Ableton Forum

Sound Forge has a way of chaining a group of VST plug-in effects and saving them as a preset. They call it a plug-in chainer.
What would be great would be too be able to have a presets for the different instruments I use by being able to load some sort of template or plug-in chain.
For example, equalizer, reverb, compressor, filter for the acoustic guitar.
Saturator, delay, reverb, equalizer, limiter for the electric guitar. Then be able to load each chain into whatever track I'm working on with that instrument.
Am I missing something or is there no easy way to do this in Live?
I checked the forum. Maybe it's too obvious of an answer?

you can't load a chain of multiple plugins into a pre-existing .als like that.

you CAN make your own pre-defined .als's that can be used as templates. Channel 1 would have all your fx for acoustic guitar, Channel 2 would have them all for electric guitar.

Sorry for my density. Are you meaning "track" when you say channel? Are you saying that I should set up a number of tracks--one for electric, one for acoustic, one for voice, one for pad synth, one for drum track, and then save this template as an als?
Thanks.

feyshay wrote:Sound Forge has a way of chaining a group of VST plug-in effects and saving them as a preset.

man thats funny i was just thinking that it would be awesome to do this in live yesterday. that would save so much time, and would be very handy. hopefully ableton will work this in somehow sometime

Well, (jumping on the bandwagon) you could try...

PLOUGE BIDULE.

Specifically the VST bridge. Save whatever "chain" you want as a Bidule Layout, load the appropriate VST bridge plugin onto the track, launch Bidule in VST mode, open the Layout you want in Bidule.

Advantages: Much more routing flexability.
Disadvantage: You only get one instance at a time (for now...).

feyshay wrote:Sorry for my density. Are you meaning "track" when you say channel? Are you saying that I should set up a number of tracks--one for electric, one for acoustic, one for voice, one for pad synth, one for drum track, and then save this template as an als?
Thanks.

sorry, yes, channel = track.
Channel 1 Channel 2 = Track 1 Track 2.

that would be a great way to do it in Live.

but Buzzcock is also correct that making these templates in Plogue Bidule would allow you to load these chains into pre-existing .als's

you can do it either way.

would be nice to see ableton implement a sort of fx grouping save system, sort of like a multi plugin preset.
But i'd rather see many many other things before that (PDC, more warp settings, altivec, dual cpu audio engine, minimize tracks in session view, etc.)

buzzcock wrote:Well, (jumping on the bandwagon) you could try...

PLOUGE BIDULE.

Specifically the VST bridge. Save whatever "chain" you want as a Bidule Layout, load the appropriate VST bridge plugin onto the track, launch Bidule in VST mode, open the Layout you want in Bidule.

Advantages: Much more routing flexability.
Disadvantage: You only get one instance at a time (for now...).

With Bidule's VST bridge, i can't seem to figure out how to make the MIDI splitter work. All the synths are on one channel but I want to be able to put them on different channels like in Rewire mode. Is this possible within an "instance" of Bidule in VST mode?

Check out this chainer by Xlutop!

http://www.kvraudio.com/get/261.html
Does exactly what I want. Very easy to use.
Anybody use this? Anything similar that works as well (for PC)?
I'm sure you can do more overall with Bidule, but you can load numerous instances of this.

My live template contains all manner of plugins all lined up and ready to use. It's a great way of working, because you don't even have to load up your chain, it's sitting right there, and you can drop a signal into it at a moments notice.

(btw, a little tip; I use an extra channel to resample externally sequenced impulse beats on the fly. the extra channel is already set up with a compressor, redux and supatrigga, so at any time I can grab a bar or two and layer it over the top for extra meanie-credits )

Former Pharaoh wrote: With Bidule's VST bridge, i can't seem to figure out how to make the MIDI splitter work. All the synths are on one channel but I want to be able to put them on different channels like in Rewire mode. Is this possible within an "instance" of Bidule in VST mode?

Not sure but when using the VSTi Bidule Bridge, options in Live for "Midi to" (for any track) gets you Plogue Bidule Device with Bus 1 and 16 channels to choose from.
But that was maybe not the issue?

// C

The most powerful tool I've found for this sort of thing is EnergyXT.

Thanks on the recommendation.
I saw that on KVRaudio, but I passed it over.
I'm going to try both out for a couple days, I think I like the Energy better than the Chainer right now.

This is on Abletons to-do list. But i hope they finish it soon.
I'm not sitting on my ass by the way. Already i have saved lots of .als files that will become presets later.
When i play me dreamscenario in my mind about this subject. It goes a little like the tale of the ant and the grasshopper.
A .als file is what you make of it

I've said it before and i'll say it again.
Adding this feature to Live would be the ultimate educational tool when it comes to electronic music in general. Along with a texteditor where the helpscreen is now.

conny wrote:

Former Pharaoh wrote: With Bidule's VST bridge, i can't seem to figure out how to make the MIDI splitter work. All the synths are on one channel but I want to be able to put them on different channels like in Rewire mode. Is this possible within an "instance" of Bidule in VST mode?

Not sure but when using the VSTi Bidule Bridge, options in Live for "Midi to" (for any track) gets you Plogue Bidule Device with Bus 1 and 16 channels to choose from.
But that was maybe not the issue?

// C

Basically. I just want to be able to setup multiple synths on multiple channels within a VST bridge, but I think I am missing the point which is each Bridge is one patch on one channel which could be made into one big super synth/fx patch. Eventually, this will be really useful when multiple bridges can be utilized on different tracks.

I use both Chainer and EXT for this. EXT's got more options overall, and Chainer's more stable. Unfortunately, Chainer's development's been at a standstill for over two years
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