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VST instruments and instrument tracks
• The rightmost button allows you to activate the desired
output for the instrument.
This is useful when you are using VST instruments that have a large num-
ber of audio busses, which may be confusing. Click one of the entries in
the pop-up list to activate/deactivate output busses for this instrument.
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 instrument
settings.
Adding instrument tracks
To open and use an instrument track, proceed as follows:
1. Pull down the Project menu, open the Add Track sub-
menu and select “Instrument”.
You can also right-click the track list and select “Add Instrument Track”
on the context menu.
2. The Add Instrument Track dialog opens.
You can select an instrument for the track from the pop-up menu (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 but
-
ton, the dialog expands to show the Presets browser, where you can
browse for sounds, see
“Using the Presets browser” on page 152.
3. Click the Add Track button.
If you have selected an instrument in the Add Track dialog, the new track
gets the name of the instrument. Otherwise, the track is named “Instru
-
ment track”.
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 menu, 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 225.
• 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 233.
• As with the MIDI track inspector and track controls, you
can adjust track delay, choose MIDI input, work with VST
instrument panels, etc. For more information, see the chap
-
ter “MIDI realtime parameters” on page 233.
• 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 win
-
dow via the Devices menu. For further information, see the
section
“The Plug-in Information window” on page 143.
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 automa
-
tion parameters.