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[workflow] How to configure a multi-instrument plugin efficiently (BBCSO) ?

Hi all,

So I have this plugin, BBC Symphonic Orchestra Discovery, and it runs fine in Qtractor, both within Carla and Yabridge.

The plugin contains many instruments and my goal is to assign each one of them to a dedicated MIDI track.

I believe other DAWs refer to this as multitimbral functionality (but don't quote me on this).

Right now, I only figured how to assign one instrument by track by duplicating tracks, which also duplicates instances of the plugin, which ends up bloating the CPU very quickly, even when running silently in the background (see attached screenshot).

Auto-deactivating tracks doesn't solve the problem.

So how to approach this ?
- Can I use one instance of the plugin and assign each instrument by track?
- Do I have to invoke some midi channeling magic? (problem: many audio outputs in the patchbay but no midi outputs... see attached screenshot)
- Is this a Bank/Patch situation?
- Help ! :)

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Image icon patchbay.png62.84 KB
Image icon CPU bloat.png69.17 KB
Image icon goal.png52.24 KB
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rncbc's picture

hint: insert the (multitimbral) plugin on a MIDI ouput bus, to which those MIDI tracks converge (one per MIDI channel, get it?)...
of course, you'll have to differentiate instruments by MIDI track/channel, but well, that's pretty old 90's tech. ;)
bottom line is, you'll only need one instrument plugin instance serving to as much 16 channels that is.

hth.
cheers

Cheers,

Then I guess this plugin isn't multitimbral as I can't find a way to differentiate instruments by MIDI track/channel...

rncbc's picture

that or Carla is fooling you down there...

cheers

Most plugins today are not capable of maintaining relationships between patches and MIDI channels. Even the Calf fluidsynth player, while having this ability, is limited since everything goes out through a single pair of audio outs. So even in that case, you have a Piano assigned to MIDI channel 1, a bass on MIDI Channel 2, and a Airplane (yea, old school!) assigned to MIDI Channel 3.... now you can't mix those individually.

Essentially, the old "hardware" approach was abandoned some time ago and everyone just runs multiple instances of any given plugin. This was one of the things that blew my mind coming back into this after a 10+ year break.

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