I’m doing a major reconfiguration, adding 3 master racks in the background rack; My Monitor feed, Guitar, and Wind Instrument. Since i’m rebuilding all my song routes in the process I thought of including a global method of adjusting EQ and level for an input. What’s the best way to do this?
For example, when changing from my primary gig guitar, a darker mahogany humbucker, to my backup/alternate guitar which is a bright and slightly softer Strat, I want to quickly select a rack state for the Strat that’s globally applied across all songs. (I’ve done this before at the song level with an EQ and Drive/Gain rack in front of the amp sim, it’s not perfect but it works pretty well and avoids the most major issues)
Since my new master racks are going to be in the BG rack, I think I’d want to put this function in the BG Rack as well. Should be simple enough but in setting it up I got a little confused…
I currently have been using a mono input “GUITAR”. So instead of using that, I created a new input temporarily called “Background Guitar In” with the input from my interface, and created that input route in the BG rack, feeding my new “Global Guitar EQ” rack in the BG… but where should I route that to? A loopback to another new input that has unassigned inputs? (Similarly I could just un-assign the input for my existing GUITAR input). The more i thought about it the more I realized that whatever I do, it must be an unassigned input or else it would be colored by the raw input signal.
BTW, any other thoughts on Master racks in the BG are appreciated! I’m pretty sure the 3 Master racks are all I’ll need, but then I got to thinking maybe another un-used Rack, jsut in case I need another later. All the re-routing will take some time so I want to do it right once and for all. And Then I’ll just make a new Song Template with all the correct routing for the future. Of course it will be easy to add more plugins in each of the 3 Master Racks, but right now I’m thinking EQ and maybe Loudmax as a limiter, and maybe a reverb if I have a situation where I need the tail to extend into the next song.
Thanks!
Tom
I would avoid using Loopback to / from the background rack for abstracting input. As far as I’ve understood @brad, using the Loopback ports adds another buffer of latency to the audio route, so I’d avoid that. Same applies to a master rack in the BG rack - you’ll add another buffer of latency on the way out - suddenly your latency has tripled…
In my setup, all my input and output abstraction and my master rack are therefore shared racks inside the actual song file. I use a standard template that already contains most of my “boilerplate” racks and routing whenever I build a new song, so it’s not too painful.
But it would be really good if the background rack could have non-loopback audio and MIDI ports that are visible to the current song without having to add latency via Loopback - @brad, maybe something for the backlog?
Thanks Torsten, I wasn’t aware of the latency issue, so I’ll put my racks in each song. So if I want to make a global change, I think if I have just one rack state, and make sure that exported state is unchecked, then I could modify that state and save it. I’ll have to test it but I’m pretty sure that should work…?
Thanks!
Tom
Just want to confirm that latency is not increased simply by selecting [Options] =>[Advanced] => [Show Loopback Ports] … latency is only increased if you use a loopback port … is that correct?
Yes, that’s the way I work with my “global” racks. I make sure their internal properties aren’t exported; also I make sure that their state isn’t controlled by the containing song, and that they aren’t saved automatically:
So e.g. my master rack has two states: Default / Metering, with the metering state showing the GUI of a level metering plugin contained within. It is saved in its default state, and it is independent from the containing song, so even if I save a song with that rack in “Metering” mode, the next time I start Cantabile, it will be loaded in Default mode, independent of song.
