It would be insanely helpful if an instrument track didn’t have to have a VST inserted on it, but instead could route it’s MIDI to a VST on the rack and then receive the audio back from the VST - all on the same instrument track.
If I want, for example, to use VEP, and have, say, a Kontakt instance loaded in it with 16 different instruments all routed to different MIDI + Audio channels, then in the DAW, I need to have multiple combinations of MIDI and (what do you call them?) Audio(?)/Aux(?) tracks. MIDI to send the data and the other track to receive the audio. So, not only is there additional routing, but there are double the number of tracks needed, and then there is the management of two tracks for one VI.
Either I can put the two tracks next to each other, which, in a big template, makes the screen terribly cluttered. Or I can put all the audio receiving tracks together somewhere else, but then it gets painful to automate both MIDI and audio parameters, since they happen on different tracks.
In essence, instead of thinking of an Instrument track as “a place where I load an instrument”, it is thought of as “a track to manage both MIDI and audio for a VI”, then I think it makes a lot more sense.
Please fix! If you need to see an example of it in practice, Pro Tools has done this for a while, and it’s extremely extremely handy.
I realize that this is not a very helpful reply regarding your particular issue. But I believe the original intention for Instrument Tracks was to assign one monotimbral instrument per track. In that case I believe the Instrument Track would work the way you want it to. You would have a single track for both MIDI and audio.
My biggest complaint with Instrument Tracks has to do with the fact that copying the track copies the VST assigned to the track. That is, a new VST is inserted into the copied Instrument Track. The workaround is to route a MIDI track to the Instrument Track (and to then copy the MIDI track). But then what is the point of having both Instrument Tracks and Rack Instruments? They essentially function the same way.
Yes it’s beyond time they unified the VI thing into one system instead of two. I generally prefer the combined MIDI/audio in one track, but “track” instruments don’t quite cut it in multi-timbral mode.
Yes, if I were doing monotimbral instruments, I agree, it would work fine. Problem is, we live in a more modern time when things like Kontakt allow you to load up and route multiple instruments at once, making it more conducive to collecting similar things together, building more intuitive templates (IMO), etc. Also, I use VEP, and I really don’t plan on loading one instance of VEP per instrument…
Also, yes - good point about having Rack instruments.