Question about plug-in instruments and archiving

[cornutt]

Well folks, my studio proper is down for the rest of the year. Last week, it all went off to my mom's basement for safekeeping while we build our new house. In a few weeks, we move from our home of ten years to a crummy and tiny apartment, where there won't be any room for my gear. So it's all in storage, except that I was allowed to keep my JD-800 and the Mac.

Anyway, I'm going to make the best of the situation by spending the summer getting up to speed on some plug-ins. So, first I downloaded a copy of the 6.3 pre-release. I downloaded a copy of the AU version of Crystal, and I did the following: I assigned a MIDI track to Crystal, pencilled in some MIDI, and rendered it to an audio track. So far so good. I noted that after the render, it archived the original MIDI track.

I then assigned a second MIDI track to Crystal so that I could compose another track. However, I then noted that this second track didn't seem to be able to send any MIDI to Crystal; it didn't activate Crystal's waveform display, and I didn't see any audio coming back. The visual keyboard on the track graphic didn't send anything either. Nothing worked until I un-archived the first MIDI track. Then the second one started working. I have found that this is repeatable: archive the first track, the second one stops working. Un-archive the first track, the second one starts working again. The converse is not true, though; archiving the second track has no effect on the first one.

The question is: am I doing this right? If I already have an instance of Crystal in the Effects/Synths window of a track, can I simply assign a second track to the same output and expect it to work, or do I need to create a second instance of Crystal for the second track?

[Jerm]

Well it sounds like everything is working as I would expect.

If you have a plug-in, such as crystal, as a track insert then that track must be active (unarchived) in order for it to produce sound. Your alternatives are to either instantiate another crystal on the new track or assign crystal to an aux buss. Note that assigning crystal to an aux buss will not solve your problem because the program (sound/preset) will undoubtedly be changed between track 1 and track 2. If you are worried about processor, and you probably should be, the best thing to do is to use the new freeze command (found in edit menu->track operation->freeze) on track 1 and instantiate crystal again on track 2. While the first track is frozen it will not use up any processor other than a simple audio track and you can thaw it at any time to get the sound back for editing.

[cornutt]

Okay, thanks. I now realize that what I was doing was sort-of cheating. And yes, Crystal does use an impressive amount of CPU. I just started working with it, and I need to learn some of the tips and tricks for reducing its CPU usage.