Hitting "E" will bypass all FX bins -- which can be useful. But I need something more specific -- 

I do a lot of tracks that mix vocals and instrumentation. So I will have, say, six vocal tracks and 30 instrument tracks. 

The signal chain for my vocal FX bin has about 150ms of delay. This is fine for playback, because everything in the track is just delay-compensated.

For recording MIDI virtual instruments, this 150ms delay is almost unworkable. Since my INSTRUMENT FX are all low-latency, when I RECORD MIDI I would like to just bypass the vocal FX bins. 

I would LOVE to be able to "GROUP, " for example, SIX vocal tracks together and hit ONE key to bypass only THEIR FX bins . . .   without bypassing every FX BIN in the project (which is what "E" does). 

Yes, I could freeze the vocal tracks . . . or I could right-click on each one's FX bin to bypass it manually . . .  But I go back and forth a lot and that's cumbersome. 

I also find it interesting that when a track is muted, its FX bin is not automatically bypassed. My dream would be to select a group of tracks to be muted and have their FX bins bypassed with one key press. 


Does anybody know if there's a way to move toward these results?

http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/FeatureRequest.asp

Why don't you put the efx on a buss? Then all your vocals are sent to that buss and all you do is mute the efxs on that buss. 

You can have dozens of buss's 

I never track with any Fx plugs active, just to avoid the latency they introduce

I never track with any Fx plugs active, just to avoid the latency they introduce

Yes Ditto here too. Once I figured out WHY I sometimes would be experiencing latency I have always hit the bypass all efx bins toggle while tracking.  Even if it's just a few ms? that's enough to mush up your recordings. 

Johnny - in the bad old days this was the normal thing to do anyway.

Nothing would get recorded until the band knew how to play the song (mostly )


Because of the enormous amount of options available at all stages of the recording process, the lines between tracking/mixing/mastering have become increasingly blurred thanks to the technology available, so to my mind, bypassing all Fx is a necessary part of tracking - I'm not mixing - I'm tracking.

If I need to monitor what I'm recording with Fx then there are several ways to do this - it might only be an approximation of what it will end up sounding like, but it should be really easy to set it up, either via hardware or by using some of the ever increasing number of Fx plugs onboard a lot of modern interfaces.

tayzonday

For recording MIDI virtual instruments, this 150ms delay is almost unworkable. Since my INSTRUMENT FX are all low-latency, when I RECORD MIDI I would like to just bypass the vocal FX bins. 

If I understand correctly, what you are referring to as "INSTRUMENT FX" are your soft synths.
And you are inserting them in the FX bins of audio tracks.
If so, you might want to try inserting the soft synths from the tool bar instead. Select the appropriate synth audio outputs.
This configures the audio tracks as dedicated outputs for the synths, and bypassing all of the FX bins will not impact your instruments.

Ya I didn't understand what he was talking about there either. Bypassing the efxs bins should have nothing to do with MIDI. Anyways , the OP is not engaged here, yet another post and leave.  

RobertB

tayzonday

For recording MIDI virtual instruments, this 150ms delay is almost unworkable. Since my INSTRUMENT FX are all low-latency, when I RECORD MIDI I would like to just bypass the vocal FX bins. 

If I understand correctly, what you are referring to as "INSTRUMENT FX" are your soft synths.
And you are inserting them in the FX bins of audio tracks.
If so, you might want to try inserting the soft synths from the tool bar instead. Select the appropriate synth audio outputs.
This configures the audio tracks as dedicated outputs for the synths, and bypassing all of the FX bins will not impact your instruments.

Thanks for the reply Robert! By "instrument FX" I mean the zero-latency audio FX that I apply on the audio output of MIDI-controlled soft synths. These usually consist of EQ, gain and "non-lookahead" compression. 

For example, because iZotope Alloy is real-time (no latency) -- I have no reason to bypass the 65 instances of iZotope Alloy I might have on 40 soft-synth audio tracks. This is different than my vocal FX chain which has audio FX which add latency. 

Cactus Music


Ya I didn't understand what he was talking about there either. Bypassing the efxs bins should have nothing to do with MIDI. Anyways , the OP is not engaged here, yet another post and leave.  

Thanks Cactus Music! This question might clarify your bewilderment:  "Do you need your mix to sound close-to-final while you are tracking MIDI?" 

My answer to this question is, resoundingly, "YES." 

If you are not dependent on the sound of your mix when you are tracking MIDI, then  absolutely -- bypassing Audio FX bins to eliminate latency should have nothing to do with the mechanics of MIDI input.