Using LiveTrack L8 as Audio Interface

Hey folks, Steve Johnson here with the Not So Straight and Level podcast and with the SJ Knows Everything Facebook page. I don't know everything, but I might know a little bit about this. So today we're going to talk about using the LiveTrack L8 by Zoom as an audio interface. A lot of people have asked about using this as an audio interface. Zoom's documentation on the subject is a little bit lacking. Today we're going to connect it up to Adobe Audition and show you how that works, if you like that. and you want to see how you can use it with some other software, some other gadgets, that sort of thing, hit some likes or some subscribes, and maybe I will make some more videos on the process. So, but let's jump right into it. We're not going to go through a complicated unboxing and opening little boxes and all that sort of thing. We're just going to get down to the meat of the situation. So here we go. The first thing that you've got to do is don't hook the device up to your computer just yet. Today we're using a Windows 10 computer, and we're going to hook the LiveTrack 8 right up to that. But first... we got to get the right driver from Zoom. So we go to the Zoom NA North America website. We go to downloads here on the LiveTrack 8 page, and we're going to download the L8 driver for Windows 7, 8, and 1 and 10. So, or Windows 7, 8.1 and 10. So everybody knows how to download a driver and how to install it. So we're not going to go through that. All right. But that's what you got to do. You got to get that driver. After you get that driver and open the zip file, You'll see this little Zoom L8 EXE file. You're going to take that, double-click it. It's going to install the driver. I've already done that, so I don't have to do it again. Now, you can see my board laid out here. I hope it comes through pretty good. I'm just using my webcam to capture this part of it. I've got a Shure SM58 microphone connected up to input 1, and you will see that when I talk in here, I've got the gain set, and this is jumping up and down. Okay, so just a little jump. Here that I'm gonna stick in the middle of this because I forgot to mention it now when I got my live track 8 out Of the box it was set up to run the audio interface on a PC or Mac But I'm gonna show you how to do that just in case you need to do some troubleshooting So the first thing you do if you go down here, you will see We're on recorder mode right now I'm going to switch to mixer mode and when I do that you'll see this light that says audio interface when you click that That changes this screen to say audio interface. Now I'm going to do one later on iOS but with the GarageBand or something but right now we're going to use PC Max so I just push on this little button boom and I say are you sure yes click again now that pops us back to mixer mode or to yeah mixture mode but the thing is it's not very satisfying because it doesn't like other Zoom products when you go into audio interface it's a dedicated interface In this case, it's just a pass-through interface because you can use the Zoom L8 for normal recording and everything else and pass the audio interface through at the same time. So you could essentially record on two devices at once if you wanted to. So that's the skinny on that. We're going to want to get Adobe Audition configured in order to take the input. And that is where the documentation is weak and that's where you want to pay attention. So I'm going to go ahead and pop up Adobe Audition right now. Here we go. The first thing I need to do once I'm in Audition, I'm going to start a new multi-track session because I think that's really cool. And I'm going to tell it I want to use a 24-track music session, I'm going to call it. And I'm going to just call this the L8 Demo. All right, so now I've got a 24-track multi-track session set up. Now I've got to work on my inputs and outputs. So the first thing I've got to do is I've got to go into Preferences. In Windows, it's Edit, Preferences. and i'm going to go to audio hardware now you'll notice that the device class up here i've chosen is asio or asio or however you want to pronounce it okay so asio right there you need the zoom asio driver okay just like that the rest of this stuff i'm not going to mess around with you might be smarter than i am and be able to mess with that if you hit settings it pops up a little window that looks like this which allows you to change the buffer size and some other exciting stuff that i'm not going to mess with today so there we go and that's all we got to do instead of that we have audio channel mapping over here we're not going to mess with that right now it shows you all the inputs and stuff i'm just going to pop over here directly to our multi-track session i'm going to go right here to my first track one i'm going to choose the input device that's what that means right there input i'm going to click on this i'm going to use mono and i'm going to go down to input 1 which is my number one input on the live track l8 okay so now with any luck at all if i hit the record arming button here you will start seeing the output from my talking transferring from the L8 onto Adobe Audition on channel one. Okay, so that's really cool. So guess how we would set up channel two. Imagine that, we would go right down to this little thing right here and say mono input two. Right, so now we've got one and two. I don't have anything in two, but if I did, you would be seeing that jump around there if I had it armed for record. Okay, just to show you how that's gonna work, I'm gonna hit the record button. I'm gonna pick this up and say, hey everybody, this is Steve. talking through the live track 8 and recording on the amazing Adobe Audition software. Okay, so that's all there is to it right there. Makes sense, right? Now, for you naysayers, I'm just going to go ahead and move this over to number 2, set the gain about the same, bring this up over here. I'm going to hit record over here. Oh, look at that. Now I'm recording on number 2, and I can record that at the same time, right in that same spot. I'm going to hit record and say, okay, naysayers, check it out. All right, so there's that. Notice. I have punch in or something so I've got record set up here so it recorded over the top of that I don't care I just wanted to show the how that was going to work now I'm going to unarm these two for record so we got that those out there let's say if you know anything about the live track 8 it's got these two really super cool other things here in the middle these are multi-function inputs all right you can have a standard input if you push this thing like this okay Now we've just got standard line inputs. You can plug your guitar or your banjo or whatever you want to in here and just use this as another input. It's not an XLR, just a standard input, just like the centers of these are. Okay. That's all fine, well, and good. But we got a lot of other inputs already we don't need. All right. So if I hit this button again, now USB lights up. Okay. What that is, is that means that whatever, this is now an input that comes from the USB connection of the computer. So I can take what's coming out of Audition. and run it back into this device right here, okay? And I'm just going to show you that that works. I'm going to back up and hit play, and you'll see I'm hitting play, and here is the output coming from Adobe Audition right into the L8, right on this USB 1.2. Obviously, if I did 3.4, I could do the same thing, okay? So that's just kind of a nifty thing, good to know. Something you can do if you want to recirculate that. Now of course there's always an opportunity to get some kind of feedback loop if you're not careful. I haven't had that problem but I'm sure you could do it if you tried hard enough. So that would be our USB input on that one, that's kind of cool. We know one of the cool things about the Live Track 8 is the telephone interface. That's this little TTRS connection right here. And you could plug your telephone in. use this as an audio interface, record on Audition instead of on the LiveTrack 8, and capture the phone input. And then, of course, the other snazzy thing that this has is this little sound generator pad where it makes these nifty little sounds when you hit the buttons, and you can change the sounds. It does intro music, that sort of thing. You can pass all of that onto Adobe Audition as well, too. I'll just show you that real quick in case you're a non-believer. So I'm going to go to Mono. I'm going to use, this is Channel 8, so I'm going to go down here to Input 8. I can get down there. I got something in my way. Hang on just a second. Let's go down there again mono input 8 now when I arm for record if I hit one of these buttons You will see it dances up there And if I hit the record it's gonna play one of these little magic button things when I hit it Okay, which is like claps or something like that, whatever I've got programmed in there So that is all there is to using this device as an audio interface pretty simple If you have any questions, if I haven't covered something appropriately for you, leave some notes in the comments of the video, and I will certainly answer your questions as best that I can. I hope this has been helpful. See you next time.

Zoom's documentation on the subject is a little bit lacking. Today we're going to connect it up to Adobe Audition and show you how that works, if you like that. and you want to see how you can use it with some other software, some other gadgets, that sort of thing, hit some likes or some subscribes, and maybe I will make some more videos on the process. So, but let's jump right into it.

We're not going to go through a complicated unboxing and opening little boxes and all that sort of thing. We're just going to get down to the meat of the situation. So here we go. The first thing that you've got to do is don't hook the device up to your computer just yet. Today we're using a Windows 10 computer, and we're going to hook the LiveTrack 8 right up to that.

But first... we got to get the right driver from Zoom. So we go to the Zoom NA North America website.

We go to downloads here on the LiveTrack 8 page, and we're going to download the L8 driver for Windows 7, 8, and 1 and 10. So, or Windows 7, 8.1 and 10. So everybody knows how to download a driver and how to install it. So we're not going to go through that. All right. But that's what you got to do.

You got to get that driver. After you get that driver and open the zip file, You'll see this little Zoom L8 EXE file. You're going to take that, double-click it.

It's going to install the driver. I've already done that, so I don't have to do it again. Now, you can see my board laid out here. I hope it comes through pretty good. I'm just using my webcam to capture this part of it.

I've got a Shure SM58 microphone connected up to input 1, and you will see that when I talk in here, I've got the gain set, and this is jumping up and down. Okay, so just a little jump. Here that I'm gonna stick in the middle of this because I forgot to mention it now when I got my live track 8 out Of the box it was set up to run the audio interface on a PC or Mac But I'm gonna show you how to do that just in case you need to do some troubleshooting So the first thing you do if you go down here, you will see We're on recorder mode right now I'm going to switch to mixer mode and when I do that you'll see this light that says audio interface when you click that That changes this screen to say audio interface. Now I'm going to do one later on iOS but with the GarageBand or something but right now we're going to use PC Max so I just push on this little button boom and I say are you sure yes click again now that pops us back to mixer mode or to yeah mixture mode but the thing is it's not very satisfying because it doesn't like other Zoom products when you go into audio interface it's a dedicated interface In this case, it's just a pass-through interface because you can use the Zoom L8 for normal recording and everything else and pass the audio interface through at the same time. So you could essentially record on two devices at once if you wanted to.

So that's the skinny on that. We're going to want to get Adobe Audition configured in order to take the input. And that is where the documentation is weak and that's where you want to pay attention.

So I'm going to go ahead and pop up Adobe Audition right now. Here we go. The first thing I need to do once I'm in Audition, I'm going to start a new multi-track session because I think that's really cool.

And I'm going to tell it I want to use a 24-track music session, I'm going to call it. And I'm going to just call this the L8 Demo. All right, so now I've got a 24-track multi-track session set up.

Now I've got to work on my inputs and outputs. So the first thing I've got to do is I've got to go into Preferences. In Windows, it's Edit, Preferences.

and i'm going to go to audio hardware now you'll notice that the device class up here i've chosen is asio or asio or however you want to pronounce it okay so asio right there you need the zoom asio driver okay just like that the rest of this stuff i'm not going to mess around with you might be smarter than i am and be able to mess with that if you hit settings it pops up a little window that looks like this which allows you to change the buffer size and some other exciting stuff that i'm not going to mess with today so there we go and that's all we got to do instead of that we have audio channel mapping over here we're not going to mess with that right now it shows you all the inputs and stuff i'm just going to pop over here directly to our multi-track session i'm going to go right here to my first track one i'm going to choose the input device that's what that means right there input i'm going to click on this i'm going to use mono and i'm going to go down to input 1 which is my number one input on the live track l8 okay so now with any luck at all if i hit the record arming button here you will start seeing the output from my talking transferring from the L8 onto Adobe Audition on channel one. Okay, so that's really cool. So guess how we would set up channel two.

Imagine that, we would go right down to this little thing right here and say mono input two. Right, so now we've got one and two. I don't have anything in two, but if I did, you would be seeing that jump around there if I had it armed for record. Okay, just to show you how that's gonna work, I'm gonna hit the record button.

I'm gonna pick this up and say, hey everybody, this is Steve. talking through the live track 8 and recording on the amazing Adobe Audition software. Okay, so that's all there is to it right there.

Makes sense, right? Now, for you naysayers, I'm just going to go ahead and move this over to number 2, set the gain about the same, bring this up over here. I'm going to hit record over here.

Oh, look at that. Now I'm recording on number 2, and I can record that at the same time, right in that same spot. I'm going to hit record and say, okay, naysayers, check it out. All right, so there's that. Notice.

I have punch in or something so I've got record set up here so it recorded over the top of that I don't care I just wanted to show the how that was going to work now I'm going to unarm these two for record so we got that those out there let's say if you know anything about the live track 8 it's got these two really super cool other things here in the middle these are multi-function inputs all right you can have a standard input if you push this thing like this okay Now we've just got standard line inputs. You can plug your guitar or your banjo or whatever you want to in here and just use this as another input. It's not an XLR, just a standard input, just like the centers of these are.

Okay. That's all fine, well, and good. But we got a lot of other inputs already we don't need. All right. So if I hit this button again, now USB lights up.

Okay. What that is, is that means that whatever, this is now an input that comes from the USB connection of the computer. So I can take what's coming out of Audition. and run it back into this device right here, okay? And I'm just going to show you that that works.

I'm going to back up and hit play, and you'll see I'm hitting play, and here is the output coming from Adobe Audition right into the L8, right on this USB 1.2. Obviously, if I did 3.4, I could do the same thing, okay? So that's just kind of a nifty thing, good to know. Something you can do if you want to recirculate that.

Now of course there's always an opportunity to get some kind of feedback loop if you're not careful. I haven't had that problem but I'm sure you could do it if you tried hard enough. So that would be our USB input on that one, that's kind of cool.

We know one of the cool things about the Live Track 8 is the telephone interface. That's this little TTRS connection right here. And you could plug your telephone in. use this as an audio interface, record on Audition instead of on the LiveTrack 8, and capture the phone input. And then, of course, the other snazzy thing that this has is this little sound generator pad where it makes these nifty little sounds when you hit the buttons, and you can change the sounds.

It does intro music, that sort of thing. You can pass all of that onto Adobe Audition as well, too. I'll just show you that real quick in case you're a non-believer. So I'm going to go to Mono. I'm going to use, this is Channel 8, so I'm going to go down here to Input 8. I can get down there.

I got something in my way. Hang on just a second. Let's go down there again mono input 8 now when I arm for record if I hit one of these buttons You will see it dances up there And if I hit the record it's gonna play one of these little magic button things when I hit it Okay, which is like claps or something like that, whatever I've got programmed in there So that is all there is to using this device as an audio interface pretty simple If you have any questions, if I haven't covered something appropriately for you, leave some notes in the comments of the video, and I will certainly answer your questions as best that I can.

I hope this has been helpful. See you next time.

Transcript for:Using LiveTrack L8 as Audio Interface

Transcript for:
Using LiveTrack L8 as Audio Interface