By default, in the latest version of Studio One, when you load an instance of Impact XT, only its main output will appear in the Console. To see the other potential outputs, open the Instrument Rack in the Console sidebar.
Get the most out of your multi‑output instruments in Studio One.
In the early days of Studio One, you could easily find yourself overwhelmed by instrument output channels. Load up an instance of Impact XT, and you’d have to scroll sideways through a slew of outputs in the Console looking for your active tracks. Dealing with virtual instruments with multiple outputs seemed to be more of a game of whack‑a‑mole than a useful and creative way to split sounds out to different channels. These days, with the more mature Studio One, outputs are handled with a lot more nuance, and instead of crowding out the mixer, you have to go actively in search of them.
So, in this workshop, we’re going to look at what happened to all those outputs, and explore how to use and manage them in your project, whether you’re using stock Studio One instruments or third‑party plug‑ins.
But why would you want to use multiple outputs on a virtual instrument? Usually, multiple outputs are available on instruments that can produce more than one sound at a time. So, for instance, if you are using a virtual drum kit, you might want to mix the individual drum sounds in the Studio One Console. Or if the virtual instrument is multitimbral, like Kontakt or SampleTank, then having each sound on a separate output gives you more mixing versatility and saves you from having to load up multiple instances of the same plug‑in.
Impact XT
Impact XT was once the biggest culprit for output‑drowning, but now it loads up with a sensible and sober single‑channel strip. So, where have the 16 mono and 16 stereo outputs for each pad gone? They are still there, but won’t be available until you activate them. As you load up different presets, you may find that additional outputs are already set up for you, but you still might not be able to see them in the Console.
The Impact channel you see in the Console is the main output for that instrument. All other sub‑outputs are routed to it by default. If any of them are active, you can reveal them by clicking on the little folder icon (‘show sub channels’), right beneath the fader, next to the little keyboard icon that brings up the instrument GUI. As an example, load up the ‘Chill Hop’ preset, and Impact will generate eight stereo sub‑channels that will appear to the right of the main Impact channel strip.
Here’s a quick tip if you are loading older projects into Studio One 7. Impact output channels from older projects will continue to exist independently and clutter up your Console. However, if you right‑click on the first Impact channel, you can select Create Instrument Bus, and Studio One will roll up the channels into a folder just as if you’d loaded a fresh instance of Impact.
The Multi Instrument plug‑in lets you load multiple virtual instruments and create splits and layers. However, it won’t show individual outputs for Impact XT unless those outputs are enabled in the Impact preset.
To get a full overview of what’s going on, you should enable Channel List and Show Instrument Rack from the Console sidebar. The Channel List is the bottom icon of four lines, and the Instrument Rack is the little keyboard. The Channel List will show you which channels are active in the Console. As you toggle the sub‑channels folder button on the main Impact channel strip, you’ll see them greyed out when hidden. You can click in the Channel List to quickly navigate to a channel in the Console.
The Instrument Rack is one of the places where you can activate outputs.
The Instrument Rack is one of the places where you can activate outputs. To view the available outputs, click on the name of the instrument (not the little down arrow, which is for other options). You then tick the boxes alongside the outputs you want to activate. This process is the same for all multiple‑output instruments. Initially, it looks like all the outputs are routed to themselves — for example, ‘Impact St 5’ is routed to ‘Impact St 5’. This is simply showing the destination of the fixed output from Impact. You can rename the destination channel strip to your liking. So you might route the snare to output 5 in Impact, but if you rename that channel to ‘Snare’, the instrument rack would now show that ‘Impact St 5’ is routed to ‘Snare’.
To allocate outputs within Impact, you click on the bottom right of each pad, where you can assign that specific pad to any mono or stereo output of your choosing. All of the allocated outputs and channel names will be shown in the list. Just be aware that you can route them to inactive channels, so if you’re not hearing a pad, go back to the Instrument Rack and make sure the selected output has a tick next to it.
The Multi Instrument Plug‑in
The Multi Instrument plug‑in is a powerful tool that lets you combine different virtual instruments into a single instrument. You can layer up sounds, split your keyboard, add Note FX and create fabulously complex combinations. As far as the Console is concerned, all it shows is the main output bus for the whole Multi Instrument. Thankfully, there’s a little folder icon: click on that and all the sub‑channels are revealed, whereupon you’ll be able to see the outputs for each instrument within the Multi Instrument on their own channels.
Curiously, though, using a multi‑output instrument within Multi Instrument doesn’t seem to give you all the access you’d expect. There’s no folder button for Impact sub‑channels, and the output options do not appear in the Instrument Rack. However, if you have enabled outputs in the preset then they will appear when you load it. It’s a bit of an anomaly which should hopefully get some attention in a future update.
Making Kontakt
Are third‑party plug‑ins treated in the same way, or do we have to approach them differently? Let’s look at Kontakt from Native Instruments. For this, I’m using the free Kontakt 8 Player, but the way this works should be similar for earlier and more complete versions.
To see the individual outputs in Kontakt, you must switch it to Classic view. To enable outputs, click on the Output Port Setup button in the plug‑in header at the top.
In its latest version, the detail of how Kontakt can be set up has been smoothed away so that you can get on with loading and playing the libraries without any bother. However, we want to bother about the outputs, and so the first thing you need to do is switch to Classic mode in the View menu. When you load an instrument you should now be able to see the Header, which contains the instrument name and preset and a few other bits of information like panning, level and tuning. Click the little ‘i’ button next to the camera (snapshot) icon to see more information. You should now be able to see output, MIDI channel, voices and so on. Click on the output option, and you can route that instrument to any of the available outputs within Kontakt. This does not yet have any wider connection to the Console in Studio One than the single mixed output.
To activate the outputs from Kontakt in Studio One we can use the Instrument Rack in the Console as we did with Impact, or we can use the Port Setup button at the top of the Studio One plug‑in header. At the top of the GUI, above the actual Kontakt plug‑in, there’s a pair of icons with arrows. The one where the arrow is pointing away from the line is the one we need. Click on it and you’ll be able to activate all the outputs you need, which will appear as sub‑channels in the Console.
Using the Studio One Console will give you much better mixing and automation facilities, plus access to all the PreSonus and third‑party effects.
Kontakt has its own internal mixer, which you can bring up from the View menu when in Classic view. You can set levels, rename outputs, and load other Native Instruments effects. You can configure the mixer manually by adding strips one at a time, or, perhaps more efficiently, you can select a factory configuration that will load a good selection of stereo and mono channels for you. It’s not particularly sophisticated, though, so actually using the Studio One Console will give you much better mixing and automation facilities, plus access to all the PreSonus and third‑party effects.
I should add that all the instruments you load into Konkakt will respond to all MIDI channels when in Omni mode, and so will play together if you connect a MIDI keyboard or sequence them from a track in Studio One. If that’s not what you want, then, in the same ‘i’ panel, you can assign the instruments different MIDI channels in order to address them separately. Then you can create additional MIDI tracks in Studio One to play and sequence the instruments independently. There are some interesting connections here when you set this up that you might find helpful, so let’s go through the steps.
You already have Kontakt loaded, with a few instruments, running to different outputs that you have enabled. Set each instrument to its own MIDI channel. Add a new instrument track in the Studio One arrange window. Open the Inspector for the new track, and you’ll find the output/input section just above the channel strip. The Out part is where you select the instrument you are routing the track to, and we want that to be the already loaded Kontakt. Next to that is usually the MIDI channel number. This now seems to be called Instrument Channel and is listed as Event Inputs, with a number that looks a lot like a MIDI channel number. Let’s assume these are the same thing and that PreSonus have done one of their strange non‑standard naming things, and select the relevant channel for the instrument you wish to play. Then, a step or two underneath, you’ll find Channel: this is where you can select the output you want to associate this track with. With those connections all made, you can rename the track to reflect the instrument you are using, and the channel in the Console will follow suit. It only sounds complicated because some of Studio One’s naming conventions are a little opaque, but it really is obvious once you’ve done it a couple of times.
One Good Reason
The Reason Rack plug‑in is another popular multi‑output instrument. Reason Rack has its own mixing Consoles that you can load and patch together within the plug‑in... but there’s also a simpler and more automatic way. As you load instruments into the Rack, their outputs are automatically wired to the I/O Device module at the top of the rack. With the To Main buttons lit, all the outputs will be summed to the main Reason Rack output in the Studio One Console. However, if you enable the outputs (as you did with Kontakt and Impact) then you can deselect the To Main button to route an instrument directly to its own output in the Console. I really appreciate the simplicity of that.
Enabling outputs for the Reason Rack works much as it does for Kontakt. With outputs enabled, turning off the To Main button for a channel at the top of the GUI will automatically route it to a channel in the Console.
Once you are making full use of the multiple outputs from your multi‑output instrument, then each one can be treated the same as any other channel in the Console. This means you have panning and level control, mute and solo, insert and send effect options, icons, scribble strips, and you can even create different submix busses to group the outputs of certain instruments or certain parts to one fader. You also have full automation control over the mixing of these instruments, and can record or draw movements into the track.
This gives you masses of versatility without crowding out your Console with unused outputs, making for a much smoother and more useful experience.