Return chains: why only in Drum Racks?

Nokatus · Post by **Nokatus** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 11:16 pm

The way you can set up sends in a drum rack is very flexible (thank you!), and being able to do the same in a regular instrument rack would be great.

You can't currently adjust send levels for individual chains inside an instrument rack at all. I'm sure different layered instruments could use some different send levels, just as different percussive sounds in a drum rack do

...

Using this, you could layer instruments and conveniently send different amounts of their signal into the return channels of your project - doing it neatly from inside one rack. As this routing feature is already coded into Live, it sure wouldn't be an unrealistic undertaking adding it to the instrument racks as well?

evilxsystems · Post by **evilxsystems** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 11:27 pm

also being able to route input from other tracks to a particular rack chain would be very useful...

Nokatus · Post by **Nokatus** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 11:54 pm

evilxsystems wrote:also being able to route input from other tracks to a particular rack chain would be very useful...

That you can do already, but admittedly only using a hack of sorts. Place the new compressor on the rack chain you wish to bring the signal into, and set the sidechain key "audio from" as the source you want. Put the compressor into "sidechain listen" mode, which bypasses everything else in the compressor and just lets you hear the key signal transparently - effectively routing audio from outside the rack, downstream inside the rack chain. Convenient, but still a hack.

annihilator.1 · Post by **annihilator.1** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 1:20 pm

l think the returns should be available for effect racks aswell, for audio tracks.

Nokatus · Post by **Nokatus** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 8:15 pm

annihilator.1 wrote:l think the returns should be available for effect racks aswell, for audio tracks.

Absolutely.

About the instrument racks having sends... As I mentioned the compressor trick above, I realized you can hack sends into any instrument rack using a drum rack in a parallel chain.

Create a chain into the drum rack per every instrument rack chain you want to have sends in. Then use the External Instrument and/or compressor trick to bring audio into those chains from the instrument rack chains. Configure sends. Yay!

A hack, but it works.

evilxsystems · Post by **evilxsystems** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 11:58 pm

Nokatus wrote:
evilxsystems wrote:also being able to route input from other tracks to a particular rack chain would be very useful...
That you can do already, but admittedly only using a hack of sorts. Place the new compressor on the rack chain you wish to bring the signal into, and set the sidechain key "audio from" as the source you want. Put the compressor into "sidechain listen" mode, which bypasses everything else in the compressor and just lets you hear the key signal transparently - effectively routing audio from outside the rack, downstream inside the rack chain. Convenient, but still a hack.

Why didn't I think of that! Thanks! but seriously, this highlights how easy it would be for them to do if they felt so inclined....