I've had the Alesis io4 for years but never totally mastered it.
At the moment I've been using running laptop -> io4 -> Harman Kardon amp -> 2 floor speakers.
I'm running pipewire and consistently I've been using EasyEffects with a compressor effect. But I don't have to be.
I will be using Bitwig again soon but I have a more immediate problem: switch speakers at night so as to not bother neighbors.
Two that end I have purchased a couple powered Edifiers (I'll get better monitor/bookshelf soon but these are ok for now).
So the 2 main channels in question (just for youtube, Strawberry or VLC, etc) go as described above.
I just need to be able to switch to the bookshelf speakers late night. Ideally I'd like to use a little of each (ie mostly bookshelf at night).
I had almost this setup before but that was before I switched to Pipewire.
I have Pipewire and pipewire-pulse and I can run pavucontrol. With pavucontrol I only seem to get sound when I have the io4 set to "Pro Audio".
Channels 3 & 4 of the io4 are marked "USB". I don't want any USB out from the io4 at all, only audio out.
Can it be done? If not, if I purchased a FocusRite 4i4 would that make life easier? The only inputs to the audio device I want to use right now are the laptop USB connections.