does anyone have any hacks for changing rack presets?

[Angstrom]

My edirol controller has 10 buttons I can assign midi on/off mssages to. You could do this with keys as well. My keyboard playing goes to channel 1, each instrument has its own channel that recieves the input from channel 1. Then I map the buttons to turn each instrument on/off simultaneous with the record function on that channel. So any given time only one instrument (or rack) is on and transmitting, unless I choose multiple instruments.

I got the edirol specifically to have those buttons for that purpose.

don't you find that when you turn the instrument off the audio channel is audibly recalculated?
This was my major problem with turning devices off and on. I was using complex preset racks rather than just a simple 'Sampler', so the problem is compounded a little more in that situation.

[hoffman2k]

/Track1/Operator/Load/Bass-Cruncher.adg

Fingers Crossed

[Angstrom]

that would be good

[glitchrock-buddha]

This is another reason why Kore is great. It does exactly this. I was one of those people that thought racks would do everything I wanted, and while I do love ableton racks, Kore is an extremely useful tool for not just the NI library, but plug-ins in general. Of course it isn't useful for ableton's devices, but I was always under the impression that live's devices were not supposed to be using cpu when they were not being played, so a simple chain selector should work fine in theory for ableton's deviecs I suppose. Angstrom, I'm not sure if you're wanting to focus more on Live's devices or plug-ins, but if the latter, I would suggest picking up Kore 2 used for cheap for the purposes your after, rather than trying to come up with a way to do this with racks.

[Angstrom]

hmm, I've always been put off Kore as I'm not a user of other peoples presets. Not at all.
I always have made my own and that's one thing I just love to do, I mean - I prefer to make my own software synth so I can get exactly the sound I want with exactly the controlability . Flipping through a million factory presets is not my style.

KORE 2 is the Next-Generation Workstation – a powerful software / hardware system with a versatile library of more than 500 production-ready sounds with over 3,000 sound variations, plus over 100 effect settings.

yep, I'm getting definite feelings of nausea from it.

[pulsoc]

My edirol controller has 10 buttons I can assign midi on/off mssages to. You could do this with keys as well. My keyboard playing goes to channel 1, each instrument has its own channel that recieves the input from channel 1. Then I map the buttons to turn each instrument on/off simultaneous with the record function on that channel. So any given time only one instrument (or rack) is on and transmitting, unless I choose multiple instruments.

I got the edirol specifically to have those buttons for that purpose.

don't you find that when you turn the instrument off the audio channel is audibly recalculated?
This was my major problem with turning devices off and on. I was using complex preset racks rather than just a simple 'Sampler', so the problem is compounded a little more in that situation.

Do you mean it makes a sound?

My instrument racks consist of mostly Reaktor synths and some instances of Automat, with some added effects. I have not had any audio issues with turning the racks on and off.

[friend_kami]

i haven't used v8. so if you have say sampler and operator within a rack you can jump from one to the other via a midi or key stroke? does this also mean you can specify which instrument in that rack will receive your midi notes?

i assume this means you'll still have to have all of your instruments for a set loaded?

you'd have to map the same key to the record arm as well or something - it basically moves the blue hand so you can instantly control a device with your controller

I bought Kore about the same time Racks were introduced and everybody was saying how they made devices like Kore obsolete, yet Racks offer no solution to saving CPU by switching between devices and turning off the unused devices with something akin to preset changes. I really don't mean to be bashing on Ableton, I love their DAW, but it seems to me sometimes they seriously don't get basic ideas, like a user might want to switch between a couple soft synths and samplers in a single song, and have the synths not being played turned off to save cpu. Seems straightforward enough to me, the laptop equivalent of synth racks from some prog group in the 70's, but that wasn't the idea at all.

we need a rule selection scripting language for midi mappings imo.

[Angstrom]

we need a rule selection scripting language for midi mappings imo.

I would be happy with a new type of rack - the "preset rack". You throw in whatever presets you feel you might like to use (from your main library) and then you have a nice short list to flip through.


it would be visually large and it would be something like this


from a thread here
http://forum.ableton.com//viewtopic.php?p=706361#706361

[glitchrock-buddha]

hmm, I've always been put off Kore as I'm not a user of other peoples presets. Not at all.
I always have made my own and that's one thing I just love to do, I mean - I prefer to make my own software synth so I can get exactly the sound I want with exactly the controlability . Flipping through a million factory presets is not my style.

KORE 2 is the Next-Generation Workstation – a powerful software / hardware system with a versatile library of more than 500 production-ready sounds with over 3,000 sound variations, plus over 100 effect settings.

yep, I'm getting definite feelings of nausea from it.

No no, the benefits of Kore are far more than a preset browser! The Kore Player is a preset thing. Kore itself is like super racks. You can do entire performances with Kore in standalone, but it's even better as a plug-in in Live.

Ignore the preset thing, but do yourself a favor and watch the Kore 2 video tutorials on the NI site, especially the ones about performance control. There so many ways of changing a complete setups with the push of a button. Not only turning on and off devices, but saving settings of combinations of devices as on or off. For example in an ableton rack, say you had an operator and electric on one chain and on another you wanted an operator and analog. You'd have an operator in the first and second chain probably. In Kore, you could have for example, three synths loaded. 2 of them are turned on for one performance preset, and for another, one of those is off and the third is now on. One synths could be on in both and with totally different settings.

[Angstrom]

Ignore the preset thing, but do yourself a favor and watch the Kore 2 video tutorials on the NI site, especially the ones about performance control. .

I did watch them and I got the impression that it only handles 'player' versions of NI instruments. Which I do not use and are not appropriate to me. I write my own VSTi for when I want a certain sound, and for layered samples I use racks of Ableton Samplers. I don't want to have to try and re-make all those in some kind of NI 'player' format .. and see no indication that it could even do that. It still looks like a big "factory sound player" from all of those videos I watched. Even the 'sound design' video simply talks about putting reverbs on presets and layering them.

So can Kore actually handle VSTi or anything from outside the NI family ?
Or woudl I have to re-make every single sub-sound and sample and waveform translation of every preset I ever made?

I doubt that Kore could do anything with those ableton racks so I'd have to try and convert them all to some kind of kore format, but would Kore even understand my various VSTi ?

The idea of trying to remake my synths in a whole new format just so I can preset change them seems like overkill

[glitchrock-buddha]

Ignore the preset thing, but do yourself a favor and watch the Kore 2 video tutorials on the NI site, especially the ones about performance control. .

I did watch them and I got the impression that it only handles 'player' versions of NI instruments. Which I do not use and are not appropriate to me. I write my own VSTi for when I want a certain sound, and for layered samples I use racks of Ableton Samplers. I don't want to have to try and re-make all those in some kind of NI 'player' format .. and see no indication that it could even do that. It still looks like a big "factory sound player" from all of those videos I watched. Even the 'sound design' video simply talks about putting reverbs on presets and layering them.

So can Kore actually handle VSTi or anything from outside the NI family ?
Or woudl I have to re-make every single sub-sound and sample and waveform translation of every preset I ever made?

I doubt that Kore could do anything with those ableton racks so I'd have to try and convert them all to some kind of kore format, but would Kore even understand my various VSTi ?

The idea of trying to remake my synths in a whole new format just so I can preset change them seems like overkill

Of course it loads VSTs! You don't need a single NI instrument for Kore to be useful! It will load any VST or AU plug-in, instrument or effect. And any control c an be assigned to Kore "Macros" (like ableton rack macros, except you get lots of pages as well as morphing between settings which is awesome).

It blows me away how much misconception there is about Kore being this big NI preset browser. Any VSTi you make will load fine and do anything normally. You don't need to make a "Kore specific" version or wrapped version of anything. You simply load Kore. Then you load the plug-ins you want inside Kore. You can save a patch including whatever instruments are loaded as a Kore patch, and you can change the patches within the device itself within Kore as normal.

Obviously it can't load ableton instruments because they aren't VST/AU, but in that case I think a live rack would be sufficient as the devices wouldn't need to be turned on/off.

[Angstrom]

Of course it loads VSTs! You don't need a single NI instrument for Kore to be useful! It will load any VST or AU plug-in, instrument or effect. And any control c an be assigned to Kore "Macros" (like ableton rack macros, except you get lots of pages as well as morphing between settings which is awesome).

ah that's the crucial factor that I missed in their demo videos.
They seem to be completely targeted at a market of people who want to flip through to "find the perfect preset for your song"

which is never how I ever work.
I think of a song, I make the sound using the tools to hand - I then play the notes that I thought of with the sound that I thought of.

They need to adjust their marketing materials from this "band in a box" angle. I have written Kore off ever since it came out as a kind of kids toy. Like a garage-band of presets

KORE 2 is the Next-Generation Workstation – a powerful software / hardware system with a versatile library of more than 500 production-ready sounds with over 3,000 sound variations, plus over 100 effect settings. Find, play, and tweak sounds with unprecedented speed, power and ease.

---

KORE 2 produces cutting-edge sounds right from the start based on the integrated sound engines of REAKTOR, MASSIVE, ABSYNTH, FM8, KONTAKT and GUITAR RIG. The versatile sound library covers production-ready sounds of nearly all kinds - ranging from band and orchestral instruments to synthesizers, drums, soundscapes and sound effects. Every included sound provides up to 8 sound variations which can be morphed using the unique morphing pad or the KORE controller - intricate sonic transitions are at your fingertips!

that sort of stuff probably appeals to a lot of people, but not me.

[ngermick]

I have been struggling with this exact topic for the last week or two. I'm curious as to whether or not you use one large performance in KORE or break them down into multiple instances. I totally agree that it's far more than a factory preset browser.

Also, it's worth checking out the Reaktor Toolkit for Kore.

http://kore.noisepages.com/2008/05/19/f ... -toolpack/

This allows you extend your performance presets with additional MIDI controls. You can even map the buttons or knobs to send note on/off messages or cc's and then route that back into Live via IAC (on the mac) or out to external gear.

So in theory, you can have one page of controls on the KORE controller mapped to LIVE and other pages of controls mapped to VSTs. And each of these can be stored in a single preset per song. One push of a button, and you're entire set up can change.

Where I started to get hung up was that I was trying to use KORE for fx processing of external gear/vocals and simultaneously to play VSTi's and also to send patch changes to external gear. My goal was to have all of my vocal fx, patch changes, and vst presets set in a single preset in a KORE performance. This all worked great with KORE standalone. But trying to do that in a single instance of KORE in a host isn't practical due to routing limitations.

So now I'm at the point where I need to determine whether to use multiple KORE instances OR to split duties between KORE and Live racks.

[hoffman2k]

Max loads VST's too.

*Seeks Cover*

[glitchrock-buddha]

ah that's the crucial factor that I missed in their demo videos.
They seem to be completely targeted at a market of people who want to flip through to "find the perfect preset for your song"

They need to adjust their marketing materials from this "band in a box" angle. I have written Kore off ever since it came out as a kind of kids toy. Like a garage-band of presets

that sort of stuff probably appeals to a lot of people, but not me.

Ya, no doubt they did market it heavily about the preset management, but that' the least important feature for many people. If you re-watch any of the tutorials, just keep in mind that anything done when loading an NI plug-in can be done with any plug-in. Saving morph patches, performances etc.

I'd also suggest checking out the Kore tutorials from macprovideo.com. Even if you don't want to buy the tutorial, they have a few free tutorials as a glimpse of the full video tutorials. They might give you some insight to the possiblities. Also http://kore.noisepages.com/ can be a good source of Kore related tutorials. Again, remember that anything they do with an NI plug-in can be done equally as well with any VST.