I/O external routing defaults back to 'master' when you drop a clip into audio tracks

[sliding down the banister]

I am hoping someone can assist me here; as this has me scratching my head.

Up until now I have only used Ableton Live in a studio environment; but I am planning to use it to perform live.

Consequently, I am setting up some blank templates in Session View to which I will be adding clips created in other projects / sets during my live set. I am going to be using an external mixer and in the new live projects/set, I have set-up the I/O routing so that a number of audio tracks output are configured to separate channels on the mixer via ETX Out. i.e.

Track 1 - Audio to EXT Out / Output Channel 1/2
Track 2 - Audio to EXT Out / Output Channel 3/4
Track 3 - Audio to EXT Out / Output Channel 5/6

My problems begin though, when I attempt to drop onto the [blank] audio track, a clip [or clips] created in another project / set. For some reason the 'Audio To' in the I/O routing is defaulting back to 'Master' from 'EXT Out' each time a add a clip onto a blank track.

I have just checked the above in Live 8 and I am not having a problem there. When I drop a clip into an audio track; the I/O routing set-up remains unchanged.

Is there anyway I can prevent this from happening? I can not see a way to 'lock' the I/O routing settings on a track; or am I missing something blindingly obvious here?

[sliding down the banister]

Well for those that have read above and/or found the same issue; the feedback I received from Ableton, confirms that the above is an 'expected behaviour' and one that is unlikely to be changed.

They suggested a work-around, which I had come up with after some testing / playing around myself a couple of days ago. Namely load a 'dummy' clip into a scene you do not wish to use and then save the template. When you add 'additional' clips, the I/O routing remains unchanged.

In my case, I created a template with 20 scene/rows and then added a small file of 'silence' into the scene/row 20 of each track. They are sufficiently away from the scenes I am usually using, to not be inadvertently deleted when I am adding & removing clips banks.