Duplicating MIDI track causes plug-in instances to multiply

[Elena Kolpakova]

So, I had a simple instrument track. The synth used was EastWest Opus. In the synth I had 10 instruments loaded, say, full set of Hollywood Strings. As each instrument inside Opus gets assigned a separate MIDI channel, I wanted to create 9 more MIDI tracks.

Therefore, I split the instrument track into an audio and MIDI track pair. And then tried to duplicate just the MIDI track ticking the checkboxes to keep the track properties, FX, etc.

Now guess what happened. Cakewalk tried to duplicate not only the MIDI tracks themselves but the plugin instances themselves. And that implied, 9 more Opus instances, each having full set of Hollywood Strings. So yeah... after a minute or two of its hard attempts to successfully fill out the RAM in its entirety, it just died.

So what was I doing wrong? Why of all things did it try to clone the synth instances? What's the point of splitting the Instrument track then? And the worst was that I couldn't even cancel this. Just had to wait until dies in pain or kill it with my own hands.

[scook]

39 minutes ago, Helene Kolpakova said:

Therefore, I split the instrument track into an audio and MIDI track pair. And then tried to duplicate just the MIDI track ticking the checkboxes to keep the track properties, FX, etc.

Instead of splitting the instrument track, try "Append Instrument Track" in the track menu just under "Split Instrument Track."

[Elena Kolpakova]

Hmm, look like I somehow had both audio and MIDI tracks selected and that caused the synth duplication. But thanks for the idea scook, I will try your suggestion next time to avoid this in the future.

[scook]

If one wants all the audio in one track, there is no need to split the instrument track. Change the channel on the instrument track and add MIDI tracks for the other channels and point their outputs to the same plug-in.

If one wants separate audio and MIDI on separate channels, append instrument tracks will do this and keep everything as instrument tracks.

Finally, separate audio and MIDI tracks may be added to a project and pointed to the same plug-in too, leaving the original instrument as is except for the need to force its channel just like the first option above.