Open Kontakt Kits in Drum Racks

selthym · Post by **selthym** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 7:10 am

What is the easiest way to open or convert a Kontackt kit into a Drumrack?

You can convert a .nki to Sampler which is great. What I want to do is open my Kontakt Drum kits up and then place the multisampled hits into a drumrack. I want all the BD hits in one Cell (one instance of Sampler), the snares another, same with the hats etc.

As you can convert a Battery Kit into a Kontakt kit, I will then be able to dispose of Battery for good... But still have the kits!!!

Any Ideas?

selthym · Post by **selthym** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 12:11 am

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 12:49 am

Where exactly is the advantage of disposing Battery when you can easily combine it with Drum Racks anyway with one instance of Battery running 16 cells of a Drum Rack (saving Memory and even allowing lower CPU load with higher Plugin Buffers than the same amount of Simpler/Sampler instances playing the same samples)?

e-theory · Post by **e-theory** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 2:11 am

Exactly,

Battery has waaaaay more features than Drum Racks ever will and uses less CPU for the same results.

Why on earth would you want to ditch Battery?

If Ableton ever implements effects or instrument racks that can source their chain inputs from anywhere, then a Battery/Effects Racks combo would be an unbeatable combination.

For a few years now I have been dreaming of being able to route the 32 channels of output from Battery3 directly into 32 chains of an effects rack, for further processing ( Currently I have to do this with extra Audio channels and without track grouping this is rather messy to keep track of ).

That kind of setup would be a massive improvement on Drum Racks, which I still cannot find a good use for. Battery simply does the job more efficiently imo. Having to click on a chain to change it's parameters within that tiny interface and all of the scrolling it implies doesn't make sense to me, whereas Battery lays it all out in front of you with a single click taking you to any parameter directly.

tylenol · Post by **tylenol** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 5:37 am

e-theory wrote:If Ableton ever implements effects or instrument racks that can source their chain inputs from anywhere, then a Battery/Effects Racks combo would be an unbeatable combination.

For a few years now I have been dreaming of being able to route the 32 channels of output from Battery3 directly into 32 chains of an effects rack, for further processing ( Currently I have to do this with extra Audio channels and without track grouping this is rather messy to keep track of ).

If I understand what you mean, this is now actually pretty easy to set up for kontakt at least using the "External Instrument" device. Put the kontakt instance in one chain, and external instruments in each of the other chains, and have them send midi to and accept audio from the appropriate kontakt channels. I don't have battery but if it is as flexible in terms of routing as kontakt, you should be able to do the same thing.

e-theory · Post by **e-theory** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 6:21 am

This is the first thing that I tried when I bought my copy of Live 7 and unless I missed something in the 7.01-7.02 upgrade, it simply does not work.

The last time I tried this the External Instrument device only allowed access to the main output of Kontakt/Battery, and not it's other multiple outputs.

I'll check this again when I go home just to make sure, but I am pretty sure what you are saying is not actually possible within Live currently.

tylenol · Post by **tylenol** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 7:55 am

e-theory wrote:This is the first thing that I tried when I bought my copy of Live 7 and unless I missed something in the 7.01-7.02 upgrade, it simply does not work.

The last time I tried this the External Instrument device only allowed access to the main output of Kontakt/Battery, and not it's other multiple outputs.

I'll check this again when I go home just to make sure, but I am pretty sure what you are saying is not actually possible within Live currently.

It's definitely possible, I have it set up in some of my sets (and one of the stated purposes of the external device plugin in the manual is to help with multi-timbral instruments). The only restriction I've noticed is exactly the opposite of what you say, that you don't seem to be able to intercept the plugin's main output. But, like I said, I don't have battery so maybe it's kontakt only. Also, this is on the mac using the AU version, I've never tried it with VST though I do know that the multi-in-out stuff is more clunky with VSTs. Maybe that is the issue?

e-theory · Post by **e-theory** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 8:44 am

Holy crap dude,

I have never been so happy in my life to be corrected.

I just, got home, tried it again and BAM! I now think I have everything I could ever want from a DAW. This is the greatest feature ever! You have no idea how long I have been wanting/hoping/trying to do this, and I thought I was pretty good with this program.... I can add however to this thread that you can indeed catch both the main output from Kontakt and from Battery as well as the other outputs like so ( just in a slightly different way.... ):

1.) Make a new Midi Channel and add an Instrument Rack.
2.) Add Battery/Kontakt as the first chain
3.) Add External Instrument as the second chain and select Battery/Kontakt as the MIDI To and choose a secondary output as the Audio From.

You will now notice that the main Battery/Kontakt chain contains the main output and the External Instrument chain contains the secondary output.

I just noticed then too that if you group the External Instrument into another chain you can do some absolutely amazing routings - like route the kick and snare into their own group, process them individually, then mix them together, then process them with each other, and then add them back to the main rack mix. Incredible. I love it I love it I love it!!!!

Before this I was trying to use the External Audio Effect instead of the External Instrument - thinking it was some kind of routing thing that I could use to pipe things wherever I wanted to - multi outputs and all - and it turns out that it wasn't - that is what External Instrument was for. I missed out on all of this because of naming

I will read the manual much more thoroughly next time - although I just looked then and it is still a little bit misleading in it's wording.

Once again Tylenol, thanks for the post and making me look at something with fresh eyes. This is the greatest feature find ever.

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 9:50 am

Look here for an explanation of how to set Drum Racks with Battery. Because of a restriction of the External Instrument you can only use 16 stereo channels per Instance though (or use panning of stereo channels to get 32 mono channels). To be exact you can use mono channels, but External Instrument will never allow more than 16 channels still, so there is no benefit. It's all described under the link:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... ht=battery

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 10:59 am

Anyone considering the combination of Drum Racks + Sampler/Simpler to be superior to Battery/Kontakt should take a look at this thread:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=80427

For large Drum Sets with lots of samples Battery has a considerably smaller memory imprint and can be made to use less CPU load (if you know how to set Plugin Buffers in Live, unfortunately there's a timing bug with large Plugin Buffers).

e-theory · Post by **e-theory** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 11:38 am

Hey Timur, cheers for the link! That is really really cool!

Just wanted to also let you know that the midi channels limit you are experiencing with the External Instrument is not technically a "restriction" to 16 channels on Live's behalf.

The VST SDK documentation from Steinberg states that as per the VST instrument specification, it restricts software synthesizers to access at most 16 channels of MIDI data simultaneously from a host when used as a plug-in to that host.

As far as I am aware this is the same case in and for any host. The only reason you could ever access more channels as a standalone, in Kontakt for instance, is that it allows access to more than one midi port at a time. Kontakt standalone ( which is run in it's own custom host ) goes outside of VST Plug-in spec to allow 4 "ports" with 16 channels of MIDI each - allowing an "apparent" 64 channels of MIDI.

From the VSTSDK Documentation:

Code: Select all

VstInt32 AudioEffectX::getNumMidiInputChannels  	(  	  	 )   	 [inline, virtual]

Returns number of MIDI input channels used [0, 16].

Called by the host application to determine how many MIDI input channels are actually used by a plugin e.g. to hide unused channels from the user. For compatibility with VST 2.3 and below, the default return value 0 means 'not implemented' - in this case the host assumes 16 MIDI channels to be present (or none at all).

Returns:
    Number of MIDI input channels: 1-15, otherwise: 16 or no MIDI channels at all (0)

Note:
    The VST 2.x protocol is limited to a maximum of 16 MIDI channels as defined by the MIDI Standard. This might change in future revisions of the API.

See also:
    getNumMidiOutputChannels()
    PlugCanDos::canDoReceiveVstMidiEvent

In theory as the return type of this function is a 32bit number you "could" ignore this and return any number you wished, but it is unlikely the host would accept this.

So in that case I doubt that this restriction will change any time soon - which is very annoying.... That is typical Steinberg for you....

However I have not checked whether more than one instrument within one rack will allow more than 16 External Instruments per Rack is spread across more than one plug-in instrument? It would be interesting to test though....

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 12:00 pm

Thanks alot E-Theory. I asked Ableton more than once about the this restriction and did not get any answer. Finally some definitive answer wether Live, Battery or VST is to be blamed

Fortunately you can either use upto 32 mono-channels by using the panning trick and then use Live's own panning via unfolding the Drum Rack. But watch out for stereo samples/cells, you might not want to pan these. It's no problem to use panning on mono cells only if you want to retain the stereo image of stereo samples, just use a mixure of both as you need them. There is a drawback to this solution though: You need to set the panning manually for all your sets and save them to be kept. Plus you can get confused by two different cells using the same output-channel.

The solution to use several instances of Battery within one Drum Rack can be used as well. External Instrument detects all output of all the different instances of Battery without a problem (you need 8 instances to fill all 128 cells of a Drum Rack). But every instance of Battery will come with its own memory usage, which is quite a drawback for big kits.

So the best solution seems to be the one that was demonstrated by user Penningt in the other thread: Combine your Battery cells into logical groups (like: toms, overheads, percussions etc.), output those groups to single stereo channels (like all toms on channel 5) and you should come quite a long way with a single instance of Battery. You still need to use Battery's own mixer for fine-tuning, but the overal picture can conviniently be mixed from Live's unfold Drum Rack mixer. Perfect!

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 12:02 pm

Anyone interested in using Battery should also take a look into this thread on the NI forum. It hints to the fact that you can use Battery convulsion reverb with just any impulse source (including Battery cells), very cool indeed:

https://www.native-instruments.com/foru ... hp?t=62255

selthym · Post by **selthym** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 12:04 pm

Thanks Timur, I will try out the above suggestions...

Quite Simply I was wanting to use only Drumracks so I could see the names of the hits in the piano roll and not have to open the Battery GUI every to fin hat midi note corresponds to each hit.

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 12:20 pm

You can do that by combining Battery with Drum Racks:

Now go and use the best of both worlds!