My wife got me an Octatrack yesterday (LOVE!) and in trying to work out how to flexibly route my synths and vocal chains through to the octa for sampling I really frustrated with the lack of midi support in Apolloās Console as I have to use the mouse to send individual tracks to Cue 3 (which Iāve mirrored to Line Out 7-8, which goes into the Octatrackās Input AB). Nearly pulled the trigger on a Console 1 Mk2 for that reason last night, but decided to sleep over it. so this morning I came up with a workaround.
I set up an instance of Ableton Live with minimal recording buffer (32 samples) as follows: All tracks on Console I am mirroring in Ableton accordingly (eg Analog 4 goes into Line In 1&2, so thereās an audio track in Ableton with ext.in set to Line In 1&2 etc). Set monitoring for each track you want to be able to sample from to IN (in Ableton). Set up an AUX Track in Ableton that Iāve called āCue 3ā. Set its behaviour to āpreā (so that it sends the signal from track to aux regardless of the fader setting on the track being sent). Route the AUX Track āCue 3ā to Apolloās Virtual Inputs 1&2 (link them up in Console for stereo). In Console, set up a Cue (in my case Cue 3) that is set to āCUEā (NOT āMixā) and mirrored to - in my case - Apolloās Line Out 7&8 (or whatever line out your using). Now turn down the track fader for Virtual Input 1&2 all the way (otherwise the signal will end up in your main mix) and turn UP the Cue 3 Send fader (or whichever Cue you chose) for the same Virtual Input 1&2 track. donāt forget to set the Send behaviour to āPreā in Console as well.
With this setup, any track I send to my Aux track āCue 3ā in Ableton will be isolated for sampling in the Octatrack (or MPC1000 or whatever else you use for sampling) while the main mix remains up and running unchanged. And since Ableton can be controlled via MIDI, using a controller with MCU Control (or even just a regular controller with itās faders/knobs mapped to the individual tracksā Aux Channel Cue 3 sends) allows me to decide what to isolate for sampling on the fly by turning a knob on my midi controller.
Also worth mentioning that I am still running all āmonitoringā / live signal through the Apollo Console, so thereās no added latency to the main mix. And with the buffer set to the lowest (possible for your machineā¦I run a speced out 2011 Macbook pro and 32 samples is just about ok) the audio going into the sampler wonāt suffer much latency either so sampling timing is still accurate.
hope this helps someoneā¦I just wish UAD would enable / integrate MIDI or OSC control into Console, would turn it into a killer live rig & effects boardā¦but ok.