After many years I’m still facing this very frustrating behaviour of Cantabile. Everytime I start a new song, the ports are spread appart and I need to scroll for ages to group them. Worst, If I group them without making any connection they all spread again.
This how it looks on a 27" at 1920 X 1080 res. It’s a light setup and not all ports are showing…
Did I miss something or there’s really no other way to avoid this but to make a dummy connection on a template song. The 21 outputs ports are spread very wide appart. I grouped the input ports manually.
The pic below shows how I want to view ports by default.
I’m 2+ years into use of Cantabile and still use the wiring diagram often.
I rarely start a new song. I am always copying a BASE.cantabileSong, typically by opening that song and executing Save Song Copy As … Port are always in the right place …
I suppose there are song templates. Should look into them, but I’ve gotten into the habit of copying songs.
I read about templates and will be making at least six very soon, but I’m presently only 2 hours into actually finishing my first test song. It will be my template template, but my setup is very simple.
Maybe a check box in Options to allow a choice for new song to “spread them out (Current way)” or “Spread out on one screen.” Maybe enter a “pixels/space” between each IO block? On my setup, if there are more than four in/out involved, I have to scroll down to access. But typically, a song is “saved as” the modified to make a new song, so this problem can be overcome.
New songs also require dragging blocks in Routes mode. The I/O blocks appear to be in the order of entry in the Options/MIDI, and I see no way to change that order. Also nice would be having the the ability to change the order of the IO blocks in Options/MIDI. Maybe the ability to drop/drag like Bindings OR a move up/down in a right click menu like MIDI filters.
Interesting approach. So, you have this base song with keyboards already attached to a set of plugins that you make a copy of, and then use the right-click menu “Replace Plugin” to customize it? That seems quite viable and easier to work with than building from scratch, but in that case when using a base song or template I’m not sure why to use the wiring view vs the routing one? Does it make it easier to add effects?
My primary set list in C4 holds a “basket of instruments”, not a list of songs. Each C4 song renders my Wind Synth (Sylphyo), and a few other controllers such as a Drum Pad, as a different sound. I’ve also got talk and play mics (play mic for the occasional acoustic flutes I use), and several control surfaces (Faderfox EC4, Launchpad Mini). Control of all this is rather gnarly, so I’ve wrapped the machinery in one [Rig] rack.
A special case is an external hardware synth, such as the VL70-m. This is much more complex, since I use direct monitoring (to reduce latency) and this requires simultaneous control of C4 and the audio interface (RME), which is uber-gnarly (requiring custom control curves, so that C4’s volume displays match that of the RME’s … see Dual Mixing for Low Latency / Direct Monitoring.
I’m not sure why to use the wiring view vs the routing one? Does it make it easier to add effects?
I think we tend to start working in a certain way (wiring view was the default when I started with C3 2.1 years ago) and that still feels most natural to me now … It is certainly harder to control things, but still great for an overview for me …
I know guitarists are a secondary consideration, but wiring view all the way for that, imo. All of the guitar emulator softwares use some form of a wiring view, and Cantabile’s is very good and very flexible. That said, the ports “auto spacing” and the huge amount of forced empty space between the left and right pane boundaries and the FX block are a real pain, imo.
The way you’ve encapsulated all of the gnarly stuff into racks is a fantastic idea! I long-ago abstracted all of my keyboards into racks, but never put those to use. Your diagrams point to a very good use of those - though with something like the Akai MPK249 (with 3 banks of slider/knob/button arrangements per setup) it is still always going to look gnarly!
One thing I REALLLY like that I had never noticed before was how the racks display their custom MIDI ins and outs in the wiring diagram view, and I would imagine they display custom Audio ins and outs as well. That is nice if you don’t have a ton of them in a rack! (Like the aforementioned MPK249 rack does…)
Yes, the wiring view displays both MIDI and Audio ports of each rack.
I tend to use the tags Min and Mout for in and out MIDI ports (e.g. CBar Min and CBar Mout). Likewise StIn and StOut for Stereo Audio ports.
The ZZ In/Out ports are special. The support (typically) multiple routes that are internal to the Rack, for maintaining Gain values that are controlled by rotary encoders which deliver [Relative] values.
But I seem to have hijacked this thread … sorry 'bout that …
I did ask Brad if he would consider a parameter that would allow some control over the port spacing and he said he would consider it. I have many different setups depending upon the type of gig and gear and therefore different sets of ports as well as the pc’s local ports when I am putting together a setlist. If we can’t control the spacing it would be better if they were closely spaced and the we could space as required.
the copy helps me also in having consistent part volume across songs
