Ableton Forum

The new group functionality can essentially be used to create busses if you want... group 5 tracks together and hey presto, they're bussed together. One thing that's missing, however, is the ability to route Sends to Groups... 5 tracks "grouped" together makes a "bus", but if any of those tracks has a send, the return goes to the Master and cannot be routed to the Group...

Any chance this feature might be added?

I agree with your request!
we always hope that someone about ableton read this forum

+1

You can still manually create a track (name it BUS) and route as many Tracks and Return Tracks into it as you like.

In Live 8 you can select multiple tracks and change their MIDI/Audio routing all at once - yeah! I love this feature!!

I hear you, but since you can't group Tracks and Return Tracks into a Group, I don't see how it would be possible... Returns are quite a separate beast.

You can still set up a BUS track manually, tho.

+1

(post edited 28.04.2010 for readability)

When I build single tracks (songs) I use returns for subtle delay/reverb/gain that can be applied to any track (controlled via the APC40 Track Control section). The last one is especially handy in the workflow for quickly increasing sample volumes.

When I build sets containing multiple songs, I organise the sounds into groups (bass/pads/fx etc) so I can easily add filter and delay to each group if I want (controlled via the APC40 Device Control). Plus it's a cleaner interface for triggering the sounds.

But if I use the gain send on a track within a group, I seem to be sending some of the signal away to the master (via the gain return) so my group fx become rather less effective as they are only processing the signal that is left behind.

I'd like an option to send sends 'via the group' to the returns (and then on to master).

(track signal + send knob values) -> (group / group fx) -> returns -> master

In the meantime I'm going to have to retrofit my tracks so they use the 'Utility' device instead of my gain send, but it's not ideal in terms of workflow.

Cheers,
Dan