Ableton Forum

I'm not sure what's going on here or if I accidentally changed some setting in Live.
I have a MIDI track with an instrument rack in it, with several Live and VST synths.

Everything has been working fine, until recently when I try to drag a new VST synth into the rack, at the bottom where it says to drag, rather than loading the actual synth, it just says "chain".

Anyone know what is going on?

Thank you in advance.

Kris

Each instrument in an instrument (or drum) rack goes in it's own chain. You should probably go through the built-in tutorial on instrument racks to familiarize yourself with the details of how they work.

Mage2k wrote:Each instrument in an instrument (or drum) rack goes in it's own chain. You should probably go through the built-in tutorial on instrument racks to familiarize yourself with the details of how they work.

Hi. Yes, I get that but this is new behavior and unexpected. I have been using this rack for months and adding new instruments to it all of the time by dragging them into the bottom of the rack window. Now, all of a sudden when I drag an instrument there, it doesn't add the actual VST instrument, but adds something named "chain". I have no idea why it is doing this.

It has always been putting the instruments in chains. On the far left of the rack there are three buttons that you use to display the macro knobs, chain list, and the selected chain's devices. Ensure that the chain you added is selected in the chain list and that you have the devices view button enabled.

Mage2k wrote:It has always been putting the instruments in chains. On the far left of the rack there are three buttons that you use to display the macro knobs, chain list, and the selected chain's devices. Ensure that the chain you added is selected in the chain list and that you have the devices view button enabled.

Hi. Yes, I have the whole list of instruments showing and devices. Basically, I see my window with my series of instruments in it from top to bottom. If I click on one, it shows the device in the right window. Below this list of instruments is the space where it says you can drag MIDI Effects, Audio Effects, Instruments, etc. So when I attempt to drag a new instrument there, rather than adding it, like all those above in the list, it adds a line item named "Chain".

If I click on the Chain button, above the list of instruments, and next to Hide and Vel, the Chain window pops up to the right, but nothing is in it. I just have the instruments in the rack, no additional effects or thing with them.

The strange thing is that when I try to drag some instruments into the list, it works. Other times it adds that "Chain" line item.

hey...how many 'lines' do you already have in the rack ?

3dot... wrote:hey...how many 'lines' do you already have in the rack ?

35

do you have some sort of 'limited version' of Live (like the ones you get with controllers ?)
if not..
have you tried restarting Live? can you reproduce this.. ?
if so..
send a 'bug report pack' to [email protected]

3dot... wrote:do you have some sort of 'limited version' of Live (like the ones you get with controllers ?)
if not..
have you tried restarting Live? can you reproduce this.. ?
if so..
send a 'bug report pack' to [email protected]

I have the full version, and latest version. Yes, I have tried re-starting Live several times. I'll send a report to Live.
Thanks.

no help with your chain limit, but i'd try keeping the amount of chains per instrument rack much less than 35. that's a lot! the way Live distributes cpu is per track, so if you have a bunch of vsts in a rack on one track only, its not spreading the cpu usage across the cpu cores, but cramming them into one core. try a few racks over 4 tracks or so (depending on how many cores you cpu has) to spread the load. if your machine has just the one core, this means nothing, but most are nowadays so..

I actually used to use a rack with 40 absynth instances (fading between presets ) playing live !