First Instrument rack

Cantabile
1

Hello all! I am in a down time between shows, and am looking to drastically modify my rig. I’ve been using two standalone Roland synths, along with an XKey controller to play my sounds, with Cantabile sending program changes to each thing. I am trying to create a Linked Rack with 10 VSTi instruments. I’ve built it so that, on the song load (from my setlist), the MIDI out of (now) Keyboard 1 and Controller 2 will be routed to a channel, each VSTi is set up to its own channel, like so -
Synth 1 = Ch 1
Synth 2 = Ch 2
Synth 3 = Ch 3
and so on. To decide where any one keyboard routes, I change the routing side to the Rack MIDI to match the synth I want to use. So if I want Controller 2 routed to Synth 4, I will use the MIDI route into the Rack to set it’s existing channel to 4. Inside the rack, I use the MIDI route to change 4 to 1 on the way into the synth.

Do I need to put this linked rack into each song in the setlist to use it? Or should it be available in each song of the setlist? If I use the Rack in all songs, does it only load once (preload), but the song changes states, patches, etc?

Watched the Rack video, but I’m not exactly sure about this. All of the synths are virtual synths, not any sampled instruments. Thanks in advance! chris

2

I have found that including a rack that handles core “stuff” in each of my songs has some advantages.

  • The rack stays loaded and does not execute “OnLoad” actions when I switch songs.
  • Settings that are controlled by the rack (for example, return volume from my Looper) are preserved across song changes.

Also, I have found that, if audio continuity of external audio input is needed across a song change (eg. playing a backing track or taking and mixing another band member’s audio), then having the rack link to the Song’s input ports (rather than the Rack’s input ports) allows for that audio continuity.

3

Thank you for the info, Clint!