This one’s a longshot as I can’t imagine a simple straightforward way to implement this, but it would be really great if it were possible to record a short 4 bar snippet of a song and then have the midi (and ideally audio ins) run back through everything as though you were playing it live. Would make it way easier to mix/change sounds and balance levels.
Right now, the only way I believe to accomplish this would be to record the audio/midi and then set up the midi and audio players with each individual midi track and audio track sent to the appropriate midi block and plugin chain in order to hear it back all together. Not a big deal for a single rackspace, but if I’m trying to listen/modify things in several rackspaces over a whole setlist, it would get a little tedious. I understand I can just record the audio outs, but ideally, I could change plugin presets, A/B effect plugins, etc. and hear how everything sounds at once as I’m making changes on the fly. If anyone can recommend a more effecient way of mixing stuff together in this way I’m open to ideas!
I am doing something similar (not yet with MIDI but let me try extend the approach to MIDI too). I don’t use anymore the audio interface input/output in the local rackspace but rather the From/To Global Rackspace. You can also use third party virtual MIDI port to do the same with MIDI. In the Global Rackspace I can patch everything to my audio interface and from there it is very easy to add some GP audio player whose output can be wired as you want. e.g. a DI recorded guitar can be sent to the Local Rackspace to be virtually reamped while a guitar with effects can be kept in the Global Rackspace and have its level adjusted. Because, yes, I forgot to say that I adjust all plugins levels from there using a GP Mixer which is also locally controlled in the Local Rackspaces, but sits in the Global Rackspace.
This approach is nice, not really straightforward, you have to think about it, but makes it possible to do a sound check without the band mates, but also to work on the effects, plugin sounds (if MIDI was recorded too) and so on.
One approach I use to set levels and audition patches / fx etc is to use the Rig Manager.
Create an alias for every midi input device (and always use an alias as the midi input block in every rackspace)
Create two Rigs, e.g. ‘Live’ and ‘Playback’
'Live' uses the actual midi hardware as input
'Playback' uses virtual midi ports (one for each hardware midi input device) as input
That way you can switch all rackspaces at once to either use live midi input, or recorded midi data
I have a complex setup using GP in conjunction with a DAW, so I just record the midi and audio in that for playback, rather than use the built-in midi and audio players.
However, if you use the GP record function, it can record both the audio and midi input - so perhaps you could drag those files into a simple DAW project and route the audio / midi to act as input to your rackspaces (having set the Rig manager to Playback).
If you switch rackspaces using midi, record that data as well, and you’ll be able to use it to change rackspaces when auditioning
@David-san & @Matt you guys are geniuses. Using the rig manager to create a playback rig in combo with virtual midi ports is really clever and takes out a lot of the hassle of having to set up of ton of audio/midi players to hear back the sound and adjust it in real time. Thanks for the suggestions!
