Synchronization of Track and Mixer views

[John Vere]

I hadn’t noticed this before and I swear it didn’t happen in S1, But I dragged a bunch of midi and audio tracks into a blank project.
I coloured and renamed them. I noticed that the mixer view didn’t match my new names?
So I had to rename them as well??
I then added a new midi track and renamed it.
Everything became a big mess?
One of the original tracks was gone from the track view but was still showing in the mixer?
And then I noticed that one track that I had dragged up to a new location was still in the same place in the mixer view?
It all became overwhelming and I gave up.
In my 25 years of working with midi I have never seen anything like this!
Sure it might be pilot error but I’m using 3 different Daw’s and I don’t think this is possible with them.

 

[OutrageProductions]

In the (highly recommended) Navigation Essentials MACRO toolbar is a command to "copy track names to channels". [Studioonetoolbox.com]
Quite useful, as are all of the other commands in that script. You should try it.

 

[Surf.Whammy]

That's disturbing, but more because it's not something I do and doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I'm not suggesting it's illogical, just that it's not something I do or actually even would think of doing.

If I need tracks (Instrument Tracks and Audio Tracks) from another song, then I use "Import Song Data . . . ", which works nicely in PreSonus Studio One 7.2.3, and everything aligns (names, effects, and so forth), even the colors.

I did a quick experiment where I used "Import Session Data . . ." in Fender Studio Pro 8 but the tracks were from a PreSonus Studio One 7.2.3 song. It worked nicely, and all the effects transferred, as well as the Track names, colors, Automation curves, data, and so forth.

This works for importing tracks (a) from PreSonus Studio One 7.2.3 to Fender Studio Pro 8 and (b) from an existing Fender Studio Pro 8 song to a new but blank Fender Studio Pro 8 song.

EXPERIMENTS

I tried selecting some Tracks and dragging them from PreSonus Studio One 7.2.3 to Fender Studio Pro 8; but nothing happened.

This also was the case when I selected some Channels in the Mixer and tried to drag and drop them from PreSonus Studio One 7.2.3 to Fender Studio Pro 8. Nothing happened.

Doing this from Fender Studio Pro 8 to Fender Studio Pro 8 will not work, either, because I only can run one Fender Studio Pro 8 song at a time, hence no way to drag-and-drop from one to another when only one can be open.

To be specific, I selected some Tracks and Channels in a PreSonus Studio One 7.2.3 song and then tried to drag-and-drop them to a Fender Studio Pro 8 song rather than audio clips or MIDI sequences. See the attached image to understand the names I use for stuff.

However, I was able top select an audio clip from an Audio Track in PreSonus Studio One 7.2.3 and then drag-and-drop it to Fender Studio Pro 8; btt this only worked for audio clips, not for MIDI sequences on Instrument Tracks, which I suppose is the way MIDI sequences exist, where I suppose this, because I do everything with music notation. None of the effects on the corresponding Audio Tracks transferred with dragging and dropping the audio clips.

I do everything on the Mac, and this is the way it works on the Mac.

SUGGESTION

Instead of doing what you tried, do it via "Import Session Data . . .", which will create all the stuff to new tracks with the original names, colors, effects, Automation curves, and data (audio clips and MIDI sequences). Once everything is in the new song, you can copy and paste at will in the same song from one thing to another; so think of doing other with "Import Session Data . . . " as perhaps being an intermediate step.

Whether this worked previously with PreSonus Studio One 7.2.3 but now doesn't work in Fender Studio Pro 8 is another matter, and I have no information on that aspect of things.

Import Session Data works, and that's the way I get stuff from other songs into Fender Studio Pro 8.

This is all I can think to do.

 

[TimC340]

You aren’t supposed to be able to run v7 and v8 alongside each other, so how are you managing to drag tracks from one to the other?

I assume John is dragging audio and midi stems from a Windows folder into v8. I’ll give it a try later and see if my experience is similar.

 

[Surf.Whammy]

You aren’t supposed to be able to run v7 and v8 alongside each other, so how are you managing to drag tracks from one to the other?

I assume John is dragging audio and midi stems from a Windows folder into v8. I’ll give it a try later and see if my experience is similar.

Perhaps it's different in Windows, but I can run PreSonus Studio One 7.2.3 and Fender Studio Pro 8 at the same time on the Mac with no problems, at all.

On the Mac, they are separate and independent applications, complete in what for macOS are called application packages (a.k.a., UNIX "bundles") and have their own resources and everything else.

Among other things, this is the reason you need to keep a copy of your user-defined custom templates; because at least on the Mac, installing an update or new version probably will overwrite the resources and everything else in the "bundle", including any user-defined custom templates you might have put there. Perhaps not, since I have not determined where the user-defined custom templates are stored; but it works this way with NOTION 6 on the Mac; so it's best to have your own copy of your user-defined custom templates. at least as a backup or archive.

[NOTE: See YouTube video in my follow-up post, below. ]

Regarding "dragging audio and midi stems from a . . . folder", this is not something I do, although it apparently is possible, at least to some degree.

I will try it and see what happens.

For reference, I am not suggesting stuff like this is illogical or makes no sense; but it's not something I do or even need to do.

I did some scouting around, and there is a "Media" folder and a "History" folder in the song folder; but I don't use them or even noticed they were there until this conversation.

On the other hand, there is an "Export Stems . . . " menu item; but I have not needed to use it. I have at various times used the "Export Mixdown . . . " menu item, but at the moment I forget why. Perhaps it was when I captured the audio for my favorite Rammstein song, "Radio" and was trying to get it into Audacity to slow it down enough to decipher Flake's stellar synth phrases in the Intro, which continues to elude me.

It's stellar, but it's sufficiently chromatic in a "tight" way to make no intuitive sense to me.

If I listen to the song enough times, perhaps I will be able to identify the notes . . .

EXPERIMENT

I did a quick experiment and dragged a WAVE file from the "Media" folder into a new Fender Studio Pro 8 song, and the audio clip was pasted but not the various VST effect plug-ins.

Then I closed that song and opened a song that has a MIDI sequence for an electric guitar and then exported it as a .MID fie using "Export Selection" as described in the Fender Studio Pro 8 "User Reference", which as with all such tomes I make an effort to avoid reading.

Then I dragged-and-dropped the .MID file to an empty Fender Studio Pro 8 song; and it was pasted but there was no corresponding Instrument Track and none of the VST effect plugins. The MIDI sequence was there, but there was no way to play or hear it, and there was no Instrument Track for it.

So, I created an Instrument Track with a SampleTank 4 (IK Multimedia) electric guitar and then dragged-and-dropped the MIDI sequence from where it was onto the new Instrument Track, and then it played, but there were no VST effect plug-ins and no Automation curves for it.

From this experiment, I infer that if it used to work, then it doesn't work now in Fender Studio Pro 8.

Yet, I can see how it might be useful to grab a MIDI sequence and then to use it to play another virtual instrument on a different Instrument Track--for example to use a MIDI sequence for a violin to play an oboe or something similar, although it's not something I have done or even thought about doing.

However, since I do everything in music notation, I have copied measures of music notation and then pasted them to other staves, but there is no specific exporting and importing, as fart as as I know.

SUMMARY

I was able to reproduce what the OP described colloquially as a "mess"; and if it ever was working, then it's not working in Fender Studio Pro 8.

It's also not something I plan to do, because "Import Session Data . . . " is what I use; and it's one of the things I like about Fender Studio Pro 8 and use every so often when I want to add something I already created and fine-tuned in another song.

[NOTE: "Radio" (Rammstein) is one of my current favorite songs and Christian "Flake" Lorenz's synth is making me crazy; but I will decipher the notes, eventually, where for reference it's just the rapid notes, because the other stuff is easy to discern. For reference, the song is about East Germany when the only way to get information about the world was via the radio. Radio was very important, especially for music in East Germany. This version has English lyrics. ]

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[Surf.Whammy]

This YouTube video shows Fender Studio Pro 8 running side-by-side on the Mac with PreSonus Studio One 7.2.3.

Lots of FUN!

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[Lukas]

I hadn’t noticed this before, and I swear it didn’t happen in S1, but I dragged a bunch of MIDI and audio tracks into a blank project.
I colored and renamed them. I noticed that the mixer view didn’t match my new names.
So I had to rename them there as well?
I then added a new MIDI track and renamed it.
Everything became a big mess.
One of the original tracks was gone from the track view but was still showing in the mixer.

This is not a new behavior - it has always been like this. It’s simply the way instruments and instrument tracks work.

I have a couple of videos on that topic. This is probably the most comprehensive one:

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What you see in the mixer is not the instrument track itself. It’s the channel of the instrument plug-in.

If you have only one instrument track for an instrument, renaming the track will usually also rename the channel, and vice versa. However, this breaks down if you have more than one instrument track connected to the same instrument. In that case, you no longer have a 1:1 relationship, so mirroring the name doesn’t work anymore.

I suspect that this is what happened in your case.

 

[Lukas]

You aren’t supposed to be able to run v7 and v8 alongside each other, so how are you managing to drag tracks from one to the other?

It's not possible on Windows (maybe ASIO is the reason), but it is on macOS.

 

[Surf.Whammy]

I did a few experiments and created a template in Fender Studio Pro 8 on the Mac, which works nicely.

However, the two template files are in a subfolder named "v8" of the "templates" subfolder of the "Studio One" subfolder of the macOS "Documents" folder. One is "*.songtemplate" and the other is ".data", which makes a bit of sense.

This works; but I am not certain it should be "v8" under "Studio One" rather than being under something like "Fender Studio".

I also did an experiment where I corrected a spelling error in one of the user-defined custom templates; but afterward when I used it to create a new song, there was nothing. This tends to suggest there is a mechanism for verifying a user-defined custom template based on its original name no matter if its spelled as you intended.

I suppose it's like creating user-defined custom presets, where if you misspell something, then the best strategy is to create a new preset and spell its name correctly, which is what I do.

FACT: You can get lost in all the details of this stuff; so I make an effort to keep it as simple as possible, even when it requires doing something a few times when I make spelling errors.

I know where presets are stored, of course; but I usually forget it after a few minutes, since it's simply too much computer information to remember in an immediately conscious way.

Lots of FUN! .

 

[Surf.Whammy]

Regarding multiple channels for one VSTi virtual instrument, Gregor Beyerle made a video on it a few years ago; and it works, but it's a bit confusing for me conceptually.

Being what some folks might consider to be lazy, my strategy is to have a separate VSTi virtual instrument for each thing, where for example I usually like to have two kick drums, three snare drums, tom-toms, cymbals and hi-hats, and a few Latin percussion instruments.

There is a way to do this with just a few VSTi virtual instruments; and you can have up to four voices on a music notation staff; but it's too complex for me.

So, when I start a new song and am not using a saved template, I literally drag the VST3 version of Addictive Drum 2 (XLN Audio) to the a Track Lane, which creates a new Track, which I suppose is a separate and independent instance of the VSTi virtual instrument.

Then I label it "L. Kick Drum"; set the panning; and so forth.

Then I do it again for the "R. Kick Drum" and each of the other drums, cymbals, and Latin percussion instruments.

Instead of doing it all with just one or two VSTi virtual instruments, there are 10 or more of them; and each one is used to provide one drum, cymbal, tom-tom, or Latin percussion instrument.

I usually like to have two of each thing so I can put its sounds in motion or at least configure them differently.

This probably is not the most efficient way to do it; but it's easy to do and is straightforward.

In the example, I will have a separate staff for the "L. Kick Drum" and another staff for the "R. Kick Drum", and so forth.

For me, the primary advantage is that I can compose for what each foot would be doing if I were playing a real drumkit, and what each hand and drumstick would be doing. Since each drum, cymbal, tom-toms as a group, cymbals and hi-hats as a group, and Latin percussion instrument is on its own staff, using music notation to play them is straightforward and is just a matter of knowing what each foot and hand is doing, which is the way I conceptualize virtual drumming; and there is only one voice per staff, because using multiple voices is cluttered, confusing, and generally is a visual mess.

Lots of FUN!

 

[John Vere]

What is with all this 6 pages of?? Does anyone even read posts like that?
I thought moderators only allowed one topic per post?

Anyway thanks @Lukas for your clarification.
I was thinking it was a setting that I couldn’t find.