Ableton Forum

Hello,

I'd like to know if it's possible to bounce a MIDI-only track that controls a VST track to audio in the Arranger.

The setup is like this:
MIDI Track - Just MIDI data, no plugins, routed to a specific channel of a VST-only track.
VST Track - A VST instance with multiple instruments and a single stereo output (routed to group, if that matters).

In Studio One, you can Bounce specific MIDI clips (on MIDI-only tracks routed to multi-instrument, single instance VST tracks) to audio from a context menu very easily. In Cubase, it requires a little bit of setup, but then you can freeze the VSTs audio outs from a top-level context menu.

In Live, is it possible to do something similar with this setup? Unfortunately, it would have to work with split tracks (many of them, in practice) as shown above.

What I have been doing it just recording the audio to temp audio tracks in realtime, but this takes quite a long time and definitely feels like the wrong workflow. But I haven't found a way to use Freeze/Flatten that works with this setup, or any variations I've tried (mostly routing to specific audio tracks and trying to freeze them), and the manual didn't offer any insight from what I read.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Thanks,
-Adrian

By setting up a separate midi track, and routing it to your VST, Live will not allow you to freeze the midi track because there is no audio outputted from it. You'll have to move the midi clip to the VST's track, and flatten that track.

However, concerning multi-timbral VST instruments, you cannot freeze a track when the VST has other tracks associated with it too.

So you have two workarounds, multiple instances of the same VST on their own tracks, or what you have been doing, record the audio output to another audio track using Live's internal audio routing.

Allright, that seemed to be the case, but again I am new to Live and wanted to make sure. Somewhat disappointing but not a big deal.

Thanks for your reply!
-A

Yeah, it can be a workflow killer when using multi-timbral VSTs, especially when your computer is short on resources.