Inactive Instrument tracks - MIDI still plays!

[gonzolagonda]

Anyone else seen this? Deleting the inactive instrument tracks stopped them playing(!) but before doing that I was getting the MIDI from Inactive (hidden) tracks playing a rewired Reason instrument and causing some confusion! Mad.

[Ozzie]

It's always been this way.

[mhmh]

....I was getting the MIDI from Inactive (hidden) tracks

I hope you did´nt mean that hiding a track makes it inactive?

I know that muting an instrument track does´nt stop its MIDI from playing, I have´nt tried making them inactive.

[Giles Reaves]

Use the mute button on the MIDI section of the Instrument track if you want to mute MIDI data. This works for active or inactive instrument tracks.

[jeremyroberts]

This is a fundamental design flaw of the so-called "instrument track" --

I raised this point about 10 minutes after 7.0 was released. I'm disappointed that all my talks with PT product managers didn't do anything on this for 7.2 or 7.3 -- someone high up must really like it this way.

The flaw is calling it an instrument "track". It's not. It is basically an aux track with a midi track slapped on top. You give up many powerful features of a midi track in order to lay it on top of an audio aux... I'll use them, but always know that it's a flawed solution...

My top-3 list of required improvements to the instrument track include:

1. option so that midi mute follows audio mute (or mute can be designated as midi or aux - for control surfaces)
2. option to "flip faders" - use midi volume instead of aux volume on the fader (again, for control surfaces)
3. inactive track must mute midi and make all resources on the track disappear (the only true way to make a midi track inactive is to remove its channel assignment, since simply muting it does not factor in any midi mute writes)

I don't expect these features to make the software, since it's been 14 months since the instrument track surfaced, and in this year+, there have been many opportunities to solve the "inactive track disables midi" issue... as I said, I'm guessing someone high-up the food chain wants it to be like this.

In my opinion, it's sloppy interface design. But that's how it is. :-(

[jeremyroberts]

Use the mute button on the MIDI section of the Instrument track if you want to mute MIDI data. This works for active or inactive instrument tracks.

no it doesn't if you're already using midi mutes as automation data. the only way to disable a midi track is to remove the midi assignment.

[mhmh]

I absolutely agree with Jeremy.

And unless Digidesign starts to copy some of the MIDI features of Logic or Cubase,
these programs will always be the better choice when it comes to MIDI-Arrangement.

Martin

[gonzolagonda]

Yes this really is very poor implementation, if you didn't know (as I didn't), you wouldn't expect an "Inactive" track to be still gurgling away!