Is there a Key Command to load a Rack Instrument?

Howdy,

I am just wondering if there is a Key Command for loading a new Rack Instrument?

Obviously Pressing Alt and T toggles between showing and Hiding the Rack Instrument Rack but I would love to able to press a keycommand to load a new Rack Instrument up without having to show the Rack Instrument and scrolling to the top of the Rack to press the “Add Rack Instrument” button. May not seem like a big deal but it becomes one when you have over 100 Rack Instruments.

The template keeps on growing…

Thanks

Jono

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I have almost given up using the Instrument Rack and now just create an instrument track. My shortcut for that is ;. My thinking is that it is quicker and if you organise the Arrange Page easier to deal with. Plus you don’t get the Midi and Audio track in the mixer.

Probably not much help. However I did look to see if you could create a shortcut for creating a Rack Instrument, but like you I could not find anything.

Thanks for the reply. I have gone the other way and decided against instrument tracks. I’m using VEPro 5 with Cubase and I just find it to be the quickest way of routing so many instruments. I know you can assign midi tracks to Instruments tracks but I went round in circles about this haha so I settle for the RACK! Now, why oh why is there not a Key Command? I have looked through every option. It’s fine, I shall have to keep plodding on, suffering! Haha!

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so what is better then? to use the rack or an instrument track? im using only the VST rack and never think of using instrument tracks. what difference is there??

You should use the rack . If you add a new instrument every time you are using way too many rescourses . If for instance you want to add 5 different instruments in kontakt. you only need to have one instance of Kontact in the rack . If you have 5 separate instances of kontact open thats just silly . Of course if you are only going to have one instance of a certain plug in used in a track then of course use the track but , its rare i ever do that i use mainly kontact and omnisphere/keyscape/trilian . I can do all that with just 2 instruments in the rack .

While this intuitively sounds like it should be true, the reality is a lot more complicated. In most cases using Instruments instead of Racks consumes only a modest amount more resources (and many of us feel those are resources well spent for the increased ease of use & reduced complexity - remember having unused cpu & memory doesn’t buy you anything). The number and complexity of the Instruments used inside Kontact are what primarily drives resource consumption, not the number of instances of Kontact.

This has been discussed several times in-depth on the forums, such as:

Jono, sorry about going OT. I know you are well versed in the nuances between Tracks & Racks.

I encourage you to visit Vi-Control where there is a large user base using huge orchestral templates using 1 instance of kontakt/play for every single instrument track. I just read of one who uses over 800 orchestral tracks with over 800 instances of Kontak…almost all of them track disabled of course. The size of the template with 800 instances
isn’t as large as one might think…all disabled of course until whatever tracks are needed.

As raino said, it isn’t that clear.

To this date I believe the only functional difference between Instrument Rack and Instrument Track is the fact that when using Instrument Tracks, you can not use save/load selected. If there are any other differences I would love to hear about them.

Don’t apologise. I guess I am well versed now. But I wasn’t, going around in circles actually, and if your advice helps anyone understand the benefits of Instrument tracks vs Rack Instruments then that’s only a positive things.

Truth is, I’m now using both. Since starting an MA with Thinkspace Education I have gone down a Rabbit hole and my Orchestral Template is getting out of hand.

The exciting development, for me, is that VEPro 6 now allows for Disabling tracks so in theory, once Cubase’s bug of routing being forgotten with Midi Tracks attached to Instrument tracks, you could have a template completely disabled on all of your computers.

At the minute I have all channels that are connected via a PC Slave (there are over 900) using Racks. Inside Cubase, I have 500 Disabled Instrument tracks and they are mostly Sound Design things or VIs that don’t get used all the time so when I want to use them, I enable them (via Key Commands), use them and depending on what is going on, either RIP them or leave them active. I do find that Instances of Kontakt, within Cubase start playing havoc with CPU (I’m now using a 12 Core Mac Pro 5,1 as master computer) so I prefer using VEPro 6 both on Slave and on Master. Man, I’m such a geek now haha! Could talk all day about this stuff! :wink:

The one other (I think) remaining difference is that MIDI Tracks have MIDI Sends so you can route the midi data to multiple destinations and Instrument Tracks don’t. But who knows maybe that will change in the next couple weeks as it seems like a silly thing to have on one track type & not the other.

I remember those days. I believe you started one of the threads I linked to above.

@fj12rider are you aware that you can have MIDI Tracks send their output to an instance of Kontact (or whatever) that is on an Instrument Track? This allows you to use a VSTi on an Instrument Track exactly the same as if it were in the Rack.

I also encountered the inability to configure the hot key to turn on the tool into a rack rack!
I tried to set up Cubuses 11 very sorry. If it is not possible to do. (
The tool track does not fit me how I am engaged in the selection of the synthesizer to different midi paths and I need frequent redesign of different synthesizers on one midi track. Though it is possible with a tool track Often mechanically removing along with midi a track. Therefore, the Rack tool is preferable. The only minus in the Rack tool is that it cannot be saved as an audio track under midi a track that you need to turn into audio samples