Solved Track Channel Assignments

[Stuart Welwood]

In either FP8 or S1P, I can't get the tracks associated with the mixer channels the way I want. I have 3 outs from a drum machine coming into 3 aux channels, numbers 8, 9, and 10. They feed into a drum bus, channel 7. So far, so good. The problem is that all the drum tracks are associated with channel 10, the hat. I thought I might be able to use the inspector to change the association, but the channel dropdown shows only the 2 bus channels, not the aux channels. What am I missing? Thx - SGW

 

[Dtgtr]

Check out this video to see if it helps you.. you don't need to set up aux tracks, just activate your outputs and that should do the trick for you. ( Unless you're talking about a real drum machine )

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[Stuart Welwood]

Check out this video to see if it helps you.. you don't need to set up aux tracks, just activate your outputs and that should do the trick for you. ( Unless you're talking about a real drum machine )

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Nice try, but the Roland R-8 is a real drum machine. It has 10 hard outputs. Thanks for the reply, though.

 

[Dtgtr]

That's what I was afraid of!! See if this gives you any help and if not, hopefully somebody else will chime in!

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[Stuart Welwood]

The external device settings are working fine. The R-8 responds to the MIDI tracks and produces sound out of the correct outputs and the aux channels have the expected signals. All the dots are connected. I just want to associate each of these tracks with different mixer channels:

hopefully somebody else will chime in!

Or maybe I'm asking for something that doesn't make sense. - SGW

 

[SwitchBack]

Those are instrument tracks so we're talking midi. Per the video you can have all of them go into one multi-output instrument plugin, and then set the instrument plugin to send output to individual channels in the console. Increase track height of the instrument tracks (at least to medium) to see where each midi track is sent to in the instrument. The video (also) shows how to configure the instrument plugin's outputs.

You can also (and at the same time) connect the r-8's 8 audio outputs to an 8+ channel audio interface to get those as audio inputs in S1/SP. An audio input always has a channel in the console.

 

[Stuart Welwood]

you can have all of them go into one multi-output instrument plugin

Thanks for the try, but I don't think you understand the situation. The R-8 is not a plugin. It's a for real drum machine. 3 of its 10 audio outputs go into a Presonus Studio 1824c interface and into the 3 aux channels pictured below. Here's where it is in my External Devices:

But that just gets the MIDI to right place. It works fine, as do the aux channels.

By rearranging the aux channels in the console:

The tracks now reflect the difference in their associated channel numbers; all are set to 9. No matter what the order, the tracks' channel numbers all point to the Hat's channel. The number 10 in the previous screenshot was just a coincidence. It does not refer to the MIDI channel used to trigger the drum machine.

Note that the Instrument Output setting for each is set to the R-8. I want the Kick track to be associated with the Kick channel, the Snare with the Snare, etc. - because that is where their associated signals are being processed. In other words, the Kick's mixer channel number should be 10. The Snare track's should be 8, and so on.

I would have expected the channel number to be editable in the track inspector, but the field isn't editable.

It seems that there must be a way to accomplish this. If there is, it's eluding me. Cheers - SGW

 

[Dtgtr]

On your external devices shot it looks like it's just set for channel 10.. if you set it to all does that make any difference?

 

[Stuart Welwood]

On your external devices shot it looks like it's just set for channel 10.. if you set it to all does that make any difference?

Good idea! After opening it up to all MIDI channels, all of the channel number disappeared. So did the volume sliders, but I guess that should be expected. They didn't come back after resetting the channels to 10. Good try, though.

 

[Dtgtr]

Thank ya! I thought we were on to something... sorry man!

 

[John Vere]

Am I missing something or are you saying that you are sending midi data to the Roland and then it is generating the audio which you have connected 3 audio cables to your interface.

Im not understanding why you are using Aux channels?

Normally you then insert 3 audio tracks and select the corresponding inputs from the audio interface. Then you can record the audio to the tracks once you are finished editing the midi dat to your liking.

 

[Stuart Welwood]

Normally you then insert 3 audio tracks and select the corresponding inputs from the audio interface. Then you can record the audio to the tracks once you are finished editing the midi dat to your liking.

I'm using Aux channels because that's what I learned from the manual and other sources about how to use an external MIDI device. I can see the advantage to having rendered audio tracks when it comes to mastering and making quick updates to the mix - no need for real time updating. Until then, I would rather not have them around. It just means that I don't have the convenience of mixer channels associated with MIDI tracks. As far as I can see, I can't have that either way.

 

[Stuart Welwood]

I discovered how to make the association between a MID track to an external device and an Aux channel returning the audio from that device.

In the picture below, channel 8 is displayed as the channel for the M1's output. Here's how it got there The button encircled by red is the Outputs button on the External Devices macro control panel. The first time I clicked it he menu below it appeared without any check boxes. I picked Add Aux Channel and a new Aux channel appeared, and it was associated with the instrument track. I verified this by using the popup menu on the track header to select Show in Console.

Note that the check box could have been used to make the association to an already existing Aux channel. I did have to rename the channel to match the track and change its color.

 

[Dtgtr]

Nice!!! I'm glad you figured it out!!!

 

[SwitchBack]

The whole setup is still a bit confusing to me. You have your drum machine send midi to S1/SP so you can record that to the instrument tracks, but you don't use an instrument plugin like Impact to make the midi tracks audible or mixable with the rest of the tracks. Which can be fine as you can play the instrument tracks back to the drum machine to have the drum machine produce the audio for S1/SP.

Then you have audio outputs from the drum machine go to S1/SP, not to audio tracks but only to aux inputs. Being auxes you can't record these inputs but they will mix in with your main mix. In this configuration your S1/SP song will only work when the drum machine is up and running.

To me it would make more sense to return the audio from the drum machine to audio tracks, so that they can be recorded too. That way you can also work on (and save) the song independent from the drum machine. Win-win, right?

 

[Stuart Welwood]

The whole setup is still a bit confusing to me. You have your drum machine send midi to S1/SP so you can record that to the instrument tracks, but you don't use an instrument plugin like Impact to make the midi tracks audible or mixable with the rest of the tracks. Which can be fine as you can play the instrument tracks back to the drum machine to have the drum machine produce the audio for S1/SP.

Then you have audio outputs from the drum machine go to S1/SP, not to audio tracks but only to aux inputs. Being auxes you can't record these inputs but they will mix in with your main mix. In this configuration your S1/SP song will only work when the drum machine is up and running.

To me it would make more sense to return the audio from the drum machine to audio tracks, so that they can be recorded too. That way you can also work on (and save) the song independent from the drum machine. Win-win, right?

Ah! I see the source of your confusion. I will try to better describe what I'm up to.

First, the drum machine is not sending MIDI to anywhere; it's sequencer is idle. The Roland R-8 Mk II Human Rhythm Composer (whew) is only being used as a sound module. I especially like its cymbal and hat samples and a very useful parameter called Nuance. It's responding to the FP8 MIDI tracks. The resulting audio comes in the Aux channels. I do this because I am still in the process of editing the MIDI. I don't ever use loops or patterns. And I tweak every sound by hand with lots of hand-tweaked automation.

I also have some instrument tracks that output to Presence for toms. So far, I haven't found a use for Impact. It's just not the way I work. When I'm satisfied with the drum tracks, then I will use Freeze to Audio Track to make the mastering process faster.

I have no need to be independent from any of my gear. When I turn on the top power strip on the right side of the console, everything in the center and the lower right rack is powered up, including the drum machine.

Each piece of gear was chosen for a capability that I didn't have at the time. I keep them as long as they work. If they break, I fix them or throw them out. I want all of them available in an instant. As for the four synths, I want to have the ability to edit their tracks in real time. So the other three are used the same way as the drum machine.

I hope this helps to make sense of how I go about it - and why. - Stuart