Nested Groups Bug?

[H20nly]

Is there an issue with nested groups in Live 12, or am I doing something wrong?

If I take 3 vocals, each on their own track, and then group them… everything works great. I then set to ‘Sends Only’ and route the Group to a send I call ‘Mix Bus’ and everything still works great

If instead, I take another grouped set of 3 vocal tracks and create a new Group with 2 nested Groups inside… and then route the nested Groups to the new higher level Group… there is no audio when I press Play. The meters on the highest level Group don’t even move.

I’d RTFM but… it seems to be missing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[[jur]]

If instead, I take another grouped set of 3 vocal tracks and create a new Group with 2 nested Groups inside… and then route the nested Groups to the new higher level Group… there is no audio when I press Play. The meters on the highest level Group don’t even move.

And are you still sending to Sends Only in this setup? If yes, which group is routed that way?
Can post a screenshot, just to be sure I'm understanding your grouping and routing correctly?

[H20nly]

I don’t have a pic. It was laid out like this:

6 Vocal tracks in 2 Groups
V1+V2+V3 = G1
V4+V5+V6 = G2
Vocals are routed to their respective Groups

The two groups, G1 and G2, are nested in a 3rd group
NG1+NG2 = G3
The nested Groups are routed to G3

If G3 is routed to Main or to Sends Only, there is no audio and no meters moving on G3.
Even though the tracks in the nested groups meters are working, there is no audio to Sends or Main from the vocal tracks

When it wouldn’t work, I reverted back using undo because I need to control the group volume more than I needed to troubleshoot

I tried to recreate the issue on a new set and was unable to.
I went back to the set with the issue, tried again, and it worked

But… here’s the kicker, it’s happened to me twice. Once while mixing (described above) and once while tracking. When we were tracking I needed to be able to handle about 18 tracks broken up between verses. Verse 1, 2, 3 each being grouped and then nested to control the artist (artist A). Our tracks typically have 2 or 3 vocalists. So there is a need to group artist A for some level of overall control so that when artist B goes in the vocal booth, the freshly recorded artist A takes are somewhat managed and/or can be turned down using 1 fader overall (Group) or by turning up or down a verse (nested Group) and dial in or swap reverbs, delays, etc. This way if artist B says turn down artist A verse two, it doesn’t take a bunch of micro edits

When it failed to work again. I created this thread wondering if there are any bugs… known by Ableton or noticed by other users

[[jur]]

Interesting.
I can't recall anything like this, but my brain's saturated by bugs and it's possible that I forgot.
I'll ask around.
If this happens again, it'd be cool if you could generate a Status Pack (Help menu > get Support) and send it to Support.

[H20nly]

Interesting.
I can't recall anything like this, but my brain's saturated by bugs and it's possible that I forgot.
I'll ask around.
If this happens again, it'd be cool if you could generate a Status Pack (Help menu > get Support) and send it to Support.

Sounds good.
Never generated one of those. I assume that is something that has to be done in real time while the issue is ongoing, correct?

Also, based on your reply… is it safe to assume that what I’m trying to accomplish, by nesting the groups, is completely ok? Are there any limitations I should be aware of?

[[jur]]

Yep, just generate one when you notice something's wrong; it's a bunch of logs.

You can nest groups as much as you want, the only limit being... your screen's height, basically, as each group will make the track header bigger.

[H20nly]

Thanks for confirming! I appreciate the info

[H20nly]

It happened again last night and I figured out the issue.

The original groups were routed to Sends Only. When I nest them, they need Output routing updated to the new (higher level) group (which is set to Sends Only). This is where the problem comes from… I was selecting the (new main) Group track from the list of ‘all’ tracks in the Output drop down, not the section near the top (where Main is an option and the Group is listed as well).

Since there’s over a hundred tracks in the set, the drop down for Outputs goes beyond the top of monitor screen and scrolls. ‘Sends Only’ is at the bottom of this long list, so changing the current option results in starting at the bottom too. Rather than scrolling to the top, I was selecting the new group from the tracks listed… my new group was something like track # 92 and just a few tracks away from ‘Sends Only’ at the bottom.

The behavior is different when the Group track is selected from the ‘all’ tracks section of the Outputs list. So, basically, I was selecting the first instance of it I see (to save time/scrolling) and causing the problem due to lack of understanding… User error.

I am still not sure what the other behavior is for, but I know it results in silence and that the Group needs to be selected from the top of the list…

Solution: scroll like the routing depends on it

[JasonW]

Thank you for sharing the solution to this!