Don't know if you also have experienced this problem. When I record something on Ableton, I select the External IN 3/4 but then I have all the sound coming from my PC recorded over my playing. This mean, my MSN beeps, the metronome, the MP3 I am currently listening to, etc...

Can't understand what's wrong. It's working well on Reaper and other audio softwares but not on Ableton. Sad.

I wrote an e-mail to the Ableton support about that as well. But perhaps you have an idea ?

What audio interface are you using?

So, my guitar is connected in my POD2.0 which is connected in my Creative Audio Platinium external box. Then I use Creative Asio in Ableton.

But in Ableton I cannot choose my External Line In adapter which I see in all other audio software I use. I only see Ext. In 1/2 or 3/4, etc... The one I choose is 3/4. But not even sure it's the good one. There is 16 of then. Perhaps I should have tried all of them before asking.

I must say that this is not really intuitive in Ableton. Even though everything else is absolutely cool.

Try both of the following two things:

1 - In Ableton - Options>Preferences>Audio select the correct Driver type in the Audio Devices Driver Type box. This will most probably be ASIO for your Pod and also set the Audio Device in the drop down box (probably called something like ASIO Pod).

2 - in Windows disable on board sounds: Control Panel>Sounds and Audio Devices> Sound Schemes drop down 'No Sounds' (this will stop windows trying to make a sound when you get an msn message etc) then in the next Audio tab choose the Pod as your default device (may at the moment be Realtek AC97).

edit - you may need to set it as the Creative rather than the Pod - depends which is the audio device here.

The POD 2.0 is not an audio interface. I have no access to it on Windows. And the matter is not really the MSN sound but more than that the metronome sound.

The technical support in Ableton answered me and asked me to turn of the Stereo Mix volume in the advanced settings of my sound card. Problem is I can't find "Stereo Mix" anywhere.

This went away (sort of) in Vista and got renamed by some drivers to "What I hear" or something worded like that. It used to be called the stereo mix in previous versions.

Well, I think I solved my problem...

I checked once again all my settings. On other audio softwares, I was using the Creative ASIO interface but it seems that on Ableton, if I use that interface, I got all the problems I mentioned in my previous message.

So I checked all the other interfaces and find out that the MME/DirectX one just works fine.

Pretty confusing. Or perhaps I just missed something... : )

Is it a problem I cannot use my Creative ASIO driver ?

If you can record a signal using Creative ASIO as device driver in Ableton, then the ASIO driver is doing the job. The problem is with Creative Mixer probably. Have you checked there? There's gotta be an option for adjusting what is being fed through ASIO channels to DAW.

I will check that tonight. Thanks for the answer.

Yesterday I encountered another problem. I was playing over some loops I made with my guitar and a midi loop made from Addictive Drums. After like 15 - 30 minutes playing I couldn't hear the midi loop anymore. It's like the midi stopped emitting any sound to the master channel.

It already happened before so I closed the software and started it again and then everything worked fine again.

Sometimes I hate audio softwares ! With cables and hardwares you never have those kind of problems.

No problem man, let us know if it worked. I'm not sure what's the problem with the ASIO, but in general Creative cards are not cards that are used for audio production, their ASIO can be unstable. I suggest getting a good audio interface in the future. Creative makes mainstream gamer/movie sound cards regardless of the price.

I think I solved all my problems with the ASIO4ALL driver. I can plug everything in the right place and my master emits sounds. So it's good.

Well, yeah, my stuff is probably crappy but I am not a pro and as long as it make my guitar sound good enough I will continue to use that and update slowly to something better. But next update is software with Ableton and probably EZDrummer.

That's a start at least.

If it works and you get the results, you are right - no point changing. I glad you resolved the issue. Let us know if there's anything else we can do to help.

Cheers,
Ivan