Who uses sends and how? When will Ableton improve them?

[glitchrock-buddha]

The pre/post solution is not ideal. Say for instance in a live situation you want to send tracks 2, 5 and 7 to a return track with a filter on it and not hear the dry signal. You have to set the sends to pre, raise the send levels for each track and lower the volume level for each track to zero. Tom Cosm I believe, has a free live set where he demonstrates this by using the QWERTY keys to lower the track volumes and the numbers 1234567 etc above them to raise the send levels.
This imho is a little tricky.
An easier method is to use the phase cancellation trick. Put the FX in your send track in a rack with 2 channels. FX in first channel and utility FX with phase inverted on second channel. I use the last scene on my PadKontrol to send each track to a "wet only" send by simply tapping a pad.
Downside is that it doesn't work well with VSTis for some reason (there is a small sample delay or something that causes the phase cancellation not to work ... maybe messing with the track delay could fix it).
In any case, I would love to see Ableton implement a cleaner solution.
-grimley

I guess when you start to get into that kind of thing where really you're trying to make the sends work as inserts, it might be better to just route your tracks to bus tracks or use group tracks. I really wish there could be nested group tracks though, as my number one use of group tracks is freezing tracks where I want to keep the effects unfrozen.

[grimleyj]

The pre/post solution is not ideal. Say for instance in a live situation you want to send tracks 2, 5 and 7 to a return track with a filter on it and not hear the dry signal. You have to set the sends to pre, raise the send levels for each track and lower the volume level for each track to zero. Tom Cosm I believe, has a free live set where he demonstrates this by using the QWERTY keys to lower the track volumes and the numbers 1234567 etc above them to raise the send levels.
This imho is a little tricky.
An easier method is to use the phase cancellation trick. Put the FX in your send track in a rack with 2 channels. FX in first channel and utility FX with phase inverted on second channel. I use the last scene on my PadKontrol to send each track to a "wet only" send by simply tapping a pad.
Downside is that it doesn't work well with VSTis for some reason (there is a small sample delay or something that causes the phase cancellation not to work ... maybe messing with the track delay could fix it).
In any case, I would love to see Ableton implement a cleaner solution.
-grimley

I guess when you start to get into that kind of thing where really you're trying to make the sends work as inserts, it might be better to just route your tracks to bus tracks or use group tracks. I really wish there could be nested group tracks though, as my number one use of group tracks is freezing tracks where I want to keep the effects unfrozen.

Yeah, but how do you route tracks to a bus on the fly with a controller?

{simple senario]
On first breakdown, send drums, bass and synth to LPF and lower cutoff to silence.
Leave vocal track as is
Second breakdown, send vocals and drums to same LPF leaving bass going to main outs.

[glitchrock-buddha]

Yeah I know what you mean. Maybe Hoffman2K's snapshot application that he mentioned could be used for this, if I understand him correctly. He briefly mentioned it in the BCR performer 1.6 thread.

[jcobb00]

ok, check this out you all.

i may have found a solution to what i am looking for, and maybe everyone already knows about it, maybe not.

after talking on the phone with ableton, reading everyone's posts, and screwing around with live i have come to this solution


1. create 2 audio tracks (or however many you want) and keep their "audio to" as master

2. create a return track (or however many you want)

3. in sends on the master track click the post button so that it reads pre

4. place an audio effect rack on the return track

5. create 3 chains within the audio effect rack. 1 titled dry, 1 titled wet, and another titled invert

6. place whatever effect you want within the wet chain and leave the dry empty

7. place the utility "invert" on the invert chain

8. open the chain zone editor and:
for the dry effect extend both light and dark blue lines from 0-127
for the wet effect drag the dark blue line from 0-127 and the light blue line so that is is only on 127
for the invert chain drag the light blue and dark blue lines from 0-127 so that it is the same as the dry effect

9. click map mode, then click the chain selector, then click map in one of the 8 macro knobs to map it so that you can control the dryness/wetness with 1 knob (or you can keep it all the way wet and get the same effect from the send knobs)

make sure whatever individual effects you chose to place in the wet chain are already 100% wet (if if the effect offers that option)

this allows you to send and track to any return channel in a dry/wet fashion with minimal volume increase due to audio double-up (see below for additional information)

dryness and wetness are now adjustable for 1 track at a time, or as many tracks as you want at 1 time

in my experiences in the last 15 minutes i have not been able to test many different effects with this solution. there are noticeable volume increases when an effect is 100% wet on different effects but this is preventable by reducing the limit of the macro chain knob to something lower than 127 (experiment yourself to see what sounds good)

unfortunately beat repeat and eq3 (my personal favorite efffects to use) do not work great with this because the effect is not replacing the original audio (the cancellation process due to the inverted audio). a solution to this however is to just lower the track volumes of the sending channels so that you can only hear the return channel

i will continue to mess around with this to see what it has to offer, and i'm sure i will run into some problems along the way but i recommend experimenting with it as well and please let me know what you discover

[grimleyj]

This is the phase cancellation trick I mentioned earlier in this thread.
It doesn't work well with virtual instruments (at least not on my MBPro).

[jcobb00]

yup, thats why i started messing around with it again, i knew about it but had never used it with a pre send, only post