This has to be a bug, right? (Preset Swap Issue)

[aburton]

Ableton Live 9.5 Suite/Push 1/OS X/NI Komplete Ultimate 10

Struggling with something that is so annoying it just has to be a major bug? It is really ruining my ability to flow with Push. Unfortunately, Ubermap and AudioModder don't help as the "bug" is with Ableton. I've searched and no one else seems to be struggling with it...so maybe I'm crazy here?

Imagine I have 2 instrument presets (.adg) saved within Ableton. Instrument A might be an accordion VST. Instrument B is say the bass VST. I have carefully mapped the VST parameters so everything works great on Push. All params are the number and in the order I want.

Load instrument A - everything works!
Start clean and load instrument B - everything works!

Load instrument A, then SWAP to instrument B, all hell breaks loose. You do NOT get the carefully mapped parameters. Instead you get parameters in different orders. Ableton might decide parameter 5 should be #009 and leave it blank. Swapping (as opposed to delete and drop in new) causes all sorts of VST parameter map problems! Your 1 bank of presets might now take 2 or 3 banks?

SWAP again to preset A, everything is still screwed up. Delete the preset, load A again. Everything back to normal!?!

Why does Ableton screw up the mappings? Doesn't the preset tell Ableton everything it needs to know - these X parameters go in this order? Why would the history of what I have swapped matter at all?

It is hard to have Push mappings when they can change every single time you use swap... Grrrrr

Has anyone else seen this? Is anyone else frustrated by this?

Thanks!

[aburton]

I confirmed that this was in fact a bug within Ableton via Tech Support (Case ableton 1434928) with more than one report. I'm sure it is now on some backlog of stuff.

I'm just REALLY surprised this isn't causing wide-spread frustration and no one else responded.

How do others deal with this? This basically ruins any ability to use browse on Push for presets that have VSTs. You simply do not know what parameters, in what order, you will get back! All those hours you spent carefully crafting VST mappings. Or those AudioModder presets you bought. Doesn't matter. If you use swap/browse - Ableton might decide to randomly move stuff around, stick in params that aren't there, leave some blank...

Seems pretty major, no? At least I have confirmed it independently so I know it's not user error. (Like most things I do )

Anyway, just FYI in case anyone else has the same issue

[tedlogan]

I confirmed that this was in fact a bug within Ableton via Tech Support (Case ableton 1434928) with more than one report. I'm sure it is now on some backlog of stuff.

I'm just REALLY surprised this isn't causing wide-spread frustration and no one else responded.

Heh, this old bug. Very frustrating. I filed a report about 2 years ago when I was trying to configure unique racks for each u-he Zebra preset, and they would totally screw up only upon hotswapping.

But to be clear - are you saying completely different VSTs bug out after loading between each other, or is it the same VST's racks? And are Live's macros involved? I have never encountered this when hotswapping to a different VST and when no macros were mapped. It happens to me if I did not decide upon a uniform parameter configuration for all racks and I'm hotswapping between racks of one particular VST with different macros. Actually, only Zebra gave me this trouble (I also use Hive and Bazille), probably due to its modular nature. I had different macros mapped to different parameters for each rack, causing me grief.

How do others deal with this? This basically ruins any ability to use browse on Push for presets that have VSTs. You simply do not know what parameters, in what order, you will get back! All those hours you spent carefully crafting VST mappings. Or those AudioModder presets you bought. Doesn't matter. If you use swap/browse - Ableton might decide to randomly move stuff around, stick in params that aren't there, leave some blank...

Seems pretty major, no? At least I have confirmed it independently so I know it's not user error. (Like most things I do )

Anyway, just FYI in case anyone else has the same issue

I am currently happily using a system which is bug-free, but is tailored to how I play with Push, so this might not be of much help since you're using NI I assume, but perhaps this train of thought can:

My few VSTs each use the same configured parameters (the 16 banks) respectively. I find Zebra works surprisingly well with such a setup, being of a modular nature. The trick with Zebra is to map whatever each patch requires to sculpt/perform with/etc to Zebra's 4 XY panels. These panels' parameters I leave in the last (16th) bank. The preset is racked and the 8 XY parameters are mapped to the 8 macros. No bugging out when hotswapping because you have not mapped to parameters that might not be present in a given patch, plus the bonus of having finetuned instruments with great performance/automation-ready & named controls. The 8 XY parameters are always in any Zebra preset, so nothing bugs out. Plus, you can map stuff to the XY panels (and therefore Live's macros) that cannot appear in Live's VST configure panel.

Other commonly-used parameters are configured across the 15 remaining banks, like ADSRs, filters, and main Oscillator-, FMO- & Comb parameters.

[Lovelights]

Maybe this is a stupid answer, but did you grouped your instrument rack before saving it with you own mappings? I have no problem with browsing my instrument racks, they stay with my mapping no matter what.