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VST Instruments and Instrument tracks
Instrument tracks
An instrument track is a combination of a VST Instrument, a
MIDI track, and a VST Instrument channel, in other words:
it is a track coupled with a sound – it allows you to think in
terms of sounds rather than in terms of track and instru-
ment settings.
Adding Instrument tracks
To open and use an Instrument track, proceed as follows:
1. Open the Project menu and select Instrument from the
Add Track submenu.
You can also right-click in the Track list and select “Add Instrument
Track” on the context menu.
2. The Add Instrument Track dialog is opened.
You can select an instrument for the track from the pop-up (but you can
also leave this until later if you wish). Specify the number of instrument
tracks you wish to create in the “count” field. If you click the “Browse
Presets” button, the dialog expands to show the Presets browser, where
you can browse for sounds.
3. Click OK to add the Instrument track.
When you select an Instrument in the Add Track dialog, the new track
will get the name of the instrument. When no instrument is selected, the
track is named “Instrument track”.
An instrument track in the Track list
Properties
• Each Instrument track has a corresponding channel
strip in the mixer.
• In the Inspector, you can select a VST Instrument from
the Instrument pop-up menu.
When you select an instrument from this pop-up, its control panel will
open automatically.
• You can also exchange the “sound” of an instrument
track (i.e. the VST Instrument and its settings) by extract-
ing these data from another instrument track or a VST pre-
set, see “Extracting sound from an instrument track or VST
preset” on page 158.
• On the Input Routing pop-up menu, you can select a
MIDI input.
Instrument tracks have only one MIDI input.
• To open the control panel for the VST Instrument, click
the “Edit Instrument” button in the Inspector.
• As with MIDI tracks, you can perform the usual MIDI edit-
ing procedures on the instrument track, like duplicate, split,
or repeat the track, drag and drop the MIDI parts of an in-
strument track etc. For more information, see the chapter
“MIDI realtime parameters” on page 166.
• As with the MIDI track inspector and track controls, you
can adjust track delay, choose MIDI input, work with VST
Instrument panels, choose drum maps etc. For more infor-
mation, see the chapter “MIDI realtime parameters” on
page 166.
• Instrument tracks have all options that VST Instrument
channels have, i.e. Inserts, Sends, EQ, etc.
Ö VST Instruments used in Instrument tracks do not ap-
pear in the VST Instruments window.
For an overview of all used VST Instruments, open the Plug-in Information
window via the Devices menu. For further information, see the section “The
Plug-in Information window” on page 97.
Restrictions
• MIDI volume and pan cannot be controlled (there is no
“MIDI fader” tab in the Inspector); instead, the VST Instru-
ment volume and pan are used (via the “Channel” tab in the
Inspector). This applies also to the respective automation
parameters.
Ö Due to there being only one volume and pan control for
the instrument track, the Mute button will mute the com-
plete track including the VST Instrument. (As opposed to a
MIDI track with an assigned VST Instrument, for which mut-
ing the MIDI track still allows you to monitor and record the
VST Instrument.)
• Instrument tracks always have one stereo output chan-
nel only. This means that VST Instruments that do not pro-
vide a stereo output as their first output channel cannot be
used with instrument tracks, and must be loaded via the
VST Instruments window.