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new v3.2.4 bug?


DolmensDude

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I either confused MainStage or it simply has got me dumbfounded again. Need someone to verify this situation, if possible.

 

Built two multi racks, one in Kontakt and one in Omnisphere 2. What's in there? Anything that might get used more than once in the concert. Pianos, horns, Strings - all the general purpose stuff. Purpose is to copy/paste as alias only need it to be more "flexible".

 

If pasting a non-multi-timbral instance of a given plugin, one can change the output of the plug-in to be a patch bus on the path, add an audio channel that "picks up" that patch and voila, one piano goes a long, long way as they can all be effected ad nauseum in that patch. Been doing this for years.

 

For a MULTI-TIMBRAL multi though, things are different. We can't tell the aliased multi to output to a patch bus, because... MainStage "wires up" a bunch of auxes for us, that's 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, so forth an so on that we get when we press the "+" button on a multi-timbral instance. Well, we *can* tell it do this, but it doesn't work, or it does, and then it does, and then it doesn't anymore... Gave up on that, it's not the question here, but if someone can confirm this, then I'll make a bug report.

 

So, I've got this 16x2 Kompakt multi and this 8x2 Omni multi. I made a bunch of individual patches, using a pasted alias the multi, and a copy of "wired up" aux, so K3-4, set the midi input to multi-timbral, assigned main controller to the proper midi channel, en voila, I can almost treat the multi as if it were just a rack of stuff. Cool. Built these up from scratch all day, saved, reloaded, it all worked. Then, I started taking these and again pasted the alias and the accompanying AUX audio strip into patches. They play there, just fine. When pasting, I have to reselect the source aux (the ones that MS wired up on it's own for multi-timbral outputs (after the 1st pair, so in a 16x2 in creates 15 auxes, for the 2nd thru 16th pair).

 

Was building these all day, no crashes, saved well, performance was amazingly good, and I'm CERTAIN that after a save, the routings were still good.

 

I think I confused MainStage though and since then these are simply NOT saving which makes this approach worthless. Is it a bug??? Dunno. When did it start going wrong? Pasting two of the same channel strips as aliases. Not at all strange. I use two keyboard controllers, it's absolutely possible to have the same string pad on both, one as a layer and then one as a solo line.

 

The trick that has to work here is this, the INPUT, which is an aux, related to the channel strip that was originally copied... it's there in the target patch/channel strip. it's selectable as an aux, but it needs to persist. and now it's not.

 

It's been about 16 hours today - I think I can get away with using concert level auxes, there are 64 of those.

 

What's actually the right way to copy/paste (as alias) multi-timbral channel strips, and in particular, the audio auxes for the 2nd thru last stereo pair?

There are some other drawbacks to this approach. There is *some* flexibility to aliased channel strips, so we can change octave transposition without affecting the source channel strip, but... MIDI plug-ins for some reason do affect the source, I would think that is something that would not necessarily be tied to the source channel strip. It's extremely hard to take two channel strips (that come from such a multi-timbral instrument) and put those into zones/splits, it *is* possible, but I think this is where MS stopped being able to track the source aux for the audio strip that accompanied the aliased channel strip.

 

The crux of the question is what's in bold text. What's the right way to accomplish this? I need to cut down on the absolute number of instances of Kontakt and Omni.

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I just did this on another small concert file.

 

Omni 2 multi-timbral instance in one patch.

 

copied, pasted as alias the "main" channel strip. added an aux, that "picked up" the aux3-4 of that instrument, set it to an output, it worked, saved, closed the file, reopened and it was still there. then even changed the midi input to multi-timbral, set midi channel appropriately, it worked, saved, closed, reopened and it still worked.

 

Seems my concert file is in fact corrupted *somewhere*, but then somewhere where exporting it and reimporting it did not find or fix.

 

Brutal. I versioned progress today vX, the X+1, there's 12 versions for today. Will look again tomorrow to see where it was all "still good". Will have lost a lot of work though... (not) nice.

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More silliness... Exporting patches that had the aliased multi-timbal Kontakt instance are importing back as standalone instances. Even if I manually import one patch at a time, so that the real channel strip which the alias points to is already there.

 

The multi in question reportedly is using 2GB of memory and is referenced as alias around 30x... well, that will never load... Would just be a copy/paste as alias job...

 

MS crashed only once yesterday, during all of these edits, 25 new patches, 20 edits to existing. Apparently, that was it. Thing is, file loaded properly after that crash... But everything from that point on seems to broken both the prior work and everything after that crash (when it comes to saving sources of aux audio coming from multi-timbral aliases...

 

Woof.

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Woof indeed. I've spent the whole day on MS 3.2.4 and have found what appears to be another bug that crashes MainStage on Yosemite (have started a new thread on this). Also still experiencing the same bloody strip disappearing/reappearing bug in concerts. When will Apple get their friggin act together?!?!?!?
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I'm nearly 100% certain that the concert files are getting corrupted internally.

 

That 16x2 multi I did for Kontakt, well since I had already exported it, I imported it back into a new MS concert. It came back with 16 aux channels should have been 15 since the first pair doesn't get an aux, it has an output on its own strip. One of the auxes was doubled, not the first, not the last, just one somewhere in the middle of the range...

 

If the internal pointers within a concert go wrong... Well.... what we're experiencing happens.

 

I tried putting the source multi at the concert level, but at patch level I can't get the multi-timbral midi channel,assignment to override the concert level assignment...

 

In the middle of putting a transcend 960 GB drive in this rMBP. Two partitions doesn't fit well on 512. Need to stay away from MainStage for a couple of hours...

 

Retrofit 3.2.x concert back to 3.1.1 is next up - it was close to okay... First festivals are next week already, no time to invest in 3.2.x follies.

 

By the way, thanks for your comments and feedback!

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Just letting you know that I was contacted by an Apple MainStage engineer/tech overnight regarding the channel strip disappearing/reappearing bug. I replied with all of the info he wanted, including my concerts and detailed outline of what has been happening. It probably helped that I've submitted about 8 bug reports in the past week alone (each with more updated info and with the other bugs I've found) but it's nice to know that someone actually reads them :)
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That's good. I had been rebuilding main concert from scratch in 3.1.1, only I mistakenly opened that file in 3.2.4 so was building in the wrong version.... These have ben long days...

 

So literally after 100 edit, save, close, and load again cycles I;ve got the basic channel strips 95% complete. ANY time the resultant concert file was not 100% okay, I'd go back one version, and "branch" from there and then move forward again.

 

No crashes. Midi assignments are limited to main controller assignments and expression only. Expression seems a bit broken, had to do some workarounds, including in particular inconsistencies on a UVI multitimbral alias which simply would not sound, regardless of whatever I did, it would not remember saved values on about half of the channel strips where this alias had been used. The strip holds Ravenscroft piano, which is used a lot. I put a midi script using the existing modifier midi script to just strip out expression and it worked, even though the midi monitor strip didn't show expression data hitting any strip in the patch.

 

Extensive use of Kontakt and Omni, anywhere possible using aliases of channel strips in what I called "racks" where common sounds were loaded. To get around the issue of not having editable key ranges on aliased channel strips, I used the create at set level and then replaced at patch level trick/approach. This also all worked okay.

 

Nearly every time I had to "go back a version" was related to auxes/busses. Output busses were fine, but ones that routed back to concert level effects were really ugly. Deleting an instance of a plug in that would have auxes tied to it, so multitimbral in almost all cases, would often leave unusable channel strips behind. Basically, if I had to delete such I strip, I'd just stop, go back a version and start building that patch anew.

 

I still have to assign useful controller assignments but the basics are there. The best way to approach my concert file is going to require a 2nd machine. The "racks" which are just a way of minimizing memory hit should be seen as external instruments so that midi processing would be per strip instead of "global" per "source". Working around this means having to create a new instance with memory usage per case hit to overall concert size. This concert is using 12 GB of RAM. on a 16 GB machine, that's probably max. I use a lot of Omni instances unfortunately, so I used lie versions of everything, and set per instance sample memory limit to 1/4 GB.

 

If Vienna Ensemble Pro didn't use a dongle, I would have used it hold the "racks", no doubt. I briefly considered using Live via ReWire to achieve the same but that's a really expensive solution as well...

 

I played around with IAC midi to standalone Kontakt, that worked but with no way to bring audio back to MS other than soundflower I stopped there. It worked, audio went straight to the 828 but... I need to effect those outputs. We need some kind of inter app audio solution that's sanctioned by Apple. For folks old enough to remember Logic node, something similar but for MainStage that just hosts a multi-timbal instance, with IAC and inter app audio. Kontakt is available standalone but Omni is not, so I'd still need a host for Omni, which brings me back to VEP but I don't want a dongle on a live rig. One iLok is already too many, for Ivory only as Ravenscroft will allow use of machine iLok, so the dongle is the PC itself. Much better. In fact, I replaced every instance of Ivory with Ravenscroft, Pianoteq and NI's Giant.

 

Frankly, if apple would just remove the rest of the limitations to which midi parameters applied at an alias level I could have built this within MS. It's just the key ranges, and midi effects which are getting in the way. Heck, I can even apply a different velocity curve to an alias, they're halfway there in implementing independence at alias level. They should finish this work. I suspect it's hard, but since some of it is already there...

 

First festival gig is this week, we'll see how it goes... It SOUNDS great though...

 

Look, it works. It was sheer hell starting, stopping, going back a version, or two to find a stable version and then move forward. It's not supposed to be this way...

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Wow Michael, thanks for all the info. I have to admire you guys who completely rebuild your concerts with every revision. I have neither the time nor the patience for such drastic solutions to what shouldn't have ever been a problem in the first place. Concerts that worked in one version should simply work in the next version. I suppose there's a certain time where some changes will be necessary, but not until there's a major update. The fact that we're dealing with complete breakdowns with point updates is disappointing and distressing.

 

I just read an article about Nick Rhodes' live setup with Duran Duran. Here's a quote from the article about MS:

 

Rhodes’ revamped rig does not, however, use Apple’s MainStage as originally planned. “That’s the other big change,” Rhodes tells me. “We were going for MainStage as the platform, but we encountered some glitches early on when Ozzie was testing it, particularly with how fast it was changing my sounds and samples that were loaded in. It became kind of impractical, because I do need to change sounds very quickly. It was fine with most of them, but it didn’t like some of my samples. Maybe it had to do with how big they were. We used it in rehearsals and we were in discussion with the guys at MainStage who were great, but we ran out of time before we were able to get to the bottom of the problem. So we swapped over to Ableton. Everything’s running through it now—all five keyboards, my samples and all of my sound effects.”

 

I really hate reading stuff like that! I'm using MS 3.1.1 nightly on tour and it's wonderful. I know this software can work. That's why it's such a bummer that the entire 3.2.x series is broken (although, I've been so busy I haven't had a chance to really check 3.2.4. My first short test was a failure, though.). My Macbook Pros cruise right through a show with low CPU use with 3.1.1. They can't work for 20 minutes with 3.2.x without CPU overloads with the very same concert. This is an MS problem. Period. And it hasn't been solved in 4 updates. I called their attention to this with the initial 3.2 update and they were really helpful. But, their analysis was that the problem was simply that the CPU meter was calibrated differently and so showed a higher use than before. Other than that everything was supposed to be the same. But, it isn't the same. The CPU meter seems to be accurate. It spikes all the time and I get dropouts and breakups, exactly like you expect when the CPU spikes. To be fair, I've been so busy with a move and work since then, I haven't pursued this with them. I will as soon as I get home for a long enough period of time. I don't even live that far from Cupertino, so I could conceivably show these things to them in person.

 

So, do I understand correctly that you've gone back to 3.1.1? I can tell your concerts are much more ambitious than mine. The amount of complexity and detail you're talking about is pretty impressive. Rebuilding my concerts would be difficult. Yours sound like a nightmare! I hope everything worked (or will work) at your festival gig. MS does sound great and 3.1.1 works fabulously for me. I'm a big fan. I just hope they figure out what went off the rails with these latest versions.

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Haha, I started to rebuild in 3.1.1, but somewhere just doubled clicked on the concert file which opened up 3.2.4. Didn't catch that and once I realized it I would have had to go quite a bit...

 

3.2.4 is holding up, but I'm probably up to version 140 of that concert file, but one thing I've seen is that patch busses from one version to the next are seriously messed up, export out of 3.2.x and import back in fragment out into false, non-enabled instances of the plug-in, and the patch busses become really strange global busses. I also keep seeing phantom auxes show up that I just delete, test the entire concert (save, close, quit MS, restart MS, load the concert, test again).

 

There are a lot of MS users over in the Omni Worship group over on FB. There are some power users over there, who basically said the same as the Duran Duran thing, and there are some templates available and some YouTube films showing how to make Live "work like MS"... There are some seriously killer things you can do because at the end of the day, you have a sequencer available while you play, so I don't mean backing tracks per se, but if we need a filter to open up for 8 bars for some a thematic lead, that's actually possible w/o having to free up a hand or foot to move a controller.

 

There's a guy who has built a template that also splits midi processing from audio which is really, really smooth in his demo... Was tempting 10 days ago, but I decided to stick with MS for now and rethink/revisit this later.

 

3.2.4 clearly has less hit on computing resources, but Live has always been better with its multi-core support than MS, even Logic for that matter until 10.2.2, so things are improving, it's headed the right direction, I think the MainStage ENGINE is now fine.

 

What's broken is the file structure, probably internally while loaded, and then also how it gets written out to a concert file, or exported, and then how that gets interpreted while loading, or importing. Those results? Scary...

 

I have a particular use case for sustain pedals/switches and expression pedals which probably isn't tested. I use a Behringer FCB1010 for all pedals, even sustain (which really took some getting used to). The FCB is outfitted with a Uno ROM so it allows the top and bottom row to be switched. From right to left, there are two expression pedals, and then five switches, so from right to left, first pedal cc4, which at concert level I say to switch to cc11, and send to all strips that have my top controller as controller, next pedal is cc11 to cc11 for all lower controller strips, next is a switch, so cc64 to cc64 for all lower controller strips, next is another switch, cc3 to cc64 for upper controller strips, next switch is a double "sustain" pedal to all strips, and then two more that vary from patch to patch if needed, but no matter what, every patch has concert level controller mappings. It's worked for years, being careful to tell MS never to send thru MIDI if not specifically assigned to do something - these MS options are there for a reason :-)

 

I've done a lot of head-scratching on this one because the saved values for these controllers, especially across concert level, to multitimbral channel strips, which then get aliased at patch level, don't seem to be consistent. It's supposed to save the controller values per patch, that's what it always did, but this isn't working as it should now in v3.2.4. Those expressions pedals are for performance layers for me, so I can get away with setting open or closed at start of each patch as a workaround, but in defense of Apple, this hierarchical "Beast" they built is a decision tree that's really, really hard to follow from top down and then back up again. Then there are "modifiers" at patch level as well, such as reassigning velocity or controller curves... More craziness, it's stunningly complex to "interpret" in real time! All those aux assignments related to multitimbral channel strips, auxed anywhere and everywhere by way of aliases, OMG.

 

It is a very, very powerful animal... but one thing is certain, I've never had a live rig that sounded this good!

 

Some of this is just do to my love of Omni. Spectrasonics said each instance of Omni takes 700MB of RAM + sample cache, which normally is set to unlimited. Each instance will just grab what it needs, at the cost of another instance, so memory usages grows as one plays through the set. Not good in MS, so there's a global memory parameter that lets one at least limit the sample memory. That 700MB per instance number is not what MainStage is showing as mem usage but it's clearly "heavy". I had a couple of single patches reporting 1 GB of memory used... That's insane! My total concert is now at +/-12GB. I can bring that back by auto-sampling some stuff, for live that'd be fine but it's a workflow buster, and auto sampling takes a while... You'll have an appreciation for this, but I just brought back some Motif horn and Prophet stuff. Just a quick and dirty auto-sampler session - needed some "nastiness" on two songs :-)

 

Rehearsal tonight, first show tomorrow (Kings Day here - folks will,probably have had enough to drink that they'll not remember much, but if MS were to crash, they'd remember that!). No crashes on 3.2.4 since I stopped "feeding" it old concert files from previous versions, so... I think I'm good for festival season here and I'd wait for Apple to clean up the file structures, including how to interpret 3.1.1, 3.2.x versions prior to 3.2.4, and then jump on that next version, or at another quiet moment on tour (when are guys hitting Europe?). Full live rig is on a separate partition so, whatever happens, this setup is not changing!!!

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I did my first gig with v3.2.4 on the weekend and all worked fine....but I have to admit that I was holding my breath the whole time in case something would bugger up. I never had to worry about that with v3.1.1. However, v3.2.4 does seem to be better overall with system resources: I rarely experience audio dropouts, crazy CPU usage etc.

 

I agree that most of the issues with v3.2.4 may to be related to some kind of concert corruption that keeps occurring, particularly in regard to auxes/busses. I feel that it often seems to involve using an aux or bus that you change in some way (eg reassign routing, change screen control etc) and then the concert doesn't seem capable of remembering/processing that change correctly, which leads to phantom strips disappearing and reappearing. I still wonder if the underlying issue has something to do with undo/redo causing corruption...most of the problems I experience seem to related to changes I made a step or couple of steps previously. However, there's definitely unrelated bugs in v3.2.4 concerning bidirectional MIDI communication and concerning a third party plugin that always causes MS to crash on Yosemite.

 

Guys, do you feel that MS performs better on Yosemite or El Capitan? I've been using Yosemite on my gig partition for a while now but am wondering if El Capitan is now at a good stable point for gigs....and/or if MS runs better on it?

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Good to hear. My rehearsal with today's guest artist went well. Next/Prev patch midi messaging seemed to skip/double a couple of times, but everything else held up.

 

On the other hand, saving takes a while, so although I made some level changes here and there, I just made notes and will edit and save before the show.

 

May have found a new issue. Chord trigger midi effect doesn't move with the patch level transpose. I did all kinds of vocal jazz clustered voices for a song intro, guest artist "spotlight" moment, THEN she asked to take it down a half step. Patch attributes. -1 and play on, but nope, doesn't work. Actually playing everything a half step lower with the effect still active wouldn't work because the mappings would be all wrong, they're different per note, so for this to work, the midi effect simply must take the transpose amount into account, and it doesn't. Hadn't used the chord trigger in this mode before (I can play), but this was unfortunate...disabled the midi effect and just played it but have to give up a solo hand... Oh well...

 

Undo/redo indeed may be corrupting as well, I gave up on using undo while building this concert file, undoing once something looked wrong wouldn't consistently go back to previous step, I didn't even trust revert to saved, I needed to be certain that next time I opened the concert file there would be zero surprises, so that's close, quit, open app, open file...

 

We'll see what next version brings...

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show went w/o a hitch as well. Had to make some changes during soundcheck and even that went well. Same workflow though, every change is saved under a new consecutive number, close the file, reload, check that it's still okay.

 

Was walking thru all of this with the guitar guy (who in his own right is a really good keys guy who just purchased Live as he's on PC not Mac), and explaining that the CPU hit had gone down significantly... well, in perform mode I was getting a number that roughly 2x higher than in Edit mode... Oops... didn't have time to check that one - we just looked at each other and said "hmmmm..."

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Glad to hear everything went well at the show. That's the part that matters!

 

I've seen that issue with the CPU being higher in Performance mode once or twice while testing the 3.2.x series, but it isn't consistent for me. Other people have talked about it in forums, so this isn't new or unknown. I'm not sure if anyone found a solution or if it actually matters. I wouldn't like seeing that either, though. In my experience with MS 3.1.1, the meter is accurate. When it gets too high or spikes, I get dropouts, so I like to see low, steady CPU use.

 

Have you alerted Apple to this problem with file corruption? Even though it's seemed like you and I have had different problems, maybe there's something in my concert file that's "broken" as far as 3.2.x is concerned and that's what's causing instability. Since we're at the start of a tour, I won't even consider changing versions until the end of the year, but I'll keep testing on my personal system so we can maybe sort this stuff out.

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I keep re-reading this thread, trying to understand Michael's process. I'm also trying to find the best way to build a single "rack" of sounds that can be used in different layer/split configurations on a per-patch basis. I am not able to go back farther than Mainstage 3.2.2.

 

I currently use about 5 instances of Kontakt 5 in separate Patches, each running a different single instrument. Then I copy those instrument channels and paste them in as aliases in the Patches that I use during my shows. I haven't figured out how to make a Kontakt Multi work for me. I'm not doing any midi channel switching from my controllers... I have two keyboard controllers, and each stays on the same channel through the whole show. I wish that I could have Mainstage re-map these controllers' outputs to different channels and key ranges on a patch-by-patch basis. For example, on one patch I'd like the bottom half of one keyboard to map to Kontakt channel 1 (piano), and the top half of that same keyboard map to Kontakt channels 2, 3 and 4.(layered horn section). I can do this with separate instances of Kontakt instruments, but I haven't figured out how to do it with a single Kontakt Multi.

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So. Each instrument in the multi goes on a separate midi channel. 1-16. That's in the instance of Kontakt.

 

How set (override) the midi for you controller is done by choosing multitimbral for your midi input device. Click once to set to multitimbral, then click again.

 

You'll see a list controllers you can pick per row on the left and midi channel on the right. No matter what channel your controller was sending, it's going to go out further in whatever midi channel you put here.

 

I have two controllers and I easily layer two sounds or more per physical controller. So bottom controller might have Giant, and an old EWQLSO gold library for some strings, so that would be two rows in that multitimbral list, controller 1 on whatever channel corresponds to the giant in the Kontakt multitimbral instrument, and then another controller 1 on whatever channel corresponds to the 2nd sound. Ditto the same for the 2nd controller. A lot is possible here.

 

For Kontakt there's another step we have to do in order to get individual outs to work properly but that's audio and your question was how to route midi from your controller to some other midi channel that needs to go to Kontakt. Basically you'real instructing MS to not just choose an input here, but to route and change the midi channel on the fly...

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Thanks Michael. I'll try again when I get home this evening, but that sounds pretty much like what I've been trying already. Seems like that would be OK for layering sounds, but if you want a split, you'd have to create two channels strips that alias to the same multitimbral instance of Kontakt, and I found that Mainstage wouldn't let me paste more than one alias of the same strip in a single patch.
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exactly, as the lo and hi note limits aren't editable without affecting all instances of the alias.

 

You can put one at the set level, transpose at channel strip level, then (unfortunately) put a new instance for one of the two at the patch level. You can then choose for the patch level channel strip to either replace, or be added to that first strip at set level. It's just how it works. I think at some point Apple will change the architecture, they're already part of the way there.

 

For me, obviously, every song is a set, with patches within the set, but if needed, this "hierarchy overlay approach" is the closest we're going to get until the tone generator part of a patch gets full independence from other channel strip parameters and midi parameter and processing.

 

The only way to get this right today is for the tone generator to be seen as external instrument.

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Thanks Michael. I'll try again when I get home this evening, but that sounds pretty much like what I've been trying already. Seems like that would be OK for layering sounds, but if you want a split, you'd have to create two channels strips that alias to the same multitimbral instance of Kontakt, and I found that Mainstage wouldn't let me paste more than one alias of the same strip in a single patch.

 

Weird, others say the same, but I swear I can copy more than one instance as alias into a single patch, maybe it's a bug, but I build "building block" patches first for every instrument in a given multitimbral plugin.

 

So, in Kontakt, let's say I had Alicia's keys in slot 2, slot 3 is scarbee mk 1 Rhodes. I never use slot 1 because it's not on an aux.

 

I make a patch using an alias of the Kontakt strip, add an aux, picking up up the proper output aux of the multi. Slot 2 is midi channel 2, and the aux has as input instrument Kontakt 5 3-4. Set outputs, EQ, effects on that aux audio strip, and done.

 

Do the next one, using slot 3, midi channel 3, multi output Kontakt 5 5-6 (it was 16x2), set outputs, EQ, effects done.

 

Now I want to go David Foster mode so I need the piano and the Rhodes.

 

Creat a new patch, copy the two channel strips from the piano patch, so that's the alias and the channel strip for audio in that patch and just paste it in the new patch. Not paste as alias but just paste (the alias was copied). Result is an alias and an audio strip, where I have to again choose the proper multi-timbral output pair from the multi. I think this is a bug, but... It's consistent. Set it and it works. Then I go to the Rhodes patch and do the exact same thing. Result is that last patch now clearly holds two aliases of the original channel that was copied. Since we have to again set the proper input for that aux, Imactually see TWO Kontakt 5 instrument sources, they're both there but since the midi note ranges aren't independent, they're of no use, so I just delete extra instances of the alias, keep track of which midi channel and output pairs there are and then go about building the rest of the patch.

 

So, I swear MS can have more than 1 alias of the same source channel because it will do so via the above workflow... Whether this was the intent or not beats me, 'cause there are guys here in-the-know who say it can't be done yet here it is, go figure!

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Thanks, Michael. That "copy of an alias" trick does seem to work to create splits and layers with different instruments from a single instance of a Kontakt Multi. I had a little trouble getting the expression pedal to affect all the desired channels, but I think I got there by assigning it to "All Kontakt Destinations."

 

Now I need to go back and understand how to add Aux(?) strips to get separate volume controls for each of the Kontakt instruments in my final patch. I have the original Kontakt strip set up with each instrument going to its own separate channel within Kontakt. But those "copies of aliases" in my final patch are apparently all pointing to the same audio track... If I move one strip's fader, they all move together.

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yeah, so... let's say you create an 16x2 multitimbral instrument.

 

now you you've loaded up that multi in kontakt with 16 instruments. in MainStage, you click on that + sign to create extra stereo pairs coming out of kontakt. you can do that 15x if you created a 16x2 (first stereo pair is the main one, and then you can add 15 more. That wires up MainStage, but Kontakt needs to be told to send the stereo outputs as well. In Kontakt, click on output (on top) | then on the outputs panel that opens up, choose "Batch functions", then choose "Clear output section and created one additional channel for each loaded instrument". Kontakt will then send the various stereo pairs to the auxes created in MainStage to receive those stereo pairs.

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Thanks. I did the Kontakt part, but not the Mainstage part. So I'm getting all the Kontakt channels apparently summed to one channel strip in Mainstage. I'm sure you covered it already, I just haven't had time to soak it in. You said you never use the first slot in Kontakt?

I'll get it figured out... Baby steps.

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You said you never use the first slot in Kontakt?

 

yep, but that's just a personal "quirk". I have the output of the source channel strip set to no output. no specific science as to why I do this, other than that I didn't want to inadvertently change an output on something that got aliased. no output is no output. using one of the 15 "additional" auxes for me it's always clear that I know exactly where sound flows into that channel strip, and also out.

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  • 1 year later...
Good to hear. My rehearsal with today's guest artist went well. Next/Prev patch midi messaging seemed to skip/double a couple of times, but everything else held up.

 

On the other hand, saving takes a while, so although I made some level changes here and there, I just made notes and will edit and save before the show.

 

May have found a new issue. Chord trigger midi effect doesn't move with the patch level transpose. I did all kinds of vocal jazz clustered voices for a song intro, guest artist "spotlight" moment, THEN she asked to take it down a half step. Patch attributes. -1 and play on, but nope, doesn't work. Actually playing everything a half step lower with the effect still active wouldn't work because the mappings would be all wrong, they're different per note, so for this to work, the midi effect simply must take the transpose amount into account, and it doesn't. Hadn't used the chord trigger in this mode before (I can play), but this was unfortunate...disabled the midi effect and just played it but have to give up a solo hand... Oh well...

 

Undo/redo indeed may be corrupting as well, I gave up on using undo while building this concert file, undoing once something looked wrong wouldn't consistently go back to previous step, I didn't even trust revert to saved, I needed to be certain that next time I opened the concert file there would be zero surprises, so that's close, quit, open app, open file...

 

We'll see what next version brings...

It is possible to transpose chord trigger, you have to open the plugin and click on the chord trigger range (the black bar above the range) and drag it over the new range.  Took me forever to figure this out.  

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