Ableton Forum

Hello,
I have an instrument rack with a macro mapped to the chain selector and the device's on/off button on each chain.
In the mapping window, i changed the values for the devices'on/off button according to the chain they're in. I followed the description provided in this thread viewtopic.php?f=4&t=184758

When i'm moving my chain selector the device doesn't turn on when i'm on it's chain (Only the device on chain 0 is turning on)


I supposed i'm doing something wrong... but i can't find what..
Thanks !

I had a similar problem before.
I think counter intuitively you need to allow the chainselector the whole range from 0-127 if I remember correctly.
Or wait, the on/offs need to spread over the full range?!
(so 0-8, 9-16...)

Try 'em both, I'm sure one of them works....

Thank you TomViolenz !
It was that indeed. It's a bit of a bummer because i'm mapping the macro to a midi controller. I tried to "rack the rack", map the macro (chain selector) to a macro of his parent and limit the output of this macro (from 0 to 6) so the it won't go to 127, it doesn't work anymore.
The weird thing with grouping the rack is that the last chain will turn on if i'm on 6. Before allowing the whole range, it was the first one only... (on 0)

no, the on/off just need to be on a unique number, i will try extending the range to cover it all

Thanks !
I had to cover the whole range to make it work.

...just out of curiosity: does the "stacking" of different instruments inside a rack have a (positive) effect on the cpu consumption of the set?...versus having e.g. 5 instruments on 5 tracks...
thanks
b

The stacking alone, no. But if you activate/desactivate your plugins, it has.
In my liveset, i have 4 tracks with an instrument rack containing 6-8 different instruments. Depending on the song (i'm preparing a set for live performance), i change the plugin in the rack for each track and desactivate the others.
When the plugins weren't off, my cpu was around 39%, now with the on/off selector it's around 19%. I needed to gain cpu usage because there's others process (effects etc...) that will use cpu.

scheffkoch wrote:...just out of curiosity: does the "stacking" of different instruments inside a rack have a (positive) effect on the cpu consumption of the set?...versus having e.g. 5 instruments on 5 tracks...
thanks
b

Assuming you also turn these instruments off/on it comes down to mostly an organisational advantage with the added convenience that you can switch between them with a macro.

...sounds interesting...i'm gonna give it a try...
thanks for your reply!
b

...right now my workflow to reduce cpu consumption is that i "cleaned up" my liveset so that it only contains 8 tracks of instruments...and change them by switching the instrument racks...but this method seems a little more practical...thanks again!
b

...so you guys also use the macros to turn the instruments on and off, right?...

scheffkoch wrote:...so you guys also use the macros to turn the instruments on and off, right?...

That's what this thread is about, yes

You simply map all the on/offs to the same macro as the the chainselector and set the ranges such that they are only on when the chain is selected.

...ahhhhhhhh...ohhh...this opens a new perspective for me...ha...thanks!!!!!!...

If you want to be a bit creative with it, you can use this method just as easily to slowly fade between two instruments.
Just don't make the chain selector ranges only one step wide, but let's 10 and then use the little fade bar on top of the range chooser to fade from silent to maximum in the middle, and back to silent at the end. Now make the next instruments range overlap so that when one fades out the other fades in, with no overlap at the maximum point. The on/off ranges need to be as long as the fade range of each instrument of course.

Leads to very smooth transitions and often sonically interesting results

It's also great for effects:
You can for instance have your 10 favorite distortion presets as a continuous range to "morph" between with just one macro with the in-between parts always being a mixture of two.
And with the device on/offs appropriately mapped you never need to have more than two of them on at the same time.

TomViolenz wrote:
It's also great for effects:
You can for instance have your 10 favorite distortion presets

Yeah. Swithcable Racks are also really nice for evaluating synths and other plug-ins. I just built an EQ comparison rack complete with Reversed Polarity cancellation and Spectrum Analyzers. I set up each EQ for a task by ear and switch between the EQs to really be able to compare quickly and try dialing in what I want. Doing this in a predetermined order I can record the results and listen later in other systems.

Using the set up principles mentioned in this thread you can do really flexible stuff and fast.