please help with Traktor + Ableton

Héctor Hernández

Hi there, I spent many many hours trying to make work Traktor decks in Ableton in a PC with windows, it's driving me nuts but I'm not able to make it work. I even bought an audio interface (motu m4) for this reason but it seems I can't do what I want to do. What I want to do is:

- my traktor kontrol s3 has four channels (decks) and I want to send them to Ableton as a separate audio track each. So I can use the send and returns of Ableton for effects and some other stuff. I saw many tutorials on YouTube on how to do this but most of them are in a Mac platform. Anyways they use a software for routing channels called "jack OS" in Windows is called "jack router" they are the same but I can't make it work. I choose external mix mode in traktor, choose the channels of jack router in traktor and in ableton use the jack router also. Before I bought the audio interface it seems it was working but I don't know why the deck A sound double 😑 with the audio interface now it just sounds the deck A other decks don't sound at all.

- I connect the s3 only via USB to the computer because I want to use the audio interface, the speakers are connected to the audio interface. 

 I'm pretty new using Ableton so maybe is something silly, but this silly thing is driving me nuts. Would anyone using a similar setup than mine be so kind to help me out with this, maybe some pictures of the windows of external routing in traktor and the main view and preferences of Ableton would be great. Thank you.

Héctor Hernández

I'm even ok if I can just put the master from Traktor out in Ableton with the loopback of the interface, but even if so the master sounds double , like when u have the same input and it sounds like with some kind of flanger effect, I really don't know how to set-up ableton for this . If anyone could help me that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Patch

Have you checked the old Traktor forum?

Lots of discussion there about it…

There was an issue w/32-Bit Jack Router and 64-Bit Traktor not working too well together…

But, there must be other virtual routing software out there for Windows besides Jack??? Jack is pretty old now…

But basically, you create a virtual audio interface in your routing programme, then set up your outputs in Traktor, in external mode, using the virtual audio interface that you created as your default audio device in Traktor, then, enable the same as Inputs in Live (again, using that virtual audio device in Live). Then, in your routing programme, you connect the outputs from Traktor, to the Inputs in Live. This is usually done using coloured lines that represent audio cables.

http://blog.dubspot.com/syncing-ableton-live-traktor/

http://blog.dubspot.com/traktor-to-ableton-live-how-to-route-audio/

Héctor Hernández

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/22003#Comment_22003

HI Patch, thank you very much 😊 I already check those of course. I do exactly as they say but weird thing is (before having the interface) I could route each deck to a channel in ableton but the deckA kinda sound weird because it's like it got the same audio from two different sources, even I change the master's out route the problem kept. I gave up that time and bough an audio interface. My surprise was that happened exactly the same as before. I now think that since I erased jack router and asio and install them again many times some file might got corrupted because now jackrouter doesn't even start and doesn't even see what programs I'm using for the routing, this is incredibly frustrating and annoying. But... Today finally I managed to use the loopback channel of the interface to route the master from traktor to one track channel of Ableton. 🎉That's not exactly what I wanted since I wanted to control every deck separately but at the moment is a big victory for me. I will find someday how to route every channel... I don't have a clue 🤣but that's OK, I can play a little with Ableton now 👍

Héctor Hernández

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/22003#Comment_22003

Hi Patch, I answered you but I dunno why what I wrote dissappeared 😅 anyways I was telling you that thank you for your message, I'd already check those links you sent before, indeed I was doing exactly as they said but with no luck, today I managed to route the output of the master from traktor to a track channel of Ableton using the loopback feature of the audio interface, that's not exactly what I wanted since I was looking for route every channel separately but that's ok. For now.

Thank you, greetings 😊

Patch

It can be done. I’d disconnect the MOTU interface if I were you. It’s adding a layer of complexity that you can do without…

Just create the number of outputs (Left hand side of Jack router routing window) that you want (8 - that’s 2 (1xL, 1xR) for each Traktor Deck) in Jack Router. Call that Device “Traktor 4 Decks”. Select that as your audio device in Traktor.

1 Deck A: L

2 Deck A: R

3 Deck B: L

4 Deck B: R

5 Deck C: L

6 … (you get the idea)

Then, still in Jack Router, create 8 inputs (Right hand side of Jack Router routing window). Those will be the inputs that you select in Live for each Traktor Deck.

THEN, in Jack router, you need to connect the Traktor Outputs, to the Live Inputs. Then, when you select those inputs on your 4 different Live channels (also select the Traktor 4 Decks device as the audio device in Live) the output from each of Traktors output pairs, will be routed to the corresponding Live input pairs, and, voila! 4 Traktor Decks, router to 4 separate Live channels.

Oh! The fun you’ll have!!!

Héctor Hernández

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/22021#Comment_22021

Hi Patch, that's exactly what I did but it didn't work on my computer, I have no idea why. 😫

Héctor Hernández

I also tried this config that one was saying on youtube

Héctor Hernández

point is that erased and install many many times jackrouter and ASIO4all and maybe some file got corrupted in the process cuz is very strange that I exactly do what all the tutorials says but it doesn't work to me.

Patch

You’ve got your system output routed back into Traktor?

Héctor Hernández

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/22106#Comment_22106

Hi patch, I tried any possible routing, forward backwards and in between 😂 really this is breaking my mental health... That routing I took from this tutorialhttps://www.hispasonic.com/tutoriales/como-enviar-audio-traktor-ableton-live/42418 (in Spanish, since I am from there) I'm thinking I'm OK if I'm able to just route the master of Traktor to Ableton and use the fxs only in the master but even if so it sounds extremely weird, I dunno.. Anyways now I'm in holidays far from home so when I can I will take a look to it again... Thank you for everything ❤️

Noisey

I would only rout traktor to ableton, and nothing else. Ableton I would internally in the settings rout to the sound interface. That's all.

Traktor -> Ableton -> Sound card

Why run ableton back to traktor?

That creates unnecessary loop backs...

Héctor Hernández

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/22220#Comment_22220

HI noisey, I'm pretty sure I already tried that and if I don't recall wrongly no sound came out out of Ableton anyways I will try again when I can... 😊 I start to wonder if what I intend to do is even possible.. Use the traktor as dj mixer and Ableton for plug-ins and effects. Ableton has thrillionsof cool VST plug-ins and I wonder why traktor can't implement them somehow, This would be great... At the moment I'm even considering to switch to dj in ableton only. Anyways thanks for the help.

Patch

It’s definitely possible.

Hows your routing in Live? Drop us a screen shot so we can see hiw each channel, and your master, is being routed?

Héctor Hernández

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/22362#Comment_22362

I can not send you guys a picture of my config since I won't be at home for two weeks, but from memory I can tell most of it.

In Ableton:

4 audio tracks to emulate the decks of traktor, they are in "ext in" every deck has the channel that I did set up in traktor external mixing window. They are from 1/2 to 6/8, the ext out is set to Master. Master is 1/2 and cue 3/4

In the preferences of Ableton it's asio and jackrouter.

I wanted to use the audio interface I bought a motu m4 to route the channels but I found out that that the channels 5/6 and 7/8 are reserved to the loopback function. And if I create virtual channels in jack router like 12/13 every time I choose them on traktor it crashed. So I gave up trying to use the audio interface and jackrouter together. I have to try to route all the decks of traktor to a single output of the audio interface 1/2 in this case since I don't really need to separate the four channels and I can play in Ableton with the master only. Better if I can do with yhe separate channels indeed.

I read somewhere that maybe I should plug the traktor S3 to the audio interface somehow but I have no idea how to route it to Ableton.

Any ideas would be great so I can think and try when I get home

Thank you.

Héctor Hernández

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/22362#Comment_22362

Hello there, I came back home and the first thing I did was buy two wires from XTR of the Traktor S3 to TRS of the audio interface. I'm happy to announce that with this setup I could finally use the master with fxs of Ableton. But, I realized also that using the master only it's not very convenient, since I usually use fxs on one deck to bring up other deck into the mix. Also, I noticed that Ableton don't allow to export audio bigger than two GB which is absolutly annoying because I had to merge them later with Adobe Audition task which is incredibly annoying and time consuming. Anyways, at the moment I'm still struggling with Jackrouter to see if I can separate channels, with no luck , any ideas? anyone there using Traktor S3 or similar with Ableton Live with an audio interface that could tell me how to route the channels?

Thanks