I am a relative newcomer to C3 Performer and would appreciate some advice on configuring my setup. I have 2 output channels on my audio interface (M-Audio Ultra 8R) available for my keyboards. I am moving to a fully laptop based setup but have 3 usage scenarios.
Stereo outputs from plugin instruments are routed in stereo to the 2 output channels on my interface. This is my practice at home configuration.
Stereo plugin outputs are panned mid-left to the 2 output channels on my interface. This is my playing live using my band’s own PA setup.
Stereo plugin outputs are panned hard-left to the 2 output channels on my interface - effectively summing to a mono output on one channel of the interface. This is my playing live via a house PA where the sound engineer wants a mono feed.
I need to be able to switch freely between each configuration without a lot of effort and at the moment I am thinking a Linked ‘Master Output’ rack included in each song and with a state for each of the configurations is the way to go but I would love some feedback on this approach.
One downside to this approach I have noticed is that I have to include a plugin in the Master Output rack to be able to pan its output even though I don’t particularly need a plugin in this usage case. I can just stick in a stereo limiter I suppose but it’s extra processing that I don’t really need.
If I’m not mistaken, what you want can be achieved by using three different Cantabile configurations. Effectively, you would be creating three different shortcut icons that would start up Cantabile using different global settings, while you can still use the same song setups. Take a look at this explanation to see if it fits your bill:
Thanks for the suggestion. I did think about that option but I was concerned about keeping all the configurations in sync. My understanding is that if I changed a couple of song settings, I would need to replicate that across each configuration which would be a pain. I may have misunderstood that though.
No changes to songs necessary - the different configurations only apply to audio and midi ports and devices.
I have two configurations: one for a multi-out audio interface (keyboards, guitar and break music mapped to three different audio ports) and one for a simple stereo interface that I use for dual mono. For the second configuration, I have the same (logical) output ports, but I map them differently to physical output device ports. My song files still use the same logical ports: Main Out, Guitar Out, Break Music Out
@bamforp. Consider a “Final Output” rack.This rack would be independent of Song states by leaving the State Behavior which links the State change to the Song unchecked. Such a rack would have three states, as you have described. Your interface (I/F) would be configured as plain stereo. The Rack Audio Out stereo connection would connect one-to-one to the two stereo audio ports of your I/F. Within the Final Output rack, you would set Audio routes panned as you have described. So, before you start the gig, you select the Final Output rack state for the configuration desired. In the future, you might want to add Graphic/Parametric EQ, reverb, compression, other effects as you see fit. But, this keeps them all in one place. As I (and most of us have learned from @Torsten, any piece of hardware should be abstracted into a Rack. (It’s also good OO programming practice)
I would put a single rack to perform the audio switching you need into the background rack. Set up a new Stereo audio port (Options - Audio Ports) then change the output from each song to use this new audio route to the background rack. I use this technique for adding reverb and EQ to all songs which is then adjustable from a controller.
Using the background rack would save a lot of editing time in each song.