Ableton Forum

Is anyone using Stylus within Live?

I am having real trouble with the fact that none of the main parameters appear in the Live control section that appears in the track window when you click the spanner.

As a result you can draw envelopes for the main filter etc.

Also if i do a midi learn to map the filter to an external control it works fine until i drop into record.

If i trigger the clip to play a Stylus part the control data for the midi learned parameter doesn't get through. It'll start working again once i've stopped recording!?

How nuts is that!

For me even the simplest automation does not work in the configuration you mentioned. I have opened a request to Spectrasonics for that - no answer yet. If I get any answer, I'll tell you.

Cheers,

Markus

Hi Markus,

I have to say I'm glad its not me. I've been working with Stylus and a lot of Linplug synths.

Every parameter in the Linplug synths appears in Live and waggling any of them around during a record which makes it even more frustrating when flicking to Stylus.

I found last night that if i drag the MIDI loopout of Stylus into a Live session I can't trigger the loop where i want it in the arrangment but at that moment no learned MIDI control is possible.

However if i then run the sequence and play with an assigned control it'll work AND be recorded into Live. However this control data doesn't appear as an envelope anywhere so can't be edited.

I also found that some of the parameters than Live can adjust relate to which effects are placed in th effects section which is really wierd!!!

While you can't draw an envelope to control the main filter you CAN draw an envelope to switch from distortion to reverb in the main output!

Spectrasonics really need to deal with this. I'll drop them a line to.

The problem here is the sheer number of parameters in Stylus RMX, which exceeds the number of parameters Live supports for automation. The end result is that there are RMX parameters which you cannot automate in Live.

However, using MIDI Learn in RMX has no such limitations and is easier to use in many cases anyway. See the MIDI Learn tutorial at the rmxcommunity site for details:

http://www.spectrasonics.net/rmxcommunity

Glenn Olander
Spectrasonics

Hi Glenn,

Thanks for chipping in on this board, its good to know that Spectrasonics are pro-active on this kind of thing.

I understand that there are more parameters in Stylus than can be automated in Live. I find it odd though that i can adjust which effect is assigned to an aux send with an envelope but not that master filter.

With that oddity aside i would love to use the MIDI learn feature but the MIDI learn function forgets the learn while recording in Session mode.

I'm going to do a Spectrsonics tutorial style screen video grab to demonstrate this as its highly frustrating.

I will however have another look at the tutorial first in case I'm missing a key step that makes it work.

GlennO wrote:The problem here is the sheer number of parameters in Stylus RMX, which exceeds the number of parameters Live supports for automation. The end result is that there are RMX parameters which you cannot automate in Live.

Glenn Olander
Spectrasonics

Hi Glen,

thanks for your post. I do understand that not each parameter is supported for automation. But I would like to automate the parameters that are demonstrated and named in the documentation, such as track level. Even this does not work for me I sent a demo video to the spectrasonics support and did not yet get an answer, maybe you can give them another hint.

Thanks for your support,

Markus

I've just found what my problem may have been, and this may help Markus depending on his setup.

In Live i have a MIDI track that Stylus sits on (STY-MASTER), and then other 8 MIDI tracks (STY-1, STY-2 etc) that feed the MIDI loops into the 8 patch slots in Stylus.

Having done the whole MIDI learn thing what I was doing was dragging the MIDI loop into track STY-1; Enabling the MIDI icon at the bottom of STY-1; then dropping into record, triggering the loop in the session and then waggling my controller like a loon.

Two things could happen when doing this either I'd have no control over the parameter i had learned while recording OR the control would be recorded into the loop itself and not into the arrangement.

In the latter case the controller data would also always start at zero. This would make it impossible to, for example, open the filter over 8 bars as once the loop started repeating it would carry out the filer move that had occured in the first pass and nothing more.

What I should have done, and now appear to have it working the way i want, is to do the whole MIDI learn thing and then enable the MIDI icon at the bottom of the STY-MASTER track.

Doing this records the learned MIDI into the arrangment properly. Essentially arming the midi channel with the clip in it does not work, but arming the midi channel with the actual plug-in in it does.

This is not how it is described in the tutorial for Live as that tutorial works in the arrange window and not the session view for the MIDI learn section.

I can knock a tutorial together for the session view if anyone would find it of use.

Hi,

even though your hint does not solve my issue, as I already armed that exact channel , I would still be very interested in your tutorial!

Thanks and cheers,

Markus

mandr wrote:Hi,

even though your hint does not solve my issue, as I already armed that exact channel , I would still be very interested in your tutorial!

Thanks and cheers,

Markus

Well having thought I'd figured it out I set up a test set to make a tutorial from and the results I got were totally different.

I'll keep playing with it tonight and see what I end up with.

Things seem to work better in arrange view but session view is just not as it should be.

HI,

I think something ist terribly buggy there. Spectrasonics could not come up with a solution until now. I sent them several videos showing what's wrong and from the answers I'm getting it seems they do not have a clue there

Basically I do not know hoe they got it working in their tutorial video, maybe it is faked ...

Cheers,

Markus - surrender!

Yeah. Just to be sure I walked through each step of the tutorial video and I can not get it to do what they do.

Moving parameters with your mouse just does not get recorded.

I can record parameters moved with a controller in the arrange view but not in session view.