Initialise plugins from bank file

Cantabile
1

I don’t think this is possible currently in Cantabile, and if so, this is a feature request…

It would be great if racks could be set up such that a plugin in the rack is always initialised using a particular fxb bank file when the bank is loaded. This would be really excellent for those situations where you have either multiple duplicate (or very similar) racks and you want to make sure that newly-stored patches for a plugin in one copy appear in the other copy.

I have four almost identical racks, named Nord G2 Modular A, Nord G2 Modular B etc, for each of the 4 independent patch slots in the Nord G2 Modular Engine (external rack-mount unit). Each of the Cantabile racks deals with routing MIDI out, triggering patch changes, and bringing in audio from its own slot (the unit has 4 separate audio outputs). This means that I can drive their gains independently in Cantabile (whereas that would be more awkward if I had a single rack for all four slots). In each of these Cantabile racks I’d like an instance of LFX-1310 (multi-effects plugin), but ideally I’d like to share its patches across all four of the Cantabile racks, so I can reuse the patches. But they store their own plugin data separately, so I need to make sure I import a common fxb file, make any changes, then store the fxb file, each time I make modifications. Some mechanism to say, “Always initialise this plugin using this fxb file” would make this process considerably easier.

I know it would probably require that other loaded instances of the plugin that are set to use that fxb would need to be reloaded. Maybe that’s a technical sticking point.

It would also be handy in situations where it’s more convenient to tweak / manage sounds on another computer (say, using your nice plush desktop machine, then having the fxb work in racks on a headless live machine).

Would anyone else find this useful?

Neil

2

I see where it would be useful in your case and also in other cases where you wanted to share your presets across multiple instances. As I understand it now when you load a regular fxb bank it becomes a cantabilefxb bank specific to the selected plugin and resides with the song file. Is that how you understand it? Or does it auto load the last loaded regular fxb bank? I don’t think it’s the later and that you must manually save and load fxb banks and that once loaded into a plugin slot they become part of the Song file. Any correction on this is welcome if I have it wrong. That said I think you would have to create a shared cantabilefxb bank system that stores an fxb that is not embedded in the Song file and possibly a propagation scheme to auto reload the multiple instances after edits. Anyway cool thoughts Neil!

3

@Neil_Durant

I like this as a simpler version of this. Just the ability to say always load this plugin from the fxb is simple, easy to understand and doesn’t imply automatic mirroring changes in one plugin to another.

I think this, combined with a right click “reload plugin” command which either reloaded from the referenced fxb file or the original song file (depending if this new feature is used or not) might work nicely.

I’ve back linked to this topic from the trello card and moved it into the contenders list.

Kind of. A cantabilefxb file is a special format only used for exporting Pseudo Presets. But yet, Cantabile does store a copy of the plugin’s currently loaded FXB data in the song/rack file. So conceptually yes, technically no.

Brad

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