The little button on the left - lit up blue with a metronome - that's what your looking for. Click to Enlarge

I stumbled across this somewhat by accident. If you click the metronome icon on your transport you will see the window below.

Click/Countoff Options window.

If you’ll take notice it gives you an option for output. I found Xpand and Mini Grand in there. I thought ….hmmm…maybe I can use this. Obviously they made it to use right? Right! So I set it to Xpand, since there some decent sounds in it that one could use for a click.

I created a click track (see channel image below) with no input and no output.

Then I created an instrument track and inserted Xpand with no input and an output going to bus 9-10. I set Xpand to some hi-hat sounds. I sent an output to the headphones for “count off” purposes and I also sent the main output of this channel to a bus. Bus 9-10 in this case.

This is what my Xpand window looked like. Click to Enlarge

Then I created an audio track to bring in and record the Xpand audio. I set the input to bus 9-10, since that is the output bus I used on my Xpand track, and the output to my main output (Analog 1-2). I will use this audio to “pocket” my tracks to.

Your channels should look something like this. Click to Enlarge

Audio click track for pocketing

If you don’t need this audio…just skip this the bussing to an audio track.

Audio click track I/O

Now, when tracking, don’t forget to arm the audio track you are sending your click to. At least one pass of the song. Or you could do this before hand and then make all the other referenced click tracks inactive to save CPU resources.

You can obviously set up any sound you wish. I used hi-hat in this example because it is a more natural sound. I find that something like the hat sounds tend to make a click a less violating sound to the musicians when tracking. There’s more than one way to skin a cat though.

Anyway, I hope this helps. I hope I made it clear how I did it. I hope you enjoy much better sounding click tracks. I know I, and the others I record with will.

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