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Exporting samples from a laptop with a click

chrisdavis - Mon, 03/15/2010 - 03:11 | 4,056 views

I have made several drum samples and effects for some of the tracks of the band I'm currently in. I have them set up so that each song has it's own track in Reason 4. I'm trying to figure out how I'd output the track from my laptop with a click while at the same time sending the track without a click to the stage mix. I'm assuming I'd probably just need to plug my laptop into a direct box, but what kind of cables would that require? And what else do I need to do with my laptop?

I'm using Reason 4 and I have a MacBook Pro.

I plan on plugging my in-ear monitors into my laptop's 3.5mm headphone jack to hear the track with a click, but I don't know how to export the tracks without-metronome to the PA. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you so much!

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ringochris Says Re: Exporting samples from a laptop with a click

Submitted On: Tuesday, Mar 16, 2010 - 11:31 AM

I do a similar thing with my band. I put my click on the tracks in a studio using Cubase, so can't really advise you what to do with your software, but what I did was pan the click all to one side, and the track to the other. I have the tracks on an iPod, and have a cable that runs from the iPod to the mixing desk into 2 separate channels. The cable I had specially made, and it goes from stereo mini jack to 2 cannon XLR's. I think if you use XLR's, the signal from each channel goes into the desk as a mono signal, so each channel will come out of the front of house speakers as a mono signal (both click and track will come out of both left and right speakers). So all you need to do then is just have the click running to your monitor feed and not out front. I use a wireless in ear monitor setup, and pan the click to one side and the track to the other, along with vocals and anything else you have in your monitor mix. Hope I explained this all clearly, and hope it helps! Chris

chrisdavis Says Re: Exporting samples from a laptop with a click

Submitted On: Monday, Mar 15, 2010 - 3:13 AM

Also, I have Ableton Live 7 if that helps at all. I don't know it very well but I know it's possible to ReWire the two programs and I know Ableton is pretty powerful, so maybe there's some way to do what I want with it if there's not another way. Although I'm pretty sure I've seen people only use Reason