Combining NI Battery with Drum Racks / Midi Effect Racks

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Machinesworking
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Post by Machinesworking » Tue Jun 10, 2008 1:09 am

Timur wrote:You cannot use the main outs (stereo channel 1) with external instrument, because you don't need it. If you want to use the main outs then just drag the VST to the pad/track. ;)

OK I'm trying this with GURU, and I'm running into a flaw in the system I'm using. GURU only sends 8 outputs, including the Main out. This means in order to get all 16 slots in GURU on their own track you have to use the Main outputs as well and pan every other pad left or right to send to an individual track. The Main output track is messed up by this, it's not possible to pan the track left, ad a Mono audio input after to force it mono on the track, then do the same hard right, GURU is on the first track and is affected by the shenanigans. :?

Nogi
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Post by Nogi » Tue Jun 10, 2008 9:09 am

Machinesworking wrote: OK I'm trying this with GURU, and I'm running into a flaw in the system I'm using. GURU only sends 8 outputs, including the Main out...
My inelegant workaround at this point for being 1 stereo output short was to add GURU as an instrument chain in parallel with the Drum Rack. Add an Audio Rack behind GURU with two Utility's in parallel and at that point you can use the main outs from GURU for pads 15/16 and then split them L and R as per the other tracks. This will, of course, put them in their own submix. Pads 15 and16 (in my example) have an external instrument chain as well but with the Gain set to -inf. Without this, they will not 'play' via the preview button in the chain or on the pad.

Not sure how well this will translate but: http://www.base2research.com/abletonstu ... tInstr.zip

(REMINDER: Make sure you pan your drum kit appropriately in GURU after loading it.)

Timur
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Post by Timur » Tue Jun 10, 2008 9:41 am

I've checked Guru and don't seem to have any problems with using PAN either via Guru or Live on any of the outputs including the Master. If you pan pad/samples hard left/right you need to make sure to use MONO samples though, because neither Guru, nor Battery nor Live will pan the whole stereo sample but only turn off one side when panning hard.

Battery has the advantage here that it's audio-editor window clearly shows wether a sample is mono or stereo and many of its kits' samples are mono already (crash samples are mostly stereo though, but you may want to use a stereo channel for those anyway). Additionally Battery offers to a mixure of mono and stereo channels, with the mono channels playing stereo samples in real mono. Unfortunately the maximum number of channels that external instrument can see from Battery is still 16. Neither Ableton nor NI asnwered my questions wether this is a restriction of Live or of Battery.

Timur
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Post by Timur » Tue Jun 10, 2008 11:21 am

Since External Instrument cannot adress the Main/Master outputs you are either one mono output short or have to use workarounds like the one suggested by Nogi if you want to use panning tricks. Most of these workaround will end up with at least one mono channel of the Main/Master output being outside the Drumrack folding. There are some solutions that can around this, but they are rather inconvinient. It may be better to use only 15 pads instead with the Main/Master outputting only one pad.

Strangely it seems as if NI Kore cannot be used for these kind of things at all. External Instrument doesn't offer Kore as a viable source/target to chose from.

1. Use (a Rewire capable DAW like) Reaper, load Guru in Reaper and control Reaper via External Instrument over Rewire. Reaper is able to access all outputs of Guru either as stereo pairs (even in uneven combinations like 2/3 instead of 1/2) or mono channels. You can access all stereo/mono outputs of Reaper from External Instruments as it seems (which suggests that the limitations with Battery and Guru are from within the plugin rather than Live).

Create a single track in Reaper and change its number of channels from the default 2 to 16. Make sure Midi Input of that track is receiving from Live. Load Guru on that track and route its panned outputs through the mono outputs of Reaper. Record arm the track and turn on monitoring.

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2. Use virtual audio ports or rerouted physical ports in order to use Live's track rerouting to split the main outputs. I don't even dare to think of a real plan how to set this up, it's just too awkward.

PS: There seems to be some problem with the combination of Live/Rewire/Reaper which I will report as a possible bug. Live reports upto 6999% CPU load upon loading Reaper while real CPU load is about 0%.

ethios4
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Post by ethios4 » Tue Jun 10, 2008 3:20 pm

Oh yea, I forgot about this neat trick...I never got around to trying it, but I've been dying to combine racks with battery, so I'ma try today! Thanks Timur!

Nogi
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Post by Nogi » Tue Jun 10, 2008 7:58 pm

Timur wrote: PS: There seems to be some problem with the combination of Live/Rewire/Reaper which I will report as a possible bug. Live reports upto 6999% CPU load upon loading Reaper while real CPU load is about 0%.
Can't duplicate this here. (PC w/ Live 7.0.7 with Reaper 2.301)

EDIT: However, I am seeing about 15-18% load in Live on a Q6600 (actual system load = 1%). That might be enough to cause an overflow if you are on, say, a P4.

Timur
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Post by Timur » Tue Jun 10, 2008 8:51 pm

Let's not discuss Rewire problems here, I've started a thread in the Bug & Problems section:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

Timur
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Post by Timur » Sun Jun 22, 2008 12:14 pm

Yeeks, the Guru Demo doesn't come with an Uninstaller, you have to do it manually. Bad, bad, bad stuff! :?

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