Recommended approach - Drum Rack and drum vst

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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Blackbird74
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2025 2:24 pm

Recommended approach - Drum Rack and drum vst

Post by Blackbird74 » Mon Aug 18, 2025 5:23 am

Hello all,
I'm new to Ableton, still learning every day.

I was looking for recommendations regarding the use of a drum vst within drum racks.

So, the drum rack concept is great as it allows to define specific EQ and compression per drum sound separately.
But how should I go about in use with a drum vst? (Like Nepheton or IconDrum)
Especially if I would, maybe, consider layer/combine some of these with a sample.

Should I thus create an individual drum rack per drum sound? (kick, toms, ...)
Allowing me to craft the sound per entry.
And add to those the layered/stacked samples (triggered through the same note)
Nested drum racks seems handy but then again too much cramped? :D

Or does this have downsides like having too many instances of the drum vst active or so? (or cpu impact)

Thanks for any recommendations!

BB

chapelier fou
Posts: 6358
Joined: Mon May 15, 2006 12:15 pm

Re: Recommended approach - Drum Rack and drum vst

Post by chapelier fou » Mon Aug 18, 2025 7:37 am

Some VSTs have internal audio "buses" that you can access independently from Live's other tracks.
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