You guys are awesome. Thanks again for all the great suggestions. Life things have me hoppin' busy at the moment but I will definitely look into it over the weekend. There were a couple times I've actually wanted the sound of the metronome ticking away in the music. The one in Sonar has a pleasant sound to me...

Geo524
Thanks for the great tips everyone.
 
Cactus Music I have the Scarlett 18i20 with mix control. Can you explain in brief how to set up the routing? Thanks

Unfortunately there is no internal "Loopback" function with the Scarlett 18i6. The other Scarlett models have it as do their other product lines but I asked Focusrite themselves about this before purchasing my 18i6. It just couldn't be wired that way but I decided I'd rather have the extra i/o's than the loopback.
 
However there may be other ways to do but I'm assuming Cactus Music is probably referring to the feature I'm talking about. You could double check with Focusrite though but you'll probably get the same response I did which was basically "Just use a cable from one of the outs to one of the ins".
 
Sorry... just trying to save you some time from chasing a feature that you may not have. Cheers.

mrphil
If you have a soundcard with several ins/outs and options in the soundcard mixer to routing, you can route your click to some outputs > route that to another input > record that input to a track.
I don't know if there is a smarter way around it in the X-series, I'm on 8. Reaper actually have a neat function to capture click directly to a track.

This is what I recommend, but there's also a really powerful hidden benefit here. ASIO drivers are not the best at detecting latency in hardware. If you route a metronome click out your interface, back into an input through a suitably long cable, record the audio on a new track, then, playback that recorded metronome the same way, recording the playback audio onto yet another track, between the two, you can find exactly how many samples off your ASIO driver is from latency monitoring. You can then make an adjustment to your offset by this number of samples, and voila! all of your overdubs will be sample-perfect!

Beepster

Geo524
Thanks for the great tips everyone.
 
Cactus Music I have the Scarlett 18i20 with mix control. Can you explain in brief how to set up the routing? Thanks

Unfortunately there is no internal "Loopback" function with the Scarlett 18i6. The other Scarlett models have it as do their other product lines but I asked Focusrite themselves about this before purchasing my 18i6. It just couldn't be wired that way but I decided I'd rather have the extra i/o's than the loopback.
 
However there may be other ways to do but I'm assuming Cactus Music is probably referring to the feature I'm talking about. You could double check with Focusrite though but you'll probably get the same response I did which was basically "Just use a cable from one of the outs to one of the ins".
 
Sorry... just trying to save you some time from chasing a feature that you may not have. Cheers.

Hey Beepster, You might have seen this already but if not it might be a work-around for you?


http://global.focusrite.com/answerbase/does-the-scarlett-18i6-have-loopback?id=1224
 
I have the 18i20 but haven't checked to see if I have Loop-back or not. To tell you the truth I haven't experimented all that much with the mix control software but I guess I'm going to have to start learning it.

brconflict

mrphil
If you have a soundcard with several ins/outs and options in the soundcard mixer to routing, you can route your click to some outputs > route that to another input > record that input to a track.
I don't know if there is a smarter way around it in the X-series, I'm on 8. Reaper actually have a neat function to capture click directly to a track.

This is what I recommend, but there's also a really powerful hidden benefit here. ASIO drivers are not the best at detecting latency in hardware. If you route a metronome click out your interface, back into an input through a suitably long cable, record the audio on a new track, then, playback that recorded metronome the same way, recording the playback audio onto yet another track, between the two, you can find exactly how many samples off your ASIO driver is from latency monitoring. You can then make an adjustment to your offset by this number of samples, and voila! all of your overdubs will be sample-perfect!

Thanks Brian... Whew... I know to you guys this is probably basic stuff but to me it's a bit overwhelming. Lol. I'm going to have to really dissect these instructions, break 'em down and take it one step at a time.

Oh crap. Sorry, dude. My bleary old eyes read 18i6 instead of 18i20. I think that one came out after I bought mine. I'd imagine they probably tried to cram the loopback feature on there somewhere considering how popular it is.
 
And thanks... I did know about the SPDIF trick. My needs for a loopback set up are more to snag audio from other programs so the ASIO thing is the problem (sharing driver) but if I get to that I'll just use a different driver mode or use another program to capture the audio. If I needed a click track I'd just use a MIDI track with some acceptable percussive noise and bounce it if need be (as was mentioned upthread). I actually prefer it that way anyway because traditional click wigs me out when I'm trying to track.
 
Good luck.
 
 
 
 

No prob Beepster. Yeah. The click track using midi seems like a good way of doing it too. I'll be looking into all the options provided in this thread over the holiday weekend. Gotta leave some time for BBQing too...

In what Brian has mentioned is a way to test your system to see if Sonar and your audio drivers are calculating your latency offset properly. You re record a track with strong transients with the loop it back and then see if the new track lines up. It better. Sonar does this automatically and rarely needs user adjustments. 
 
And yes I have a 6i6 , but I thought Mix Control was the same, guess not. 

Cactus Music
In what Brian has mentioned is a way to test your system to see if Sonar and your audio drivers are calculating your latency offset properly. You re record a track with strong transients with the loop it back and then see if the new track lines up. It better. Sonar does this automatically and rarely needs user adjustments. 
 
And yes I have a 6i6 , but I thought Mix Control was the same, guess not. 

Yeah, it's a hardware limitation not a software one. I'm not sure if I got a special 18i6 version of MixControl. I really don't mess with it much aside from changing my buffers. It's just me here so I don't need special headphone mixes or elaborate input set ups. I set it up when I first got it and that was that. Love that little thing... especially the separate monitor and headphone level knobs. Saved me from having to buy a BigKnob type device to control my ref monitors or running it through my mixer which would probably color the sound.

Well Gentleman I found out that the Loopback feature is only available to the Saffire line of Focusrite interfaces. I had the Pro40 originally but swapped it out for the 18i20. Looks like I'll be taking the midi route...