More than 1 MIDI Port? More than 16 MIDI Channels?

dango · Post by **dango** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 10:16 am

Aloha,

I need to know if and how I can set up more than 16 midi channels or different ports in Live.

here's my dilema, I am using Kontakt for my drums and samples. i usually put each drum sound in its own instrument each needing to receive MIDI data from a different channel. I want to have 16 channels dedicated to drums in one 'multi instrument'

i want to have another multi that also has the option to receive 16 different channels of MIDI.

In Kontakt on each instrument there is the MIDI routing feature. As of now it lists ports A-D each consisting of 16 MIDI channels. port #A says "from host" ports B-D say "not available"

my question is how can I make these other ports available?

sorry for the long post, but I need to get this nailed.

thanks for any help

d~

Amaury · Post by **Amaury** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 10:34 am

Hi,

If you need multiple MIDI ports, you need different interfaces, or a keyboard that is able to send on two dinstinct MIDI ports. One MIDI port will always give only 16 channels.

If you play your instruments with a keyboard, though, you certainly need not to play everything at once? So you can deactivate monitoring for one of the channels containing Kontakt, and play the other.

If it is internal routing, you will not have problems using multiple instances of Kontakt, as when you route MIDI to a Kontakt track, you choose first wich Kontakt track you want to reach.

Or?

Regards,
Amaury

dango · Post by **dango** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 11:23 am

thanks, that is kinda what i thought. i am going to start toying with impulse and see if i can nail a lot of my drum needs with it.

Amaury · Post by **Amaury** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 4:58 pm

Hi,

But you can still use Kontakt if you wish to. You can use as many instances, each containing 16 channels, as you wish. Only thing is not to try to record on every track at once, but with 10 fingers, it should be ok, right?

Regards,
Amaury

dango · Post by **dango** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 1:31 am

thats what i was going to do, other instances of kontakt. i actually liked using impulse last night, never used it before. the simplicity is kinda cool. i still need the strong swing feature in kontakt for my hats and other elements but the rest i can do on impulse. what i still can't figure out is i am using the same samples i used when i was working with my mpc, but they sounded a lot more fat coming out of the mpc. the same samples being played in live or kontakt, even with a nice compressor on them sound a little dull. why is this?

make · Post by **make** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 2:51 am

What you can do to save opening multiple VST instances is to open kontakt as a standalone and then route the midi from live through a loopback device.

For instance, check image below:

What I did was to route "1 midi " out through loopBe30/internal midi 1/ch 1 and then into kontakt instrument 1 midi A 1.

Live "2 midi" is out through loopBe/internal midi 2/ch 5 into kontakt midi B 5.

You would just need to route the audio back into Live.

hope this works for you.

[EDIT] On re-reading, I saw that you want to use several kontakt multi's.

You still can with the way I suggest but you could instead use each instrument as its own 'multi' and set up groups as though they were instruments.

e.g.: lay all the drum samples out so that:

kiks = C1 - B1 => then group together as 'kiks'
snares = C2 - B2 => then group together as 'snares'
Hats = C3 - B3 => then group together as 'hats'

etc etc

then you can set each groups audio outputs on seperate channels and set it up in live so you have 16 return audio tracks, each taking a feed from its relative output channel from kontakt.

"kik group" => kontakt out 1 => Live audio in ch 1, etc etc

If you wanted to effect each individual drum, then just make each drum as its own group but route the audio collectively through each drums 'type' group output [all kiks into ch 1, snares into ch 2, etc]

If I havent been clear with my explaination then I will try to find time tomorrow to knock up a Live .als and a Kontakt multi and post them up.

dango · Post by **dango** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 4:24 am

thanks make.

yeah i knew about mapping samples but forgot how to apply effects to certain groups, hence groupd effects. i re watched the tutorial dvd and am up and running.

thx

d~