Tempest with Abelton

[ZDH]

Hey everyone,

So I've had a tempest for awhile now but never recording anything due to a lack of an audio interface. I've just purchased the apollo twin thunderbolt and while I've figured out how to record my other synths into Abelton I'm having quite some trouble with the tempest.

Currently I have a wire going from one of the voice outs of the Tempest to the Mic/Line 1 of the apollo. While I can see the waveform being recorded I can't actually hear any sounds.

The second issue is that while I'm playing on the Tempest only certain notes are registered when I press on the pads which I realized is similar to a problem another user was having:
http://forum.davesmithinstruments.com/index.php/topic,955.0.html
Is there any way to work around this? Do I need to have the main L and R connected to the apollo to hear the sounds properly? I went into the menu and assigned some of the sounds to V1 which helped but theres still a little latency.

So my two questions are how can I hear my recorded sounds? and how can I ensure that everytime I press a pad that Abelton recognizes it?

Thanks!!!

[Sontag]

Hi ZDH,
If you use a mono cable to record your sounds coming from a voice output make sure they are panned hard left. The voice outs of the tempest are stereo jacks, so everything panned hard right won't come out. Latency is not a problem of the tempest, it's most likely your computer or interface, check the buffersize in ableton, if that doesn't help you can try to reduce the amount of active plugins while recording. good luck!!

[Shea]

Until you fully understand the voice outs menu and the phasing issues presented by using stereo jacks without Y cables, you should just use the Left Main out with nothing plugged in to the voice outs.

[ZDH]

Until you fully understand the voice outs menu and the phasing issues presented by using stereo jacks without Y cables, you should just use the Left Main out with nothing plugged in to the voice outs.

Awesome thank you! That solved it for me. I'll have to look into figuring out how the voice outs work when I gain more experience but for now I'm recording so thanks!

[LucidSFX]

If you are just pluging one voice out then you can expect some sounds not to be recorded. especially if you do not assign a sound to a voice. So if you just have one cable plugged into a voice the rest are sent through the master (L & R). If you do not set at least one pad to a particular voice and IF you have a cable plugged into a voice out the you will notice the Tempest allocating the different sounds to that voice, which is will confuse the hell out of you at first.

You may want to look into Ableton's External instrument midi processor. I tried it and found it wasn't for my setup but it is a cool way to learn about latency. Personally, I have setup Live in the following manner: I have the 6 voices as separate audio track lanes PLUS an additional lane for then main outs (my audio card and routing can accommodates quote a few inputs). Note that you cannot use mains and all voice outs at the same time so I have the mains unplugged unless I want to use them for a specific reason. Finally I have a MIDI track set with a negative track delay. This is necessary to ensure that your recorded tracks align to your composition. I use the MIDI track specifically to trigger beats. I don't care to use the Tempest as a Polysynth or even care to program drums from Live. I find it far faster to keep drum patterns on the Tempest. However for fills and variations I seem to be slicing the beats in live...this can change.