Ableton Forum

So i am a bit late to the dance but realised that the reason i cannot record all the channels of my digitakt at once is that
Live only allows for 16 channels for Vst plugins at a time. ……

Can anybody help me understand why that is and if it is a subject that might change in the near future or am i the only one
who cares?

It is kind of a standard. And that is very influenced by the handling of data from classic midi.

Only workaround I can think of is if you had 2 midi ‘devices’ going into Live, and each had 16 channels. Then you could filter by channel + device rather than just channel.

A haa. Interesting. Well that’s a bummer

I thought I read somewhere that only Live has this restriction but am not sure if I read it or dreamt it

I’m actually not sure 100 percent if you’re referring to something different from what I thought I was offering insight on. So maybe you could clarify.

Are you talking about audio channels or midi channels? And which plugin are you referring to?

yur2die4 wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 27, 2025 2:28 am

I’m actually not sure 100 percent if you’re referring to something different from what I thought I was offering insight on. So maybe you could clarify.

Are you talking about audio channels or midi channels? And which plugin are you referring to?

I am not referring to Midi. However your assumption it might be influenced by midi makes sense as the restriction is 16 channels.
To be honest i don`t know how an exact term would be. Virtual Outputs for a Vst Plugin?

Example the Overbridge Plugin by Elektron. If i want to record All channels of my Digitakt into Ableton i need to group them in a way
that results in a Max 16 Stereo Outputs when i actually would need more than 16 channels if i want to retain all sounds individually as teh Digitakt has 16 channels+ Fx channels etc etc .
As far as i remember somebody once explained that it is a restriction build in Ableton