Sending click track to headphone output on laptop

I’m sorry if this question has been asked before. I would like to send a separate click track in Cantabile to my laptop’s headphone output so it can be sent only to the drummer’s earphone while sending all the rest through to the band’s mixing desk. Is this possible at all without any additional hardware?

My setup is as follows:
I’m running Cantabile 3 on my laptop using a BOSS BR-800 as my sound interface (which is connected to my laptop via USB). I’m using a vocal microphone, a Nord Stage 2 NS2) as well as a midi controller keyboard (with all its sounds coming from plugins loaded in Cantabile). I am also using Cantabile to send program changes to the NS2 in each song. In Cantabile. tjhe BR-800 appears with just one input and one output.

For some songs, I have had to create a background track (mp3) with some keyboard riffs and fills I cannot possibly play while already playing something else (apart from singing), so we will need a click track for the drummer to make sure we keep in sync with the background track. So my question: is there a way to create a separate click track that gets routed to a separate output than the rest of the sounds in Cantabile?

Cheers,
Herman

Hey Herman,

the problem with your approach is that Cantabile allows you to select only ONE audio driver, so it’s either your BR-800 or your onboard sound card (for the headphone output) that gets selected.

You may be able to fiddle something using ASIO4ALL (it does allow to address multiple physical devices from one ASIO interface), but I suspect this may have issues with latency and stability, so I wouldn’t really recommend it.

Better to get a reasonably affordable 4 channel audio interface that lets you send your Cantabile main output to one set of stereo outputs and your click track to a separate pair (or an individually adressable headphone output).

If you don’t want to invest in a new audio interface, you could also mix your output to mono in Cantabile (make your main output a mono port or simply assign both left and right channel to the left channel of your BR-800. Now you have the right BR-800 channel to route a click track to. Now the only thing left is some creative soldering and a cheap headphone amp for your drummer.

You may not even need the headphone amp if your BR-800 allows you to play sounds from the PC through its headphones in parallel to the line outs (don’t know if it does) - then you only need an adapter that connects the right signal to both left and right headphone signals.

Cheers,

Torsten

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Hi Torsten,

Thanks for your quick response and explanation. Maybe I should invest in an extra audio interface as you say. In principle, I’m content using my BR-800, because it works fine for recording separate tracks in Splat, but it only allows to separate main and headphone outputs from within the interface itself, not through an external DAW…

Any tips for an affordable aufio interface that would work in my setup?

Herman

If you don’t want to spend much, take a look at the Behringer U-Phoria UMC204HD - looks like a good match for your usage scenario with the individual headphone output and costs as little as 84 EUR at big T.

Haven’t played with it myself, but the reviews look good (mostly).

Myself, I have a Native Instrument Komplete Audio 6 as my backup interface (229 €) - decent and stable, but not in the same latency league as my main RME Babyface. But feature-wise, it could also fit your bill - and it’s definitely a very solid little beast - feels like you could use it to hammer nails into the stage floor with it (when you don’t have an SM-58 handy).

Cheers,

Torsten

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How about the Behringer UMC404HD? This has more inputs because 2 are not enough for me (my keyboard uses two and then I need a mic input and sometimes a guitar input)

Torsten’s post about the use of ASIO4ALL is what I have been doing since 2014. I have used it in many different scenarios. It is stable, and the latency is less with ASIO4ALL. Just click the wrench and enable the respective devices listed. Use ASIO4ALL as your audio driver and set up channels labeling on stereo channel mapped to the headphone out as “Click” and the other stereo mapped to your audio interface as “Main”. You can even run more than one instance of ASIO4ALL at one time. It’s crazy.

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OK, I’ll give ASIO4ALL a try. It’s the latency that worries me but if that’s acceptable, it may just work for me.

Well, I installed ASIO4ALL and so far, it works perfectly fine. Within the same song, I can now send one media player’s output to the on-board soundcard output of my Cantabile laptop, so the drummer can connect an earphone to hear the clicktrack, while the output of another media player (with the extra keyboard riffs/fills I am not able to play live) is sent to the my external sound interface (BR-800). The latency, insofar as there is any audible latency at all, is certainly acceptable, although I may be able to do some tweaking to improve it should that be necessary. So far so good… Thanks once again @Torsten and @Howifeel for your help and suggestions.

Cheers,
Herman

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Nice! Our band uses a wireless in ear monitor that transmits the click, song announcement and song structure to all of us such as “Uptown Funk - click - click - Intro - click - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4- click- click …Verse! - click - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4…” I figure if you are transmitting the click, why not insert song structure triggers as well? The audience freaks out that we have no count ins. We just all start at the same time. Glad you are working with it!

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BTW we have no bass player, it is a track, which tells us where the song is. I forgot to mention that.

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Wow, no bass player, so you have a track with the bass line playing along? So who recorded your bass line?

Does your band actually play Uptown Funk? Mine does, as it so happens :wink:

Our guitarist sets up all voice cues click and backing tracks with bass (and other stuff like horns, effects backing vocals) in ProTools. They are exported as stems to be launched from Ableton Scenes on several channels within the program (so we can mix backing tracks live if necessary). I use ASIO4ALL to control a right/left channel (1/2 outs) for Cantabile, Click and Vocal Cues come from the same audio interface on 4, and stereo backing tracks with bass on 5/6. 3/4 5/6 controlled by Yamaha Steinberg ASIO in Ableton and 1/2 Controlled by ASIO4ALL in Cantabile. The audio interface is a UR28M. A fabulous piece of gear, and our main money maker. Many bands have indicated our setup is much to complicated (which it is not, really). Our audiences appreciate our perfect rhythm and flawless bass. They are very satisfied with the dedication to quality rather than a band that plugs in, plays and hopes for the best. We play Steely Dan, Doobie Brothers, Huey Lewis, Classic Rock and Creedence Clearwater. Though many have indicated the music is simple, rarely have we heard people play it in a manner that gets people on the dance floor. I wish we played Uptown Funk. I am primarily a funk keyboardist. Our promo is on youtube as California Creedence Promo 2017.

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I’m using the VoiceLive Touch for my vocal effects. Is is possible to send a CC message to my VLT (for example to change the preset) based on the song position (e.g. 50 seconds into the backing track)? Or should I use/add a different file format to the mediaplayer to be able do this?

(Again, I’m a beginning C3 user (although already a BIG fan), so please forgive me if this question has already been answered a hundred times before. In that case, could someone please point me to the relevant thread?)

Hey Herman,

This feature is not yet available for audio files but you can use a midi track in a different media player and sync the audio track and the midi track. Hope this helps, there are others waiting for this so it is in the pipeline I think.

Dave

Thanks for your response, Dave. Using a midi file suits me fine. So how do I link a CC message (to be sent to my VLT) to a specific midi event within a midi file?

Simply put the CC (or program change) event into your MIDI file - use any decent sequencer / DAW to create a MIDI track with the commands you need at the right time. Use program change / control change messages to control your VLT presets and other parameters (e.g. harmony on/off). Now save the track as a MIDI file from your sequencer/DAW and load it into a media player in Cantabile. Route the output to your VLT - et voila!

Cheers,

Torsten

Wow, that’s clever! Thanks for that insight, Torsten :slight_smile:

Idk if it is ok to post here, but here I go.
I’ve been using left channel for click and right channel por background and keyboard, and I think that was the only “cheap” way to play with background sound (I have an old lexicon lambda interface, which have 4 input and 2 output + mix output 3,5mm, but the drivers suck so I’m using asio4all).
I mixed the vst sounds and the backtrack sounds and I’m happy with results, it sounds ok for my.

The problem is (well it not a problem really) that the drummer and I both are using headphones, and the internal mix is one, so the click is too loud and I barely can hear the keyboard itself. Background sounds were created long time ago when the band where I play in that moment only had the .wav, so the click and the backtrack are merged and is hard to divide.
So now I have the vst sound and the backtrack (backtrack contain the click in, so I pan it to mix).

Are there an easy way (buying a brand new interface maybe? which has more routable output?) to send for drummer only the click + backtrack and for my the click+backtrack+keyboard, that if I want I could mix different?

Sorry if it is messy my english is not so good.

I’m afraid I’m all but an expert on this topic so am not the most suitable person to answer your question. I myself just bought a new Scarlett interface that has two headphone OUTs and lets you create separate mixes for it but I’m sure there are many other options. Perhaps you should post your question as a separate message to get more response.