’t tried the line inputs on the back, so I’ll definitely take a look and see if those work with a DI box! Using the stereo track just for syncing is also an interesting idea now that the app has recording built-in.
We’re working on this project from both live performance and production standpoints, and for the latter, the sensor audio is definitely useful (although in that situation we probably wouldn’t need all the inputs to be active at the same time, negating the issue).
@Patrick For live performance specifically, I think I’ll experiment a bit more with sending MIDI from the standalone app. I do wonder if this might be making things unnecessarily complicated, but would it be possible to send MIDI from the Portal to the 18i8? Since running the standalone app on the same computer would necessitate having to choose between Loopback and the 18i8 in order to get all the audio routed into Ableton. @tenoch’s previous post in this thread about using Loopback to route audio back into Ableton did confuse me a bit, since it seemed to end up with the same issue of having to choose between input interfaces.
And yes, I’ve tried aggregate devices before (both with and without the Portal) and found them to be somewhat unreliable, so not something I’m keen on for this.
I’m finding this process really interestesting though, so hoping to see more setups from others!
When you ask about sending MIDI from the Portal to the 18i8, you mean in the scenario where they’re connected to different computers? In that case, the Portal has 5-pin MIDI out, so you could send MIDI from one computer to the other with MIDI cables. But if you’re running everything on one computer, it’s easier to send MIDI over the virtual IAC Bus.
Your goal is to run everything on one machine, correct? Either way, I would go for a solution that doesn’t involve Loopback. So, like Tenoch said, that would mean creating submixes in SP and either running the physical outputs on the back of the portal into the 18i8, or use built-in recording to record multi-track audio that you can pull into your DAW later. In both cases, you’d be connecting both interfaces to one computer and using the 18i8 as the input in your DAW and the EVANS Portal as the input in Sensory Percussion.