# Cubase 8 Instruments Tracks vs Instruments Racks



## vudoo (Apr 19, 2015)

I'm fairly new to Cubase 8 and trying to find the best way to set up my template with VEP pro.

Instruments Racks and Instruments tracks seem to do basically the same thing, the only difference seem to be the ability to set up multi output with the racks, correct ?

What do you guys prefer and why ? Thx


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## daviddossett (Apr 19, 2015)

I see no difference. I tried both, and even when adding an instrument track via Project -> add track, it showed up in the rack.


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## Allerva (Apr 20, 2015)

There's a huge difference. I've had experience with setting up huge templates with both racks and track methods.

The bad part about using racks is if you have many patches on one instance of Kontakt on a rack instrument, you can only have Cubase's audio effects on that instance! Unless of course you make multiple audio outs per instrument in kontakt but that takes a bit of time. You also can't batch export effectively when using racks.

Stick with instrument tracks. They're great and you have way more control. Might get some backlash here (which is fine because I'll be educated) but it seems there's only two reasons why people use rack setups:

1. Saves CPU/RAM (which doesn't even matter because you're still using up processor cores if you're loading a giant multi)

2. Traditional method of doing stuff, established industry guys are just more comfortable with it. Rack template method came before track method in the DAW so that's how a lot of people learned how to do things. 

-A


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## Guy Rowland (Apr 20, 2015)

I use both for different things. (You can have multi out in instrument tracks btw). In general, my logic goes like this:

If you want all the outputs to be connected with a single midi track (such as a drum VST) it's more logical and useful to use instrument tracks

If you are using multiple midi tracks and channels for one VST, then it's more logical to use instrument racks.

With a VST3 instance of VE Pro, I might have nearly 100 midi tracks (16x8) all sharing one plugin. It's much neater to separate them properly. However, with something like EZ Drummer or a classic monotimbral synth it can be more convenient to use the instrument tracks, grouping everything in one place. You can also enable / disable at will, which is very useful (though 8.0.10 has irritants associated with that - you lose your midi input on re-enabling and sessions load with nag screens on unconnected outputs for the disabled tracks). My feeling is that multi timbal instrument tracks are still a bit new and buggy, but it will get smoother as the versions go by.

Of course you can build a template in any which way, and not use VST3 instances of VE Pro at all, but that's just what I find most useful.


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## tokatila (Apr 20, 2015)

http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=44253


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## vudoo (Apr 20, 2015)

Let say for my pop template on my slave, i have 6 instances: Bass, Guit, Piano, Synth, Horns, Strings. Each instance has one Kontakt and within that Kontakt, 16 different patches, so for example the Bass instance has 16 bass patches. 

On my Cubase 8 master rig, i would instantiate 6 instrument tracks (with 16 midi tracks per instrument tracks) and connect the 6 instrument tracks to the 6 VEpro instances.

From what i read, most recommend not using Instrument tracks in a muti-timbral fashion. This means i must have 96 instances on my VEpro where each instance will be connected to its own Instrument tracks. This seems like a lot of instances, can VEpro even handle this ?

Any suggestions for the above set up ? Thanks


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## Guy Rowland (Apr 20, 2015)

I'm not sure I fully understand vudoo, but with your master rig for sure I'd be looking at Instrument Racks. 1 instance = 96 possible channels.


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## Kejero (Apr 20, 2015)

A HUGE advantage of Instrument Tracks is that disabling them actually clears the instruments and plugins from RAM (*in Cubase 8*). I'm in the middle of building a huge template right now, taking advantage of this: basically keeping my most used instruments loaded in, and everything else disabled, but ready to go with a simple shortcut key stroke to enable them.

Thanks to Alex Pfeffer for the inspiration!


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## vudoo (Apr 20, 2015)

> I'm not sure I fully understand vudoo,



Slave rig with VE Pro has 6 instances:

Instance # 1 (bass): 1 Kontakt with 16 different bass patches
Instance # 2 (Guit): 1 Kontakt with 16 different guit patches
Instance # 3 (Piano): 1 Kontakt with 16 different piano patches
Instance # 4 (synth): 1 Kontakt with 16 different synth patches
Instance # 5 (Horns): 1 Kontakt with 16 different horns patches
Instance # 6 (Strings): 1 Kontakt with 16 different Strings patches

Main rig MacPro with Cubase pro 8:

Instument track #1 (with 16 midi tracks) will access VE pro's Instance # 1
Instrument track #2 to 6…same as above.

Hope this is clearer. With the set up above, i don't see any advantage in using Racks.


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## vudoo (Apr 20, 2015)

Kejero @ Mon Apr 20 said:


> A HUGE advantage of Instrument Tracks is that disabling them actually clears the instruments and plugins from RAM (*in Cubase 8*). I'm in the middle of building a huge template right now, taking advantage of this: basically keeping my most used instruments loaded in, and everything else disabled, but ready to go with a simple shortcut key stroke to enable them.
> 
> Thanks to Alex Pfeffer for the inspiration!



Do you set up your multi-timbral instruments via instrument's tracks similar to the method described above or have you found a better more elegant way ?


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## antoniopandrade (Apr 20, 2015)

Allerva @ Mon Apr 20 said:


> The bad part about using racks is if you have many patches on one instance of Kontakt on a rack instrument, you can only have Cubase's audio effects on that instance! Unless of course you make multiple audio outs per instrument in kontakt but that takes a bit of time. You also can't batch export effectively when using racks.



This is incorrect. You can create multiple outputs for either VST rack instruments or Instrument tracks. Both behave the same way and batch export / Render-in-Place work equally well (albeit erratically in some cases) with both methods.

Differences make it so there isn't really a clear-cut best option, depends on your workflow.

Before exporting stems to a mixing engineer I will usually clear all unused instruments and midi tracks / muted midi data from a session. This is easier accomplished with VST rack instruments, as the key command to remove all unused tracks will NOT remove the VST rack instruments, which basically means your soundsources will still exist regardless of not there's any midi data associated in it's connected midi tracks. To do the same with Instrument Tracks requires one to create small midi parts (or flags) on the actual Instrument Tracks, or else it will get deleted, even if there is midi data in one of it's associated midi tracks (you can associate midi tracks to an instrument track much the same way you can associate them with VST racks).

Then there's the disable option which is incredibly useful in C8, but Guy is really observant in pointing out, has its annoyances.

VST rack instruments have their annoyances as well. I've been experiencing a bug that causes C8 to crash on selecting a midi track connected to a VEP rack instrument. This is incredibly annoying as the workaround fix requires creating a new VEP rack instance, connecting it to a midi track and then deleting that new VEP instance. Talk about running in circles, Steinberg. 

So you see, they can both accomplish the same things, it really depends on your workflow, and whether or not you'd prefer to see your VST outputs laid in a separate section (VST Rack Outputs vs Instrument Track) in the Audio Mixdown menu, or being able to actually see your outputs close by your midi tracks in the arrange window, or the remove unused tracks example I posted earlier. So I'd say experiment with both and see for yourself which method suits you better.


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## j_kranz (Apr 20, 2015)

I could be wrong... But I've also always been under the impression that it is impossible to re-order instruments once they are in the rack. In an effort to keep my template tightly organized, I like the ability to re-order the instruments in my arrangement (if I want to keep all my Kontakt instances containing woodwinds next to one another, etc.). That also makes it handy when using folders.

Apart from that I haven't noticed much difference when it comes to performance/efficiency.


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## Kejero (Apr 21, 2015)

Since Cubase 7 the order of slots in the rack isn't fixed anymore. If you empty one slot, it essentially disappears, and all the slots below it will move up one position.

If you really want your rack ordered, you have to use instrument tracks and you can abuse the fact that disabling an instrument will temporarily remove the slot (at least in Cubase 8 ), and re-enabling it will add it to the bottom of the list. Whether that's worth the effort though...


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## daviddossett (Apr 21, 2015)

Allerva @ Sun Apr 19 said:


> There's a huge difference. I've had experience with setting up huge templates with both racks and track methods.
> 
> The bad part about using racks is if you have many patches on one instance of Kontakt on a rack instrument, you can only have Cubase's audio effects on that instance! Unless of course you make multiple audio outs per instrument in kontakt but that takes a bit of time. You also can't batch export effectively when using racks.
> 
> ...



I just upgraded to Cubase 8, and it seems they have become one and the same. If i load an instrument track into the arrange window, it will appear in the the Rack all the same. 

Furthermore, loading a VST from the rack will create an instrument track, not a MIDI track as it did in past versions. It seems we've lost the choice!


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## paaltio (Apr 21, 2015)

As has been mentioned, there is no technical difference anymore after Cubase started supporting multiple outputs on instruments tracks.

In my opinion, racks are strictly worse, because they don't support easy import and export. I see them simply as a legacy feature there to support old sessions.

Using instrument tracks only has allowed me to stop using templates altogether and build sessions with the track import feature instead. The only problem is this automation bug that still persists in Cubase 8, where importing the same instrument twice will create a duplicate output in the arrange if recording automation. The broken tracks are indicated by the greyed out header in the inspector. Hopefully Steinberg fixes it soon. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8520185/cubase_import.gif (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/852 ... import.gif)


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## Kejero (Apr 21, 2015)

vudoo @ Mon Apr 20 said:


> Do you set up your multi-timbral instruments via instrument's tracks similar to the method described above or have you found a better more elegant way ?



I don't bother. Just one patch per Kontakt instance.


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## Rob Elliott (Feb 18, 2017)

For Instrument RACKS - in my large template, will turning OFF the specific 'instrument rack' save on CPU resources (until needing to use said instrument rack). I don't see that it does. (turning off a few)


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## ZeroZero (Feb 18, 2017)

Rob Elliott said:


> For Instrument RACKS - in my large template, will turning OFF the specific 'instrument rack' save on CPU resources (until needing to use said instrument rack). I don't see that it does. (turning off a few)


If you mean disabling by "turning off". Only when all the instruments of a rack are disabled, only then does the rack unload . If you have 10 instruments in a rack, then you don't want 9 of them and disable their tracks, they remain in RAM, until the 10th instrument is also disabled. This is my understanding.


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## Rob Elliott (Feb 18, 2017)

ZeroZero said:


> If you mean disabling by "turning off". Only when all the instruments of a rack are disabled, only then does the rack unload . If you have 10 instruments in a rack, then you don't want 9 of them and disable their tracks, they remain in RAM, until the 10th instrument is also disabled. This is my understanding.


Yea EVERY one of my instrument racks is a VEP instance (for the slaves) - so Ram is not really what I was looking for (all machines are 64 gb ram) - just CPU cycles for the main Daw puter. Hope that makes sense.


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