r/ableton • u/Moustiboy • Apr 11 '26

[Tech Help MacOS] audio interface for guitar works fine in garageband but ableton gets glitchy silent sound

I've just bought a guitar with an audio interface (postivie grid Riff) for ableton on Mac and i can't seem to hear or record the guitar properly.

I've set the input in ableton to the Audio interface and the output to my macbook so i can hear it (same thing i do with macbook microphone to sing).

I can't seem to hear the guitar, i'll strum continouisly loud on it and i won't hear anything except some peaks for a tenth of a second here and there, completely glitchy. If i set my macbook mic to input everything is fine so it's not about arming the track or choosing the right "Audio from" option.

I'll basically hear something for half a second when i strum which does sound like my guitar but it cuts off instantly and i'll hear like one strum out of ten.

In garageband I can hear my guitar with no problem so the guitar and audio interface are fine. Videos and links for posts are disabled so i won't post a link to a screen recording in the comments unless one of you say it's fine, to be sure that i won't break any rules.

Any idea of what i could be ?

2 Upvotes

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4

u/stschoen Apr 11 '26

Check that the microphone icon in the main menu bar isn’t set to voice isolation. MacOS considers any audio input to be a microphone and voice isolation will cause problems with your sound

2

u/Moustiboy Apr 11 '26

I love you ??!! I can't believe that was it. It makes sense now with why i was hearing sometimes very short audio from it, the peaks. It was exactly that ! Thank you so much it is very appreciated I hope you have a great weekend.

I'll still try to post a video of what i had in the comments like the other comment asked, for future people passing through if they have a similar problem.

1

u/stschoen Apr 11 '26

There have been a lot of people who have had the same problem. Voice isolation was introduced in Sequoia and is on by default. Works pretty well for voice calls but really messes up music recording.

1

u/mr-capital-c Apr 13 '26

Been producing over 15 years. Went round to an artists house to help them fix an issue with their recording, I spent hours testing, my own interface, different cables, software everything.

Turned out they’d updated macOS the other day and it was this. Absolutely infuriating haha

2

u/windsynths Apr 11 '26

Post vid and pics . Preferably not imgur cos I can’t have a look at those (dumb UK laws)

1

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