Ableton Forum

Hi - I've been searching for a way to do this: I have a series of racks with one device per slot. The chain selector is mapped to a macro control, which connects to a knob. So, I turn the knob, and go from chain 1, to 2, to 3, and so on, and each one contains a different instrument. However, at the moment all different instruments in the chain are activated. I only hear the sound coming out of whichever one is selected, but I am using up cpu unnecessarily by having the other chains active even though they are unselected. How do I make sure that only the chain that is selected is active, and all others are deactivated?

To further clarify, when the macro moves the chain selector to position 1, I want only the chain at position 1 to be active, and all other chains (2,3,4 etc.) to be deactivated. Then, when I move the macro/chain select to chain 2, I want chain 1, 3, 4, etc. deactivated. And so on and so forth.

Thanks!

I don't think it's possible, even not with M4L.
But the method is questionable anyway since abrupt on/off switching may introduce audio glitches.

it is possible to map the on/off-button of a device to a macro knob. You can specify the range of the knob that defines off or on status. I use that on some of my efx-racks, so turning a knob from zero to any value higher than zero will turn on the device.

Still you only can define one point - so you can say "turn on device at knob value 25" but you can't tell live to turn it off again at knob value 35 for example. It will stay active on any position higher than 25.

But maybe you find a workaround.

I have a similar instrument containing 7 or 8 chains, the way I do it is a pain in the arse but also works. I map the computer keys 0-9 to turn on each of these chains and turn all the rest off - setting this up is very laborious (eg you set "2" to turn on chain 2, but also to turn off all the others) but it does the trick.

pepezabala wrote:it is possible to map the on/off-button of a device to a macro knob. You can specify the range of the knob that defines off or on status. I use that on some of my efx-racks, so turning a knob from zero to any value higher than zero will turn on the device.

Still you only can define one point - so you can say "turn on device at knob value 25" but you can't tell live to turn it off again at knob value 35 for example. It will stay active on any position higher than 25.

But maybe you find a workaround.

not sure if I misunderstand, but on/off buttons have a min/max and you can map as many as you like to the same knob, so you could map the first one min: 1 max: 10 then map the second min: 11 max: 20 and so on..

alex.the.forge wrote:

pepezabala wrote:it is possible to map the on/off-button of a device to a macro knob. You can specify the range of the knob that defines off or on status. I use that on some of my efx-racks, so turning a knob from zero to any value higher than zero will turn on the device.

Still you only can define one point - so you can say "turn on device at knob value 25" but you can't tell live to turn it off again at knob value 35 for example. It will stay active on any position higher than 25.

But maybe you find a workaround.

not sure if I misunderstand, but on/off buttons have a min/max and you can map as many as you like to the same knob, so you could map the first one min: 1 max: 10 then map the second min: 11 max: 20 and so on..

makes sense, I need to try this when I am hom. I only has issues with this, as for my racks I needed to set it to min:1 and max:0 so the device would actually turn on (and not off).

pepezabala wrote:

alex.the.forge wrote:

pepezabala wrote:it is possible to map the on/off-button of a device to a macro knob. You can specify the range of the knob that defines off or on status. I use that on some of my efx-racks, so turning a knob from zero to any value higher than zero will turn on the device.

Still you only can define one point - so you can say "turn on device at knob value 25" but you can't tell live to turn it off again at knob value 35 for example. It will stay active on any position higher than 25.

But maybe you find a workaround.

not sure if I misunderstand, but on/off buttons have a min/max and you can map as many as you like to the same knob, so you could map the first one min: 1 max: 10 then map the second min: 11 max: 20 and so on..

makes sense, I need to try this when I am hom. I only has issues with this, as for my racks I needed to set it to min:1 and max:0 so the device would actually turn on (and not off).

if you set Min: as 20 and Max as 40 for ex. then it will only be on when the knob is between 20 and 40 it will be off while either side of that

so in the given example I'd probably have 0 as off, then everything above on (actually usually I set it as about 5 or something because I don't like having just 1/128th of a knob position to turn it off - just in case in the heat of the moment you don't turn it all the way and it's a device where it's not really obvious that it's still engaged (like EQ3 for example, where it might not sound that different in a mix but it will colour the sound

yip, I actually set the knobs to turn on at 4 as well, because I don't trust myself during gigs and I don't trust the nanokontrol-knobs neither. haha.

OK - worked it out. Thanks for the responses. Mapped the chain selector to one macro knob. Then mapped another macro to the each effect enable button. Set min and max values for each instrument which means they're only active when the chain selector macro is on them. Then mapped both chain select and effect enable macro knobs to the one physical knob. (For some reason the scaling was off when mapping both to one macro, so I'd rotate and it would move through the selection, but then some would be activated, and some not).

No audio glitches or artifacts - although I am using all Ableton plugs, so I can't tell if you'd have any probs with 3rd party ones.

Thanks.

glad that it worked. By the way, you could also have mapped both chain selector and device-on-off-buttons to the same macro.

This is very clever, thanks!!

Just gotta say a HUGE thanks to all everyone in this thread for solving an issue that I never in a million years (ok, slight exaggeration) would have figured out myself. My hardware harmonizer recently died and I am trying to make the switch to all VSTs, but the pitch tracking was blowing up my memory like crazy! This solution worked like a charm. Everyone hear gets a free drink from me next time you're in New York!!