Monitoring

The web app has no audio input, so there’s nothing to monitor: monitoring is on the Mac, Windows, the iPad, the iPhone and Android.

Hearing yourself through the amp

1. Check the audio input: on, the right device and channel, a level when you play.
2. Give an audio track the sound you want to hear: its menu’s Sound submenu, or its chain in the Sound pane.
3. Open the track’s menu (right-click its header) and choose Monitor Input (Headphones). It’s checked while that track is monitored.

From then on, whatever comes into the input plays through that track, whether the song is playing or not. Choose the item again to stop. Choosing it on another audio track moves monitoring there: one track is monitored at a time.

Monitoring opens the input, so the first time, the system may ask whether Stab may use the microphone (see Allowing the microphone). With the input turned off in the Audio tab, nothing is heard.

What you hear, and what’s recorded

• You hear the input through the track’s chain and its fader, mixed with the song.
• The take is dry. Recording keeps what came into the input, not what the amp made of it. Change the amp, or try another, after recording: the take plays through whatever the track has then.

While recording is on, the chip at the lower right of the Editor pane says what Record takes, with (monitored) after the track when it’s the one you hear, such as “Audio: Scarlett 2i2 → Guitar DI (monitored)”.

Use headphones

Through the speakers, a microphone picks up what it’s playing and plays it again, and the sound feeds back into a howl. Monitor with headphones, or with an instrument plugged straight into the interface and the speakers turned down.

You hear yourself a little late: the time the sound takes to come in and go out again. Wired headphones on an audio interface keep that short; Bluetooth headphones add a delay you can hear. See Latency and dropouts.

Monitoring belongs to the song while it’s open: it’s off again the next time the song opens.