This trick gives you the opportunity to decide WHICH 128 parameters of your VST you can see, not just the FIRST 128. (Arturia's CS80, for example, has 548!), and should work for ANY VST.
You'll need a copy of the "VST instrument" version of EnergyXT (eXT) - http://www.xt-hq.com/ - which is only 39 Euros or about $US50, but you can do all of this with the demo version first to make sure it works for you. eXT is a great little tool to have anyway, but I'm not going to go into too much detail about it here, you can read that for yourself at their website. (When you buy it, I think you get all versions included).
Once eXT is installed (make sure you tell it where your VSTs are), create a midi channel in Live and put an eXT VSTi into it (energyXT, not energyXTE). Unfold the parameter list, which reads param0 .. param127.
Open the eXT GUI, right-click on the workspace and select 'Param mapper'.
Change the top dropdown to read 'Enable param to CC mapping' (it is DISabled by default).
Now select all the controllers you'd like to be able to use by clicking in the 'use' column so a tick appears. You can rename them if you really want to, perhaps later when you've assigned them to actual parameters (changes don't show in Live immediately, but they do show up the next time you move that slider).
Now add your VST to the energy XT window (right-click, VST->, then select the one you want). Its audio and midi connections should get auto-routed. Now open its GUI by double-clicking on it.
What happens next depends on what VST you're using.
In the case of CS80, I can ctrl-click a parameter to open the 'Midi control setup' (ie, midi learn) function. Then I click 'learn', move the appropriate slider in Live's parameter list (ie, param0 .. param127), and the assignment is made.
If your VST of choice has no midi-learn function, you do it this way instead; in the VST GUI, click the "File" button (top left-hand corner) and then select 'cc map'. Click 'add', select the CC number you wish to use (click and drag on the field to do that), then select the parameter you wish to control from the dropdown list, and if necessary the range of values you'd like to enforce. The appropriate 'param' slider in Live (ie, param0=cc0, param1=cc1, etc) will now control that parameter.
Of course, once you've done all that, you can use Live's midi assignments to assign physical hardware controls to the param sliders like you normally do. And/or you can draw envelopes for them. And so on.
It actually takes longer to explain than to do, and probably makes more sense when you're seeing it on the screen. The main thing is, it works, and it gets you around Live's 128 parameter limit
I'm so happy to have figured this out, it means I can stay working in Live
Gratitude to Vurt at the kvraudio forums for pointing me in the right direction!Enjoy!
~ Gywdi
http://www.gwydi.com
"Do just once what others say you can't do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again." - Edmund Brown Jr.[/i]
