Hi, I’m a long-time Cantabile user who has just upgraded to version 3 and am getting off to a very rough start.
I have 3 custom MIDI controllers (basic keyboard, controller with buttons, sliders and knobs, and a percussion pad) that I use in tandem. I need all 3 MIDI Input Ports to be routed to every plugin. When I add a new plugin, a route is automatically created from the Main Keyboard, but then I have to manually route the other two MIDI Input Ports to each and every plugin.
I have setups in Cantabile 2 that have as many as 12 plugins. In Cantabile 3, it seems that I would need to have 36 routes from my MIDI devices to the plugins. This makes Cantabile 3 much too tedious to work with especially when creating setups on stage just before a gig.
Am I missing some easy way to have 3 MIDI Input Ports automatically routed to each plugin as I add it?
Firstly I think you’ll need to use plugins within racks, if you’re not already doing so. Then you have a couple of options (there are probably other ways too):
If you don’t need to have song-dependent MIDI routing or filtering, you could set up each rack to listen directly to the MIDI devices, rather than listening to the rack MIDI inputs. Then whenever you add a rack, it’ll already be wired up to your 3 MIDI sources, and ready to go.
If you do need more song-level control of MIDI routing/filtering, one approach would be to route your three MIDI sources into a single empty “MIDI merge” rack, effectively merging the three into one. Then have a single route from that rack’s output to each plugin rack.
Putting plugins into racks definitely adds lots of extra flexibility here.
Neil, thanks for your response. I do organize all my plugins into racks. It sounds like I just haven’t discovered the options you suggest. I was hoping there would be a way to merge the 3 device inputs and then route that to plugin racks but I just couldn’t see how to do it. I’ll experiment more later this morning.
I realize now that I have been impatient with C3. When my computer died, I decided to upgrade all my software including Cantabile. That’s proven to be a bad decision since I haven’t been able to use my computer in live performances for 2 weeks while I’m ironing out the kinks. I need to slow down and immerse myself in the C3 documentation and let go of my expectations. It appears that C3 is much more flexible than C2 and I’m looking forward to the day when Catabile 3 and I become friends
there is actually a very simple way to do this: simply assign all three physical inputs to the “Main Keyboard” virtual port. Tools->Options->MIDI Ports, then select “Main Keyboard” → click “Edit”, then tick the boxes for all three physical inputs.
Now all three controllers should send their outputs to “Main Keyboard”.
As long as there is no setup where you want to split them (i.e. have keyboard output sent to one rack and pad output to another), you’re all set!
