Record Sonic Pi and Ableton interaction?

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1

Hello everybody, today I managed to setup the interaction via MIDI messages sent by Sonic Pi with Ableton.
This opens up almost limitless doors in sonic exploration!
However, I tried to record a track with the Record button in Sonic Pi and rightly it only records the sounds actually produced directly by the latter.
My composition uses some live_loops to send MIDI messages on different channels in Ableton, and other live_loops to play samples directly in Sonic Pi.
Do you have ideas and advice on how to record all the sounds produced by this interaction? Can this problem also have repercussions in any live coding sessions in sending the audio to the speakers?

2

Hi and welcome to the community,
options for recording multichannel audio output in the way you describe depend on your hardware and software setup. Firstly, are you on Windows or Mac, and do you have a multichannel audio interface? I use a fairly basic setup myself on Mac and have found Soundflower to be fairly simple and flexible, as a software solution. One Windows alternative, called Jack, is often cited but is reportedly a little less ā€˜transparentā€™ to use. Essentially, you could route your Sonic Pi output to virtual audio channels 1 & 2 say, and record that output to an audio strip within Ableton, as a first example. If you have a multichannel audio interface, that offers alternative hardware solutions too. Finally, it goes without saying, when you start sending audio across different hw/sw channels, headphones are a must-have.

Brendan

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3

Thank you so much for your answer, and sorry if i didnā€™t provide enough informations!
Iā€™m working on a Windows laptop, do you have any suggestions/guide for setupping this kind of workflow on a Windows machine?
Could this also allow me to route audio and work on visuals with Hydra?

4

Hi
Hydra is a separate entity, which you can control from within a web browser but Iā€™m not sure if controlling it directly from Sonic Pi is yet officially confirmed, although Iā€™ve seen Sam using it in this way.

As for routing audio virtually (i.e. within software), have a search online for ā€œSoundflower Windows alternativeā€. Such software presents itself as an alternative audio ā€˜driverā€™, allowing one to control which audio input and output channels your audio software uses. Then you can search here, and other specific forums for more detailed guidance on how to send audio from Sonic Pi into Ableton Live, and to record both.

This broad advice presupposes that you want to record audio output from Sonic Pi and Ableton Live natively, but there will be other solutions, such as sending audio out from those two sources to another separate piece of recording software, like Audacity for example. And you havenā€™t mentioned what your hardware audio interface setup is.

HTH
Brendan

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5

Hey man, sorry for late answer, thank you so much for your help!
I managed to do the setup thanks to VBCable and configuring some parameters in Ableton.
With this setup my samples audio is sent to Ableton through a virtual audio cable and then reproduced from here, now both MIDI and audio are sent to Ableton via virtual connections, no external audio devices involved!
This seems a pretty good setup for live performances, cause i can program logic using SonicPi, but all the audio is managed in Ableton (mainly to use its VSTs plugins)

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