I’ve finished the setlist for playing our new album all the way through and it loads a frankly frightening (to me) 69 plugins. I’m not sure how that’s actually possible, even including effects- I didn’t think I used hat many sounds!! Loading it the 1st time takes something like 5 minutes. I know I’m loading several things multiple times in a redundant fashion and at some point I may start over now that I have a better handle on how Cantabile really is organized.
But what I’m really wondering is who here holds the record for pre- loading the most plugins at once
My current setlist playing with IQ weighs in at 104 plugins, and loads from cold in 39 seconds. The plugins include some big sample sets such as Ivory II, Ravenscroft, multiple instances of Omnisphere, Kontakt etc. The wonders of SSD
Wow, no kidding! I fully hope to go SSD in the near future. It was the one major feature this laptop I’m using didn’t have. Just curious, what are the other specs on your machine?
C3 loads every instance separate, right? That’s why the count is so high? I only use like 5 plugins i guess (Synth1, warmverb fx, sampler, dmxis, kontakt, reaeq,…) but still the load is over 50.
No problem for me.
If your songs just have ‘raw’ plugins in, i.e. not stored in linked racks, then C3 will load a separate copy for each song, as it has no way to really know which plugin instances should change or be shared between songs.
If you use plugins in linked racks, C3 will only load one instance of the plugin, no matter how many songs the racks are used in.
Not really. The only real restriction is what MIDI/audio routes are visible to slots inside the rack, because racks are designed to be self-contained and reusable. You can’t route from something in the rack directly to a slot outside the rack at the song level, as it would prevent the rack from being generic and reusable in any song. Therefore you typically use input/output routes to the rack in/out ports, and route between racks or to/from hardware ports at the song level.
I have a meager 82 plugins in my standard setlist for my band. Loads in about 45 seconds, even without an SSD disk (but I use only very few large sample sets).
I have NO plugins in my individual songs; my songs are simply containers and wiring for the specific racks I use in that song; all my instruments and plugins are contained in re-usable racks. So no matter how many songs I add to a setlist, the number of plugins will not increase
Of course there are a number of duplicates in the list of plugins: a number of racks contain the same EQ plugin (FabFilter Pro-Q) or volume control; I have various instances of M1, Wavestation and Hive in my Strings, MainSynth and SoloSynth racks, etc.
@So_Godly: if you only use 5 plugins, you might want to re-configure your setup to encapsulate them in racks, assign rack states to your song settings and re-build your songs to use these racks - will massively reduce both your memory usage and load time.
Same for @FredProgGH: you might want to try to build logical racks from your plugins, combining instruments and FX into a self-contained chain (like ePiano->chorus->flanger->tremolo->amp->EQ), build presets for specific sounds or even per song, and then use songs to simply load these racks, select presets (states), set rack volumes and configure keyboard settings and zones, plus controller bindings. For the typical “send” effects, you can build FX racks with presets; you can then create additional routes from your instrument racks to the FX racks and tune the FX level with the send route gain level. Makes for very clean songs and very efficient memory use - short loading times.
Whenever you create a song-specific edit of a plugin, you’ll need to store that as a preset for that plugin. Then you create a song-specific rack-state for the rack containing the plugin - in this state, the correct preset needs to be selected in your plugin. In your song, you need to select the correct rack state (your newly created one).
Now, once Cantabile loads the song,
the song will set the rack to the saved state
the rack will set the plugin to the saved preset
That’s it!
Means that if you really create specific plugin settings for every song, you’ll have to create song-specific presets and rack states. Myself, I live with a number of “standard” sounds for every rack, to which I add a new one when a song demands it. Lots of re-use here - most of the customizing per song is combining standard sounds from multiple racks and fine-tuning rack levels and effect sends.
Just to add to @Torsten’s helpful post, you can actually also store the state of a rack’s plugins at the song level if you prefer. In the state behaviour settings for the plugin, if you select the left-hand checkbox (“exported state”), it means store the state of the selected item (plugin etc.) in the song, or song states rather than the rack state.
At the song level, the rack has an “Exported state” state behaviour checkbox. If this is unchecked, the exported state (i.e. parameters in the rack with the left-hand checkbox enabled) will be stored in the song, the same for all states. If it’s checked, those parameters will be stored for each song state, so you can vary it on a song state basis.
This is useful for plugins in racks where you rarely ever re-use settings in multiple songs, so making separate rack states would be onerous. Instead, the song configures the plugin, rather than the rack state. It’s a bit confusing to get your head around, but a useful feature once the idea sinks in.
So this is a situation where you don’t need to store the settings in rack states. However, the approach Torsten describes is the standard one I think most of us are using most of the time.
