M Audio Fast Track C600 heaphone output is silent when recording

[GeneRoberts]

I have been looking everywhere for this... I'm about to give up hope.

I heard this recorder (smaller brother c400) on a famous online interface comparison page and was amazed by the smooth, silent audio quality. So I immediately bought it.

Now it's here and I am hooking up instruments or mics into the device, but I don't hear anything through the headphones while recording. When the recording is done, I can hear the playback just fine.

I installed the latest driver on my Win 8.1 system and the computer is recognizing the device and I am able to successfully record on anything from Audacity to Pro Tools. But the headphone out is silent during recording. I can't monitor my signal.

Anything I'm missing here?

Thanks a lot for any help you might have for me!

Gene

[Darryl Ramm]

Pro Tools version?

You are not using input monitoring properly.

Pro Tools (before version 12) toggle between Track>Input Only/Auto Input.

Read about input monitoring in the Pro Tools Reference Guide. This is frequently asked about on DUC and there are hundreds of threads about this.

You also may not want to be using monitoring through Pro Tools at all, if you want lower latency you can hardware monitor thought the interface. The interface documentation will describe how to use that.

[GeneRoberts]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Pro Tools version?

You are not using input monitoring properly.

Pro Tools (before version 12) toggle between Track>Input Only/Auto Input.

Read about input monitoring in the Pro Tools Reference Guide. This is frequently asked about on DUC and there are hundreds of threads about this.

You also may not want to be using monitoring through Pro Tools at all, if you want lower latency you can hardware monitor thought the interface. The interface documentation will describe how to use that.

Thank you, Darryl. But that's the thing. Whether it's Pro Tools, Audacity or Audition, I can't get signal to come out of the headphone out while recording. Even if I don't hook up to the computer, the interface itself wouldn't allow me to monitor my signal being recorded.

[GeneRoberts]

Never mind. I finally got this to work.

For those who might be curious:

The problem was the Fast Track c600 does not allow this by itself! You can't just hook up your mic into it and hear yourself through the headphone amp.

What one has to do is:

In Audacity, go to Preferences/Recording and select "Software playthrough"

That's it!

Only problem with it is you hear yourself a bit later than the mic registers input. So there's this weird echo which is annoying.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by GeneRoberts

Thank you, Darryl. But that's the thing. Whether it's Pro Tools, Audacity or Audition, I can't get signal to come out of the headphone out while recording. Even if I don't hook up to the computer, the interface itself wouldn't allow me to monitor my signal being recorded.

Now you are talking pure hardware monitoring in stand-alone mode, the problem started off being about DAW input monitoring (not terms you used, but that was the exact symptom you described). You need to slow down, break things down into steps, open up the documentation and play with each feature until you understand it.

Now you are describing a problem using standalone hardware monitoring. I don't think the C600 has a stand-alone mode. IIRC it's hardware monitoring/mixer only works if it's connected to a computer. And that will only work if you have a monitoring mix set up properly in the interface control panel.... do you? All well described in the C600 User Guide.

Start by getting hardware monitoring working properly even if you eventually want to software monitor.

To use hardware monitoring: Connect the interface to your computer. Do not start a DAW. Use the interface control panel in Windows to set up a hardware monitoring mix. You have to read the user guide. If that is not working as documented then describe exactly what you are trying to do (what mic, what input, what gain settings, what signal going into the mic, what meter move in the control panel, etc. etc.) and what is not working and include screen shots of the relevant mixer control panels. The meters in the monitor mixer tell you everything about signal routing to/from the interface, what is coming back from the DAW. You should be able to debug all these problems from there.

If you want to monitor though the DAW: Once you have hardware monitoring working then try setting up the mixer controls for software monitoring through the DAW and play with pro tools input monitoring modes to understand how that works).

All the DAWS you mentioned have different monitoring modes. You need to get this setup right. We cannot guess what you are doing.

If you are new to DAWS then I strongly advise you to start with some tutorials or online lessons. There are many great introductory videos on YouTube. Including ones that explain hardware/software monitoring, input modes, record arming tracks etc.

Still stuck. We need exact version or Pro Tools, OS, C600 drivers. Screenshots of the driver control panels showing relevant mixer panels and screen shot of Pro Tools mix window clearly showing each track's input and output IO assignments, input monitoring modes etc.. Info of what exact mic or whatever is connected to what input, gain knob settings, etc. Clear description of what happens, what meters move in Pro Tools or in the Mixer Control Panel, etc.