Abelton Live Q

[mostapha]

Cool…glancing at it, I'm not a huge fan, but I don't use a lot of effects. My "deck" channels have a couple nested Audio Effect Racks that use a couple EQ3 devices, an Auto Filter, and a Compressor to give me a 4-band EQ, a HP filter on each channel (the VCM has direct controls for them), and a compressor that only affects the Low EQ band and is side-chained off of my drum machine audio channel.

I had a working smart mixing EQ setup for the Low EQ band at one point, but I decided I didn't like it…I kind of just prefer to work EQs.

I also have a bit of a "problem" with the way he routes effects…it's the only way you're going to be able to use dummy clips the way he does, so I get it…but it makes routing A LOT uglier if you're using the hack I use to make sends into wet/dry knobs.

The way you do that is to create another audio track for each send per track with a Utility device set to invert the phase of both sides (L/R) of the signal…and turn it up with the send. That's also harder to do with something like the APC40 (i think) because it requires you to dedicate knobs to the send/negating track volume, so you might lose some functionality. It works a lot better on something like the VCM-600 or uc33e where you're assigning buttons anyway.

It's possible to make it work, but it takes a LOT of extra Audio and Return tracks and eats processor and ram like crazy.

The issue is that Ableton Live adds a 1-frame track delay to any signal that could go from right to left in the interface…they do that to avoid a specific type of feedback loop that could cause problems and requires a signal to go both right and left (in the interface). So, despite the fact that my signals kind of go all over the place, all but 1 only go to the right.

The one that goes to the left in mine is an audio channel drawing off the master that I use as part of my monitoring setup…which uses the crossfader to fade between monitoring the master output and something like split-cuing with the master faded partially to the left and the cue bus faded partially to the right…that was the weirdest part to figure out…it uses an audio track and 2 return tracks set to output to sends only with the last one going to the headphone channel of my audio interface…since the signal is just going to my headphones, it doesn't really bother me. I also could be using a button instead of the crossfader, but it seemed a good use of a control that I never use otherwise.

I'm really starting to think that I do things enough differently than a lot of the people publishing about it, I'm going to start writing about it.

[muzacH]

I also have a bit of a "problem" with the way he routes effects…it's the only way you're going to be able to use dummy clips the way he does, so I get it…but it makes routing A LOT uglier if you're using the hack I use to make sends into wet/dry knobs.

True - the way I'm using the dummy clips, I use the crossfader to assign wet/dry. It works well except the fader has no resistance to it at all, so it's easy to go too far with an effect.

I'm also not using half of the track efx - they're all still there simply because I haven't decided which ones will stay and which will go - I have 2 weeks before my next gig so I'm experimenting. I'll probably only really use 1 efx rack. The Fade to Grey plugin is really pretty bitchin though.

I'd be curious to read your writeup if/when you do that. I'm gaining enough knowledge know that with a few more creative ideas, I might fork my own template off. It's really pretty fun figuring out workflows.

[mostapha]

I should also probably say that I don't use dummy clips (can't figure out a real use that I like yet) or per-track effects (other than my channel strip). I also just assign controls instead of using the default layout, because the defaults kind of piss me off.

I know it makes it a lot more capable to use ableton's auto-assigning of the control surface to effects racks, but its annoying to me that you have to be looking at what you want to control with the effects section…I prefer to lock it to a specific effect rack or just assign the knobs.