How do you route this in Ableton? (pic) - Low, Mid, High for several tracks

[tooneba]

How do you achieve this routing in Live? Should I compromise to use Audio Effect Rack which has chains for Low, Mid and High, and use "Audio to" in the desired track? Thanks.

[Guenon]

Multiple ways to do this, but you can for example create one audio channel called something like Split and then choose Split as the input source for your Low, Mid and High channels, each containing the appropriate filtering. On each of those three, set the output to the combining "A" channel. Now when you want to split a signal from a given channel using these, set that channel's output to Split.

Alternatively (and perhaps more neatly) you can literally split the signal already on the Split channel using an audio effect rack. Create a rack there, with three chains containing appropriate filtering, and then choose your Low, Mid and High channels' input sources from among those chains. Insert separate processing on those channels to taste, and make all of these channels feed the "A" channel.

And of course you can forgo the separate three channels completely if you don't need to have the processing on actual separate mixer channels. Have that splitter rack on the Split channel, insert different processing on each of the chains, and then set "A" as that Split channel's output.

[tooneba]

Thank for the reply. That's good work around. I didn't know I can choose input source for a channel from inside Audio Effect Rack.

Though it doesn't allow adjust one by one how much level I feed for High, Mid and Low from these different tracks, it serves the purpose for some cases.



Do you have any idea of methods that can achieve this kind of adjustment? I'm adjusting the levels of feeding individually for High, Mid and Low from source channels. Only way to do this in ableton is Send?

[Guenon]

Thank for the reply. That's good work around.

No prob. I wouldn't call the above a workaround though, imo that's still in the realm of "just how routing in Live works." You can achieve surprisingly complex systems by combining the channel routing points and different racks. Once built a vocoder out of them without an actual vocoder or resonator module anywhere

However, the need to control the level of each split component, per track. Yeahhh. One might well call that workaround-y, haha. It becomes second nature, though. Anyway, if you can spare the sends and do your splitting there, that can be the most convenient way. Still, if the project calls for multiple different kinds of split processing chains, the return channels aren't enough.

The solution is to combine the above routing possibilities again. You have your source channel you want to split; create three mixer channels next to that one, and have the original channel as their input source. Put filtering on each of those so that they become the low, med and high split bands for that particular source. Now you have mixer volume controls per band, for that specific channel being split up. For each of those specific low, mid and high channels, set the routing destination to the actual main low, mid and high mixer channels that will contain the processing you wish to do on each of those band areas. And so on.

Alternatively, you can still do the filtering as the first step of the main low, mid and high channels, and treat those 1st stage channels as simple volume controls, routing the full signal from each of them into the main split channels, in various amounts. Somewhat less overall processing in the project this way. Otherwise, it's a matter of preference, as in the first scenario you do gain the additional flexibility of not setting every split band in exactly the same way for every signal being split up.

[Guenon]

There are still many ways to do this, of course. To illustrate a geeky workaround, with a capital W, you can also achieve the individual band level control by skipping the intermediary three helper channels and use Live's stock compressor as a transparent audio injection device. So, you have your actual low, mid and high channels, with filtering and then other processing on each. As the very first device on those channels (before the filtering), have an audio effect rack, and when ever you want to pipe something from some other channel into any of those, create a new chain in every one of those racks. Insert the Live compressor on those chains, engage sidechaining and put it into Sidechain Listen mode which effectively just passes through the sidechain input audio unchanged. Then select the appropriate source channel (with the original audio) as the sidechain source on each of those. Hah. Now you can control the levels using the appropriate chain controls on each split channel.

Not suggesting to actually do it that way, but in some creative routing cases knowing that audio injection trick can give you a lot of options ... You can inject the output of any channel or rack chain into any device position on another channel/chain this way, also creating real feedback processing inside single channel strips. It's been an "unofficial routing feature" for, I don't know, at least a decade, so it's well tried and tested.

[tooneba]

I prefer the way Live deal instrument and effects linearly and sidechain for comp to FL's. But I miss the ability to use any channel as send.

Speaking for the first suggestion, It appears thats it requires more Channels that have filtering plugin than when in FL. I am using linear-phase for the filtering so the CPU usage may be the limitation of this method.

And second suggestion: using Compressor's sidechain, it actually requires only 3 filtering plugin, right? I think it is the most CPU efficient method as same degree as example of FL I mentioned in the 3rd post*. I'm going to use this method for CPU efficiency.

Thanks for many tips. It helps alot.

Edit: * maybe Compressors are eating CPU. So I will need to check which are best.

[Guenon]

Speaking for the first suggestion, It appears thats it requires more Channels that have filtering plugin than when in FL. I am using linear-phase for the filtering so the CPU usage may be the limitation of this method.

You don't need more than three filtering plugins. I think modern processors can handle that . To recap, you can have the primary low, mid and high channels, with an appropriate filter in the beginning and some arbitrary processing downstream (that you want to use in a frequency targeted process like this).

Then, when you have a channel that you want to route into each one of those, in different amounts, create three channels next to it that are for level control and routing only. Each of those will have the source channel as input, and one of those primary splitter channels as output. Now you can control the level of the signal being sent to every freq band.

[tooneba]

Oh I see. It is perfect. I can just group source, pre High, pre Mid and pre Low channels. And it allows to control the levels of feeding. I'm gonna use this.

Thanks for the detailed instructions