- In this video, we're going to show you
all three different options of the direct monitoring modes, Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Audio Interface. If you're wondering what this button does, or how to use it correctly, we're going to walk through
the three different ways to use it, and give our recommendations, as to when I would, or would not, use each one of the options. Now, first of all, it's just take a quick
look at this button here. You can see right now,
there is no indicator, no lights on, so right
now, it's an off mode. If we wanted to toggle this, we could single press the button, and you can see here that
there's a single green light. That indicates that we're in mono mode. And if we toggle it again,
now we're in stereo mode. Let's turn this off now. And let's walk through what
each one of those modes mean. So, first of all, when direct
monitoring is turned off, what we are experiencing right now is, the microphone is coming
through the audio interface, coming out through the USB cable, getting processed by my laptop. And you can see here that I
have an output from Logic Pro that is sending a signal back
to me over the USB cable, that's going into my headphone Jack. That's a lot of travel, even over high speed
cable like XLR, and USB, and going through a
relatively new computer. So I am experiencing a little
bit of a delay right now. I can hear myself speaking
through my own ears, and I can hear the signal
from the microphone, coming with a couple of millisecond delay. It can be really
distracting, really annoying, and it's not always ideal. So what I like to do in this circumstance, is I will turn down the
output of my computer. Now, right now, I'm not hearing anything. But if I turn this on to mono mode with this single circle here, this will take the microphone from my Scarlett 2i2 Audio Interface, bypass the USB cable,
and send that microphone straight to my headphones here, where I can adjust the
volume to my liking. I can hear my microphone now in both ears, in a mono signal, so the same thing going to both ears, nice with little or no delay. So I don't notice any delay
coming from this microphone, into my headphones, and it sounds great. Now, when you are in mono mode, it is still possible to send
a signal from your computer to your audio interface. So if you're recording vocals, it's possible to send your
music tracks, your drums, your guitar, your bass,
to your headphones, and you can have direct
monitoring on for your vocal mic. This gives you the best of both worlds. You get the audio that you're recording to in your headphones, and you get a near zero latency
input, like a microphone, in your headphones as well, so you can tell if you're
on pitch, or on key, during your recording. You don't have to use the
playback from your computer while you're in this mode, but it is an option that's open to you. For me, since I do a lot of
talking head videos like this, and I don't record as much music anymore, I generally just leave the
output on my computer turned off. And then I just use the
direct monitoring options for the microphone that I have connected
to my audio interface, the recording. Now, the second mode that we have here is, if I click this button again, we will go into stereo
direct monitoring mode. What this means is that all the inputs that come into the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, we'll go to separate
ears on my headphones. So there's two inputs here. I have one connected right now. So this microphone is only
coming out of the left ear of my headphones. If I had a second microphone here, that would be connected to my right ear. Some people prefer recording this way. If you have a two person podcast, it gives you better isolation. So you can tell where
the background noise, if there's fan noise
or something like that, you can tell where it's coming from, because it's not coming to both ears, so it allows you to take one ear off to monitor one source, and one ear off to
monitor the other source. That can work really well for podcasting. Other times you may want to use this is if you're making a stereo source, like you have a grand piano, and you have two condenser mics over it, you would want a stereo
recording of that source. So this would again, allow you to make sure
that each microphone is being recorded correctly, because you can monitor either one, either microphone that you
have there, to each ear, and you can tell what sound is coming
from which microphone. I hope this video is helpful. I hope that gives you some tips, on how you can use the
direct monitoring button throughout the three modes: the off, the mono, and the stereo mode. If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment down
in the comment section below. And if you want to see more
videos like this in the future, please like, and subscribe. (upbeat music)
