Multi Track Automation To One Kontakt VST Instance

[Christopher Russell]

New user of cakewalk.  I'm trying to manage a large number of orchestral instruments through instances of kontakt.  To better manage resources, I'm using the multiple instrument track support when adding a new kontakt instance.  Setting each instrument to a dedicated midi channel in both kontakt and cakewalk seems to work just fine.

My main issue is the track automation.  The synth rack shows that you can only target automation for one track at a time.  However, I want to have expression and dynamics automation for up to 16 instruments loaded in one kontakt instance.  For reference, i'm using the Audio Imperia Nucleus Orchestral Core Library for most of my instruments.

My first attempt was to manually set up MIDI mappings for each instrument in the host automation of kontakt and then also manually assign to those on the lane automation per track using the manual MIDI option for lane automation.   This becomes very cumbersome and I noticed that it would just stop working after re-loading the project.

My next attempt was to add automation assignments on the synth rack and then put them under a group.  So I added all of the expression knobs for strings for example to a "String Expressions" group.  This process was shown in the below tutorial:

 

Unfortunately, this still leads back to the original problem.  This group will not show up for lane automation unless it's the active automation track on the synth rack.

 

Are there any suggestions for solving this problem?

[msmcleod]

I'd normally recommend the MIDI mapping method you've described for automating a single instance of Kontakt over several tracks.  The MIDI mapping should persist after project reload, and this is certainly working for me on the instruments I've tried this with.

Can you confirm whether your issue is limited to the Nucleus library, or is it an issue with other instruments?

 

[Christopher Russell]

I think what happened was that I minimized all of the automation lanes by clicking the Automation Lanes = On button to Off.  This was to reduce the screen space taken by all the automation lanes after I assigned them in my template.  When I went to reload the template and turn back to Automation Lanes = On, my lane assignments seemed to be gone along with the Remote Control setting I had for them.  Is there a way to minimize the automation lanes but not have this happen?

[Christopher Russell]

Ok some progress.  The midi assignment is working again.  I may have been assigning the instruments to different channels but didn't set the automation to target that channel.

[Christopher Russell]

So now I have reproduced the problem.

My steps:

1. Set midi channel for solo violin in Kontakt to midi channel 3

2. Set host and midi automation for expression for solo violin in Kontakt to CC36

3. Create new automation lane based on MIDI set to control, 36, channel 3

4. Set the remote control to my keyboard fader

5. Confirmed that the fader was changing expression on the solo violin

6. Set Automation lanes to off on the track.

7. Saved the template and closed cakewalk

8. Loaded the template back up

9. Set Automation lanes to on for the solo violin track (at this point I notice that my custom label for expression is gone)

10. Make MIDI control 36 active again in the drop down menu and verify that the fader still controls it.

11. Confirm that Kontakt still says that my solo violin expression is till programmed to midi CC36 for both host and midi automation.

12. Try to play a solo violin note while adjusting the fader and there is no expression change.  Confirmed that the knob is not responding in Kontakt.

 

I'm at a loss at this point :(.

[Christopher Russell]

More experiments.

Started a new project template with just 2 instruments in kontakt.  Went through the same process of creating the expression mapping.  If I leave the automation lane on and save the template, close cakewalk, and reload, it won't initially respond.  If I then open up kontakt and click on the knob, the remote control automation will respond again.

If I then turn the automation lane off, save, and reload, and then turn the automation lane back on, it will never respond even after messing with the expression knob in kontakt.  Some weird, buggy failure to save state between the player and the DAW for host automation. 

[msmcleod]

@Christopher Russell - can you confirm whether you're using a track template or a project template?

[Christopher Russell]

I'm away from my system right now but my approach was to go to "Save As" and then I changed the type to template and saved.  I then load the template back up under "Existing Projects" to test.  I have tried deriving a new project from it as well and that didn't seem to fix the problem.

As an aside, what prompted this was the performance of my project after adding a lot of kontakt instances.  The midi latency per instance was perfectly fine but starting the audio engine for playback was taking 4-5 seconds.  If you have other approaches to reducing that lag vs. multiple instruments per kontakt instance, i'm fine with that as well :).