So, I am new school to producing. Using VST’s solely.
Ive gotten to a point to where I wanted to explore some other routes and hardware units with my vst.
Well I had the chance to visit a good friend of mine who has some hardware stuff. He had a G-series SSL compressor. And… I probably do not need to tell you what my reaction was when I heard some of the stuff run through this.
ANYWAY I have decided I would like to pick up some hardware stuff (particularly a compressor to start off with) to add that extra fullness, punchiness to my tracks. But i’ve never routed anything in ableton before!
I am going to assume its as follows:
In ableton
-Track 1: has drums
-I want to run track 1 through the compressor (to beef up the drums lets say) and have it come back.
Would I simply? Set the Audio to Ext to one of the outs on my Soundcard that runs into the IN of the compressor? and then have the out of the compressor go to the in on the soundcard.
Now my question is, do I have a blank audio channel that monitors one of these ins or? how do I bounced this compressed sound to the master?
What about a mastering chain? same deal?
AND last question:
Is there some sort of hardware/software toggle or something that would allow me to configure routing without having to always switch wires around? I’m sure there is something out there like that.
Anyway thanks in advance. Hope I don’t sound too stupid! 
I’m drawing blank.
[quote]hazeion (18/05/2011)[hr]So, I am new school to producing. Using VST’s solely.
Ive gotten to a point to where I wanted to explore some other routes and hardware units with my vst.
Well I had the chance to visit a good friend of mine who has some hardware stuff. He had a G-series SSL compressor. And… I probably do not need to tell you what my reaction was when I heard some of the stuff run through this.
ANYWAY I have decided I would like to pick up some hardware stuff (particularly a compressor to start off with) to add that extra fullness, punchiness to my tracks. But i’ve never routed anything in ableton before!
I am going to assume its as follows:
In ableton
-Track 1: has drums
-I want to run track 1 through the compressor (to beef up the drums lets say) and have it come back.
Would I simply? Set the Audio to Ext to one of the outs on my Soundcard that runs into the IN of the compressor? and then have the out of the compressor go to the in on the soundcard.
Now my question is, do I have a blank audio channel that monitors one of these ins or? how do I bounced this compressed sound to the master?
What about a mastering chain? same deal?
AND last question:
Is there some sort of hardware/software toggle or something that would allow me to configure routing without having to always switch wires around? I’m sure there is something out there like that.
Anyway thanks in advance. Hope I don’t sound too stupid!
I’m drawing blank.[/quote]
yeh pretty much!
you can set up your return tracks to go out to your compressor by sending the output to a particular output on your soundcard
then create another audio track to monitor the input from the channels that your external unit is returning on.
you will need to set up your original source to be sending to “sends only” if you want a 100% wet mix back again.
i can imagine it might get a little messy and would advise you set yourself up a nice template for starting your project up.