Hopefully, you’ve figured out your first question by now, but just incase you haven’t (and for those looking for the same solution), the answer is yes, you can use your usb headphones and macbook sound output to Cue…with a catch, of course. The following should work if your usb headset is recognized as a separate audio device. You can check this by going to the Output tab in the Sound system preference pane.
What you need is an audio routing utility called Soundflower. Soundflower acts as a separate multi-channel audio source in Traktor, which will allow you to pass your monitor and master outputs through it.
Soundflower has a 2-channel device and a 16-channel device. In Soundflower, I set my MacBook Pro’s Built-In Output (output to speakers) to the 2-channel device, and I set the USB headphones to the 16-channel device. You don’t have to set it this way, but I’ve found that to work for me.
In Traktor, set your sound card/audio device to Soundflower. For the master and monitor outputs, following the example above, set the master L/R outputs to Soundflower (2ch) Out 0 and Out 1, respectively. Do the same for the monitor outputs, except select Soundflower (16ch) Out 0 and Out 1, respectively.
It’s not a perfect hack, but it works. I’ve ran into the following issues (off the top of my head):
Soundflower unexpectedly quits after setup in Traktor.
- Just restart the app. It’s kinda screwy like that.
I hear noise coming out of my monitor/master output.
- In Soundflower, turn off the device where you hear noise and turn it back on. For example, if you near noise through the Built-In Output and it’s set to the 2-ch device, turn off the 2-ch device then re-select Built-In Output. If the problem persists, quit Traktor and Soundflower, and double-check your routing.
There’s latency between the monitor and master outputs.
- Personally, I’ve found that increasing the buffer size for both devices seems to help. I think it defaults at 256, but I’ve set mine to 1024. I’m not sure what impact this has on the cpu, and if anyone can shed some light on this, feel free to. Also, there’s probably a ≤1.5 sec. delay between the monitor at master at first, but 99% of the time, after about 30 minutes or so of mixing, they sync up almost perfectly.
This is my experience with mixing using USB headphones. Hopefully, this provides an interim solution while you save up for your sound card and headphones of choice. Before I found out how to do this, in order to cue tracks though headphones, I would broadcast my mix from Traktor to VLC media player through Icecast server, ALL on my MacBook Pro. Not only was this too many hoops to jump through locally, but it caused a 2-second drop in audio whenever I crossfaded to the next track. It was horrendous. Give Soundflower a try.
lates.