Embedded Racks in Cantabile Lite

Brad -

Cantabile Lite now supports embedded racks!

Racks let you organize the plugins in a song into self contained units. eg: combine your favourite instrument and effect and group it into a single unit.

To create a rack, click the Add Object button and choose “Embedded Rack”. You notice a new panel appear at the bottom of the main window that shows the contents of the rack. In this rack you can insert and connect plugins just like in the main song file.

You’ll notice in the above screen shot that the rack has its own MIDI In, MIDI Out, Stereo In and Stereo Out ports that the plugins in the rack can connect to. It’s through these ports that the song communicates with the rack.

ie: in the above example:

  • The Main Keyboard is connected to the Rack’s MIDI In
  • The Rack’s MIDI In is connected to the Jupiter plugin
  • Jupiter’s Stereo Out is connected to the Abbey Road Plates plugin
  • Abbey Road’s Stereo Out is connected to the Rack’s Stereo Out
  • The Rack’s Stereo Out is connected to the main speakers.

You can also customize the set of ports on a rack by right clicking it in the parent song file and choosing “Audio Ports” and/or “MIDI Ports”

Sharing Racks Between Songs

Cantabile Performer supports shared linked racks where the rack is saved to a separate file and can be directly re-used across multiple songs.

Solo and Lite don’t support linked racks but you can re-use racks across songs by copying them:

  • Use copy/paste — right-click on the rack in the song and select “Copy” and then paste in the other song.
  • Exporting racks — open the rack and choose File -> Save Rack Copy As… to export the rack to a separate file. Then insert in the target file by choosing Add Object -> Embedded Rack (From File).

Available Now

Embedded racks in Cantabile Lite are available now in the latest builds. Enjoy!