It’s great that we can now save racks. However, we cannot add the same rack to a single Song multiple times, which doesn’t make sense to me. Take this simple case: I have a standard rack for every vocal in my band, which I saved under the name “Vocal Processing”. There are three vocalists, so I want to add this rack 3 times. This is not allowed, and so I have to actually save 3 copies of the rack so that I can add each copy once.
Can this be fixed so that I can add the same rack multiple times?
Ps. this would fix another slight ‘flaw’, for lack of a better word. Currently, when you rename a rack within a song (i.e. one of the vocal processing racks I rename to “Paul’s vocals”), after renaming the rack it is impossible to see which saved rack it refers to. If there would be an explicit distinguishment between racks and rack instances, we could say that the instance is now called “Paul’s vocals” but the rack is still “Vocal Processing” - the confusion is gone.
This exact point was debated and pondered at length during earlier development, and there is actually good sense in not being able to have multiple instances. The reason is that if a rack can only have one instance, Cantabile is then able to look at the setlist, pre-load all the racks required for a whole show, and maintain racks in memory to be re-used between songs. If multiple instances of a rack were possible, how would Cantabile know you were using the same rack instance in multiple songs, or a different instance? And if you changed an instance, would the others change?
I have the same problem - I have 4 separate VB3 racks and 5 separate Omnisphere racks, which generally speaking have the same presets. In fact, I keep their racks/patches synchronised via import/export of fxp/fxb files, so they are in effect multiple instances of the same thing. It’s a little cumbersome, but on the other hand, the benefit of Cantabile being able to pre-load everything for a whole set while keeping memory usage down, and do lightning-fast song-switching is a big win in return, for me.
Thanks for your quick reply. I don’t mean rack instances to be independently editable though - what I mean is that the same rack on the harddrive can be loaded multiple times into memory. In other words, instead of me making the copies on the harddrive, Cantabile makes the copies in-memory.
I’ll elaborate in an attempt to be as unambiguous as possible, since talking about this can be quite ambiguous. I would start a new setlist QuestionableSet.cantabileSetList and in it a new song RipOffSong.cantabileSetList. In my “Routing” screen I would add two "Object"s that refer to the a single Rack VocalProcessor.cantabileRack that I saved on the harddrive. The local display names (within this Song) may have to be different to be able to distinguish between the two Objects. Double clicking any of these two objects would open the Rack (“VocalProcessor.cantabileRack”), and making changes would have the same implications for both Objects. That is, you cannot change an Object, you can only change the Rack they refer to, so double clicking one object and saving changes inside the rack will also change the other object, since it refers to the same rack.
How would Hypothetic Future Version of Cantabile not be able to load an entire setlist then? It would just load VocalProcessor.cantabileRack twice, since that’s the maximum amount of times that it will ever be runned simultaneously in this setlist.
That case would work I guess. But it would break the ability to have continuity of a rack between two songs, so you could no longer have the situation where you set up the same rack in two songs and switch between songs while playing that rack (holding chords or whatever). In the case of effects rather than instruments, you might want one vocalist’s effects to continue seamlessly between songs while others change configuration. The only way to achieve this is to have some unique identification of instances that you specify in each song, so Cantabile would know which memory copy to use.
One approach with the current Cantabile implementation is to use Windows symbolic links, where you have one “master” rack file, and multiple files of different names symbolically linked to the master. It would be a way of simulating having multiple rack files all identical. I haven’t tested this myself, but Brad says it should work (though you may need to restart Cantabile for changes to get picked up between these symlinked copies).
The continuity is indeed a pickle… Solving that would require to prompt the user upon adding a rack to which rack instance it should be linked, while identifying rack instances to the user by the racks’ local names in other Songs of the Setlist, but this would require a prompt every time a rack is added that has been used twice in some song. And that is assuming the user cares in the first place. Too much hassle. Thanks for the insight :P.
I’m hitting this problem. I want to use a linked rack multiple times, but Cantabile won’t let me. It’s really got me scratching my head.
I’ve had to create multiple linked racks (FF Twin 1, FF Twin 2, FF Twin 3…) and it’s getting unweildy. Despite reading the stuff here I don’t understand what the problem would be in letting a linked rack be used as many times as I need. At least then I would have access to the same consistent preset list. I’m getting into a muddle and I’m really not re-using the racks.
Linked Racks are saved in a separate .cantabileRack file and can be shared across multiple songs. They provide the ability to share plugin instances across multiple songs making song switching faster. The issue you are having is by design, the linked racks are available across multiple Songs in a set list to prevent overloading the memory with many separate vst’s loaded up. You can use them across Songs in a Set list but not more than once in a given Song.
I understand your frustration but the way it works if I use the same reverb vst linked rack for all 65 songs in a set list I only load it once into memory instead of 65 times when I do a set list pre-load. So I benefit greatly from this feature. Sorry it’s not what you need to get there.
Dave’s right, you get the reusability in terms of multiple songs being able to reuse the same instance in memory, removing the reload time (which is particularly good for big sample-based plugins).
If Cantabile allowed multiple instances of a rack in one song, how would it know which one to allocate for another song? This could break the ability to hold chords or maintain reverb trails between successive songs. Another dilemma would be what happens if you make a change to one of the instances of the rack and save it - what happens to the others?
Yes, it’s a bit annoying if you want multiple “instances” of a rack in a single song, but it’s not that big a deal to have several similar/identical racks for such purposes. Especially if you save your banks, and sync them across your racks.
If you have 1 Rack and you would change values it is not the same Rack than the first instance…introduce yourself it is a real Effekt Rack so you can not have different values for the same parameter.
Or you have one VST that accept multiple Inputs…
I think if you work analogous to the reality…it should work.
My workaround for this is the following:
For every rack, I have at least one copy, i.e. Massive 1 and Massive 2. Massive 2 is an exact copy of Massive 1. “1” is always the master. I have a batch-script which copies all of my master-racks on cantabile startup and overwrites the slaves. When I edit a rack, I only edit the master! This is important, because it ensures that every copy contains the same states etc.
Maybe this is what I need. Can you explain, please?
It seems that no-one else sees this as a problem, so maybe I’m not using Cantabile to its best ability. Let me explain what I’m doing…
I have one song in the set that uses FabFilter Twin. I created a linked rack and called it ‘FF Twin’. It seems that I can’t make Twin change patches in Cantabile (?), so I set the patch I needed and I created a Cantabile rack preset called ‘Lead Synth’ and also created a state for the linked rack called ‘Lead Synth’. All good.
Then I began work on another song and realised that I needed two instances of Twin this time. Cantabile won’t let me use the same linked rack, so I created ‘FF Twin 2’. But now I don’t have access to the ‘Lead Synth’ preset I created for Song 1 any more (obviously I can call up the patch in Twin, but Cantabile’s presets now just read 'Preset 1, Preset 2…)…
Then I got to another song where I need five instances of FF Twin (I have a chord generator that plays three of them). So now I have to create another linked rack and name it accordingly. Again I don’t have the Cantabile preset names I’ve already created, so I’m having to start from scratch every time. Every one of my linked racks has a different preset list.
This seems a very unwieldy way of doing things, when all I want is to call up the same linked rack every time and access the ‘Lead Synth’ preset (and other patches common to this instrument) I created way back in song 1.
I’m having the same thing with all of the instruments I’m using. I’m up to 8 linked racks of Kontakt and I’m not even half way through creating the set list!
I’m new to Cantabile, so realise I may not be using it to its best, but if there’s a better way I’m keen to learn. At the moment this is really not helping me, and the repeating instances of linked racks is getting very messy!
When you now want to edit FF Twin and add states or something like that, only edit “FF Twin 1” and after that execute the script and restart cantabile. then you have in all the other instances the same States etc.
From the sound of this post you could be using another method to prepare your racks and that would be to use fxb file storage. Take your rack one that has all your patches you made and save the fxb for that rack and then just create and load the same fxb file to your new instance(s). The fxb banks are Cantabile pseudo presets.
I hope that Cantabile can support a more elegant solution in the future. I’m beginning to show Cantabile to other players and this question has come up a couple of times, so I’m not alone.
The other option that has been discussed before is to create symbolic links, so you have multiple “rack files”, but they’re all really just links pointing to the same actual file, so if you modify any of them, all get modified automatically. You can make a symbolic link from the Windows command prompt using something like this from inside the racks folder:
After that, you can then load MyFirstRack and MySecond rack into the same song, but you only need to maintain one actual file. If you have a song with both in, and you modify one, the other one will stay as it is until the next time the song is loaded (don’t forget, if you have setlist preloading enabled, you’ll probably have to unload the setlist or restart Cantabile for this to happen).
I was actually going to try something akin to this method (by creating shortcuts and renaming them), but only half-thought it would work. I really like this method, because I can create a few redundant rack references and have them waiting in the wings for if they are needed.
Do they have to be symbolic links, or will shortcuts work the same? I’ll give it a try… The answer is NO.
No, shortcuts don’t work. It has to be a symbolic link. Works perfectly well though, so I think this is my weapon of choice. Big thanks to all you guys for helping with this one. I have a solution I can live with. This is going to make life much easier from here!
