solved: submix group folders. :)

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
rcutz
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Post by rcutz » Thu Nov 20, 2008 9:27 pm

autogen wrote:Nice! I just tried this with Reaktor on OSX and it's working great. Thanks for the heads up.
Is it possible to you to post it as one plugin somewhere else?

thanks
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Macintel 2ghz 1gram. OSX 10.5.3 Live 7.07. Doepfer Controler M-audio Fasttrack Pro/Mbox 2 Monome

os
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Post by os » Thu Nov 20, 2008 9:33 pm

rcutz wrote:
autogen wrote:Nice! I just tried this with Reaktor on OSX and it's working great. Thanks for the heads up.
Is it possible to you to post it as one plugin somewhere else?

thanks
maybe you missed it - I posted an OS X plug-in earlier:
http://www.expert-sleepers.co.uk/midinull.html

rcutz
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Post by rcutz » Thu Nov 20, 2008 9:39 pm

os wrote:
rcutz wrote:
autogen wrote:Nice! I just tried this with Reaktor on OSX and it's working great. Thanks for the heads up.
Is it possible to you to post it as one plugin somewhere else?

thanks
maybe you missed it - I posted an OS X plug-in earlier:
http://www.expert-sleepers.co.uk/midinull.html
Hi thanks very much.
Yes I missed it.

But I`m a fan of ExSl. I have one license of meringue wich I love.

Keep the good work.
system
Macintel 2ghz 1gram. OSX 10.5.3 Live 7.07. Doepfer Controler M-audio Fasttrack Pro/Mbox 2 Monome

friend_kami
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Post by friend_kami » Thu Nov 20, 2008 10:58 pm

hm? heh i wasnt trying to insult you or anything man. take it easy, were all friends here. right? :)
pixelbox wrote:
friend_kami wrote:
pixelbox wrote:I find it extremely fascinating that Live users are willing to sacrifice CPU and change audio buss routing all for the sake of visual & kinesthetic organization and workflow. Ableton? You guys listening? All of this effort just to fold tracks!

Very interesting.
yeah well. i didnt really need this until lately, before that i usually didnt have alot of track. now i can easily end up with 50+ tracks and not beeing able to group them for easy management is just a workflow stopper. atleast this way i can have all my bus groups with fx groups per bus group (got that?) and be able to quickly show/hide them to quickly and conveniently find what im looking for. anyone whos worked with any type of track grouping options before knows how useful this is. its not a complete workaround but this way you can simply just fold all the tracks to its minimum one play button style width and put them all the way to the left/right, making a makeshift hide group by placing them out of the way with the scroll bar position heh, and then use the show/hide group of the midi tracks and work with the different groups there. then ofcourse if needed you can resize the tracks to go directly to the source audio incase you want to change it.

if you still dont get it, make a big project with alot of tracks and just simply try it. youll be amazed as to how it will help you work and organise things for a faster workflow. seriously. especially with working with multiple groups.

yes, it does sacrifice cpu, but dont wine on me for that, whine on ableton.
Don't taze me, bro!

I wasn't taking a dig at your or criticizing you. I WAS "whining on Ableton" for that.

I'm just pointing out that many Live users are willing to go to great lengths and work around all sorts of obstacles, and re-purpose work flow just to work in this manner, thus, it makes good usability sense to make this easier to do without having to effect the routing. It's plainly obvious that Ableton needs to simply include the ability to fold and group tracks within the GUI and not have it effect anything else. Kinda like Photoshop did with Layer Bins (if you know the reference).

deutero
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Post by deutero » Fri Nov 21, 2008 12:09 am

Looks interesting, but I guess I don't work with enough tracks to really see its real utility.

I used to have folding track groups at the top of my request list, but I don't feel the need anymore since I learned to create submix tracks--I just route the audio from my drums, synths, guitars, whatever I want to group, to a single appropriately-named audio track. Once I've got them mixed the way I want, I shrink down the grouped tracks and cast them to the far right, out of sight unless I need them. I've got my single fader with effects for that submix, and then submixing my submixes is just as easy.

As much as it sometimes seems the Abes are a bit slow to implement new stuff, I appreciate that they are so protective of the uncluttered interface. The less right-clicking and digging through menus that I have to do the better.

But, like I said, my projects are relatively small--certainly not 50 tracks.
Live 8 w/ EIC, XP Pro SP3, 1.8GHz Core Duo, 3GB RAM, PreSonus Firebox, Evolution MK-425c, Korg nanoKONTROL, Akai LPK25, Akai LPD8, bigger than average brain (large hats)

jwhiting
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Post by jwhiting » Thu Dec 11, 2008 12:47 am

This doesn't make sense to me - am I missing something? You can get sub mixes with return tracks, just setting the audio output of the origin tracks to "sends only," and turning the send all the way up. No VST plugin hacks and corresponding CPU overhead necessary.

On another note, I also love that Live allows you to enable sends on return tracks themselves, so you can even create sub-sub mixes, which I've done on occasion :-).

What I *would* like to see is the ability to collapse the original tracks together in a folding mechanism like you get with chains, but, that's a separate GUI issue.

friend_kami
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Post by friend_kami » Thu Dec 11, 2008 10:40 pm

yes, you can use return tracks, and yes you can show/hide return tracks.
this way however you can have separate submix folders, say one for the percussion tracks, on for the guitar tracks, one for electronics etc.

sends cant do that, and also this reduces the amount of sends. the bigger the project, the more sends. this way its jsut one extra track per submix folder, then you can minimize all the other tracks and just sit with the submix folders (except for sending individual tracks to the sends, because this can only send the whole submix).

a slightly more convenient way to work.

jwhiting
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Post by jwhiting » Thu Dec 11, 2008 11:26 pm

OH I get it now. This is a folded group of "sends," each "send" mixing multiple independent tracks.

You need this plugin in order to create a routable destination from the source tracks into the chains of the midi instrument rack. So it looks like this:

track 1 has say, kick #1 and sends to track 5's "kick mix" chain
track 2, kick #2 -> track 5 "kick mix" chain
...
track 3, snare #1 -> track 5 "snare mix" chain
track 4, snare #2 -> track 5 "snare mix" chain
...

then track 5, overall percussion sub mix track, has two sub mixes itself, in the form of an midi instrument rack with two chains, the "kick mix" and the "snare mix".

you can now independently control volume of each sound independently (using the original track volume), the snares together (using the chain volume), the kicks together (using the other chain volume), or the whole kick/snare cluster together (using track 5 main volume).

mkay. nice idea. :)

now that i get it, i wonder - why is the plugin dll 4mb in size? that's a lot for audio thru. did you use some kind of wrapper application where the base footprint of the plugin has to include the whole platform? maybe someone could cook up a raw, compiled plugin that's much lighter weight? should only need a few kilobytes really.

thanks! -jw

FrigginEH
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Post by FrigginEH » Fri Dec 12, 2008 3:37 pm

So..... Would another potential benefit of this approach be that you could then copy your bus tracks (and their effects and preset levels) between saved projects? Unless I'm missing something, you can't do that with returns. I currently use returns for a bunch of delay and reverb with specific settings that I can't figure out how to copy to other projects. Would this allow me to copy and paste my busses to other projects?

friend_kami
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Post by friend_kami » Sat Jan 03, 2009 4:59 pm

FrigginEH wrote:So..... Would another potential benefit of this approach be that you could then copy your bus tracks (and their effects and preset levels) between saved projects? Unless I'm missing something, you can't do that with returns. I currently use returns for a bunch of delay and reverb with specific settings that I can't figure out how to copy to other projects. Would this allow me to copy and paste my busses to other projects?
yes, that should work, since its saved inside a rack. you could even save .als and just drop them over to have a template of tracks containing different effect setups etc.

and im not 100% sure how the synthmaker platform works, but im guessing this is why its that big, yes. if you want to make your own, be my guest. basicly its just 2 audio throughputs and 1 midi throughput saved as a vsti. choose whatever platform youd like, i choose synthmaker. you want to rol with c, be my guest. infact, if you do, please do post it here cause id rather take that version since it would probably load faster and use less memory etc.

Mike Goodwin
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Post by Mike Goodwin » Sat Jan 03, 2009 5:30 pm

Thanks for that one!

RCUS
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Re: solved: submix group folders. :)

Post by RCUS » Mon Nov 30, 2009 11:29 pm

I'm going through a folder and deleting some stuff I no longer need, and I just came across MidiAudio_throughput.dll. I never did get my head around exactly how I could use this for Live 7, mainly because my mixing experience had been minimal when I first looked it up. Now that I have a little better foundation in proper mixing i'm wondering if I still can use it, now that I have upgraded to Live 8?

Is it compatible with Live 8, and are any of you still using it, or is it now unnecessary?

friend_kami
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Re: solved: submix group folders. :)

Post by friend_kami » Tue Dec 01, 2009 12:43 pm

its just a vst plugin, so it should be compatible with 8.
however i see no reason to use it, other then possibly using grouped folders inside native group tracks (which ive been wanting to do for ages anyways)

davepermen
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Re: solved: submix group folders. :)

Post by davepermen » Tue Dec 01, 2009 3:09 pm

one use could be: track grouping and modulating effect clips (check dummy clips) on the group. which would be a thing i'd like to have.
http://davepermen.net my tiny webpage, including link to bandcamp.

friend_kami
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Re: solved: submix group folders. :)

Post by friend_kami » Wed Dec 02, 2009 1:20 pm

davepermen wrote:one use could be: track grouping and modulating effect clips (check dummy clips) on the group. which would be a thing i'd like to have.

yes, and yes, that would work ;)
infact, ive never thougth of that.
thanks.

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