My tracks are having bastard children (?)

[dougburgy]

Hello mixers! I'm using 7pro over here, and having fun getting familiar with it. One thing that keeps happening, is when I'm trying other VST instruments on a track (say changing from pick bass to slap bass), it is creating what is called children tracks. I've combed through the manual and the only thing I found was on page 300 about the preferences for plug ins about "automatically add all instrument output tracks..." that is not selected.

Example of what happens: I create a bass vst track on track 2. I then want to change the instrument (at least that is when I think it is happening), then I get extra tracks/faders on my mixer. So instead of one track on my mixer for that bass instrument, I have 2! I can control volume/pan/eq with either mixer track for that bass instrument. Obviously, this makes things very confusing...especially since I use my midi controller faders for volume and knobs for pan. Nothing lines up right between my mixer console and hardware controller. If I try to delete the "child track" I lose playback of that original instrument. I'm sure there are lots and lots of reasons why children tracks are helpful in music/video creation (from reading the manual, I kind of get that much) such as multiple drum parts inside one parent track, etc. However, I'm not quite ready for them yet, but my tracks keep having these bastard children, much by accident it seem. Trying to figure out what I'm doing to create this problem, so I can keep from doing it by accident.

Any help is appreciated!
Doug

[Acoustica Greg]

HI,

It sounds like you're using a multi-out virtual instrument. Which virtual instrument is it?

Edited to add:



Greg

[dougburgy]

Ahhh. I bet you are right. I think it was when I switched from MX7p vst instrument to Kontakt 5 bass instrument...and running through mx7p supplied studio devil bass amp FX plugin (which I know isn't part of the issue, but sounds great!).

Pretty sure the other time it happened was also when using an instrument from Kontakt 5. Is there something about that vsti, that causes an automatic child track to be created? That would explain it. I will have to do a bit of testing to see if that duplicates it every time. If so, sounds like the work-around (to keep my mixer from confusing me anyway) is to turn off the offending child tracks from my mixer view. I'll post back if I'm still having issues, after messing around a bit more.

Getting ready to start playing around with real-time track automations using my midi controller, so having only the needed tracks in mixer view is kind of important to me.

Thanks for such a speedy reply...you never disappoint!

[dougburgy]

FOLLOW UP:

Yep, apparently Kontakt automatically creates child tracks. I'm sure you know why, but not so sure I really need to at this point. Obviously the way it works with MX7. Instruments work great though anyway. Embarrassed that I didn't think to turn off the track on the mixer...basic stuff there. I guess I was so focused on trying to figure out why I was creating child tracks, and what to do with them, that I didn't see the forest through the trees on that one. Thanks for pointing these things out for me! Till my next crisis.....

D

[Acoustica Greg]

HI,

Yup, Kontakt is a multi-out VST. Multiple out virtual instruments allow you to tweak every distinct sound coming from the virtual instrument. You could EQ the cymbal differently from the kick drum, for example. Or you could turn the volume down on the tuba.

To control how many outputs are displayed, click Config:



Greg

[dougburgy]

Sweet! Learned something new (again) today! It's actually a very cool feature that it does that, for fine tuning sounds as you noted. But also cool that you have some level of control to make it as simple or complex as needed for the user or project. Thanks for the insight. Totally new to Kontakt...and just using the Kontakt 5 player with factory instruments to get started, but I can see wanting to getting some cool paid library content going forward for sure.

Thanks again Greg...you da man!

[Acoustica Greg]

One more thing -- here's a video chibear made:

Configuring Kontakt and Mixcraft for Multi-timbral and Multi-channel use

[Mark Bliss]

Kontakt offers several ways to load the player, and selecting this version might be what you are looking for. The others automatically add those child tracks.
Since you can configure for VSTi multi tracks within Mixcraft, I usually just use this method instead of the Kontakt multi out configurations.
And a big thumbs up to Chibears videos and descriptions, it helps reduce the headache effect of Kontakt for me anyway.

Kontakt Multi out..jpg (39.93 KiB) Viewed 4265 times

[chibear]

And a big thumbs up to Chibears videos and descriptions, it helps reduce the headache effect of Kontakt for me anyway.

Thanks Mark. One more one to come on automation in Kontakt. It's probably going to be one of those after-midnight deals so the BP pills will have lots of effect on the delivery

[Mark Bliss]

I look forward to it Chibear!

A note of clarification, since the image I posted is so small.
My point was that there are incidences of Kontakt with multi out, and without. When you select from the VSTi manu, try the one without.

[dougburgy]

Thanks Mark! I will also check out the noted video. Just wanted to add that I'm using that same Kontakt loader you underlined, but still get the added child track(s). Seems to be adding a child track for stereo or something...don't really know how to read the abbreviations. Although, turning them off in the mixer view seems like a good way to keep them in the background and out of my way

[Mark Bliss]

I was creating a bass guitar track this weekend and decided to use my favorite (not!) VSTi, Kontakt.
Upon loading it I discovered I had 54 lanes by default, and thought of this thread.

I did a little fishing and experimenting, (This is why songs never seem to get done BTW.)

I found that I had set the configuration to "Automatically add all instrument output tracks" probably while using another VSTi where I wanted that, and the configurations settings were still that way.

As Greg indicated, and hopefully this clarifies, unchecking that box and only having the main channel box checked (leaving all the "Aux" and "Unassigned" unchecked) as shown in this shot should give you the desired results.

Kontakt config.jpg (35.25 KiB) Viewed 4142 times

[dougburgy]

Yeah this thing is still bugging me. I've done as suggested and only have one thing checked in the options....it won't produce sound if you have nothing checked. It still creates two tracks for one instrument. Yeah, you can make it so it doesn't show in the mixer view, but it is still there "in spirit" and throws off the correlation between my usb controller faders/knobs and the on-screen mixer. The only work around to "fix" this is to put the kontakt instrument as the very last track, so it's child track doesn't throw me off. And that work around is only good if you use only one kontakt instrument. Don't know why it has to use two tracks for a single instrument....but glad I'm only using Kontakt player (free) with factory (free) instruments. Was kind of checking it out before buying full version and more instruments but not sure I will be doing that now. I like using faders for mixer volumes and real time automations, and knobs for pan. Short of sticky notes all over my controller for any given song, it's hard to keep track of what track I'm adjusting, since 3 becomes 4, 4 becomes 5, etc. Irritating. Too bad, as I like some of the instruments quite a lot. It's not unusable if doing all adjustments with mouse though..which I will probably do when using kontakt. If I'm missing something, please enlighten me (again). Thanks!