Midi/Audio Routing Question

[stratman]

Sorry if this is a bit long winded and complicated but, if explain what I’m trying to do and why, maybe someone can explain if there’s a better way. There’s a question at the end.

I recently got Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO) that comes with the Kontakt 2 player VSTi to host the GPO library.

Problem:
I started off by loading up a separate instance of Kontakt player for every instrument I wanted to use, but found that this is not a good method. Each instance of Kontakt player uses about 82MB of RAM, even without any sounds loaded. So this method eats up RAM very quickly, as I can typically be using 10 or more instruments.

Non-Ideal Solution:
A better method is to load a single instance of Kontakt player and get it to host all the instruments I want to use, with each instrument set to receive on a different midi channel. The picture below shows a very simple example of the type of routing I’m using. It’s the io for track 1.



Track 1 has the Kontakt player VSTi. For the purpose of the example, to keep things simple, there are only three instruments loaded into it. A trumpet set to receive midi channel 1, strings (midi channel 2) and piano (midi channel 3).

The midi parts for a trumpet, strings and piano are on tracks 2, 3 and 4. Track 1 is set to receive from tracks 2, 3 and 4 on midi channels 1, 2 and 3 respectively.

If I enabled the Master/Parent send on Track 1, then I’d hear a combination of all three instruments together on Track 1, but I don't want this. Instead, I want to bring up the Audio on three separate Track faders, so I’ve disabled the Track 1 Master/Parent send and sent the VSTi multi channel outputs to three separate tracks (5,6 and 7). This means the faders on tracks 5, 6 and 7 control the levels for the trumpet, strings and piano separately.

This does exactly what I want but…

Question:
Can I do it using less tracks? For example, it would be good if I didn’t have to use tracks 5, 6 and 7 and I could send the audio to tracks 2, 3 and 4 instead. Then tracks 2, 3 and 4 would contain the midi and the faders would also control the audio levels, which would be a neater solution. I tried this and, if I ‘Allow Feedback’ under the Project settings, I get sound through but it’s garbled and glitchy.

Does anyone know of a neat solution using less tracks?

Pete