Solved odd behaviour when adding instruments to an ens

Hi,

I am trying to follow videotutorials.

When I add an instrument, I notice the following things which seem peculiar:
- right-clicking in the edit view brings up built-in modules (I can also enter-search for them), but the right-click menu item "Library" does not show the factory library content, but only a "Load" option.
- The browser does show the factory library content as expected
- when I add an instrument to a new ensemble by dragging it from the browser into the edit view, it gets its own title pane with A|B view and snapshots, but the new.ens title pane with A|B view remains unaffected in the ensemble view. When I add another instrument (FX, Sequencers), they don't have a title pane at all. In the video I am watching (Reaktor 5) every instrument has its own title pane. Also that empty title pane of new.ens seems to be just wrong, I thought I was adding an instrument to that ensemble?
- Therefore, I cannot drag and rearrange the subsequent instruments I added as they do not have a title pane I could grab with the mouse.

So, should the right-click menu item lead to the factory library content, just like the browser does? What is happening there with the empty new.ens and those title panes of the instruments I add?
The actual sound and connections are fine, I can have a sequencer feed midi into a synth instrument and affect this with delay and reverb, e.g.

 

Yes, it should. But not the Player content I think.
My install is messed up in this regard - I get Library stuff, but it points to Blocks from a pre Patch and Play version. But I don't use right click for that stuff, so I never got around to fixing it.

If you select the instrument, or the ensemble (click the background in the edit pane when at top level), then choose the view tab in the properties pane, you can toggle 'Show Header', 'Show A/B Buttons' etc. which will then allow you to drag those suckers around, select snapshots, and whatever else...

 

Ok, so I can do this with the FM4 synthesizer from the factory library, but not with for example Carbon (category synths) and Cyan (category effects). Those do not have these options in the view tab. Why are these off for those instruments? And how do you rearrange those entitites in case you are not happy with how they are laid out?

Also, I still have this behaviour where the added ensembles do not end up in the Pane of new.ens. That sits there kind of empty while the new instruments get added besides it - How would I put the added ensembles or instruments on the top level pane of new.ens? It's kind of baffling. I mean, I can wire them up alright, but structurally speaking this can't be right, can it?

Hey, after your reply I fumbled around with my installation again and got it working and maybe this can help you, too. I changed the directory of my library factory in the directories tab, but I could only ever get either the factory library ensembles to show up in the browser or the Primary/Core modules and macros. So, only when I put the factory library folder inside Reaktor 6/Library where the Primary/Core folders reside could I get both to show up in the browser and also the library in the right-click menu.

 

Yes, I just haven't got around to setting it all up.
In the past, I had a setup with a directory that Reaktor pointed to for my user library that had symlinks to other directories in it. That way you can have multiple different directories all in the list. It's a hassle to setup symlinks in windows though . It means that you can basically add anything you like to the context menu by adding another symlink. No need to copy everything to the same directory.

 

But you wouldn't happen to know why some ensembles can be configured to show the headers and others can't?
Also, can only macros and modules added to an ensemble or what is happening there with the added ensembles not ending up in the pane of new.ens?

 

AFAIK they all can. certainly all the ones you've mentioned can have headers, snapshot selectors etc. toggled. You just need to make sure you are selecting the top level instrument container (or the main ensemble) rather than some GUI element. Sometimes this is easier to achieve in the edit pane instead of the panel.

Yeah, that always was a strange one.
I think part of it is that you might have controls or other GUI items that are directly part of the top level ensemble, so you need a pane for them to reside on. But in general the idea of a monolithic single entity is an instrument rather than an ensemble. So if you want all elements to be encapsulated in the same pane with a title bar, that is an instrument. But even then, if you load an instrument into another instrument, their GUIs will tile separately in auto layout mode.
You can turn off auto layout, and have things overlapping, so you could have a large empty ensemble background and drag the internal instruments over that. Not sure if that works well or not though as I don't use it. Reaktor in general is tricky when it comes to getting GUI layers to stay in the right order I can imagine accidentally selecting that background and have all the other stuff suddenly disappear as the background layer comes to the front... :-\

 

Ok,
I made sure to select Carbon in the edit pane and realized that while "show headers" was activated, "on" was not. When I activated that, Carbon's header along with buttons for A/B view show up NEXT TO the Carbon instrument. That way, I can reposition the empty pane by dragging Carbon's detached header, while the actual instrument/ensemble of Carbon stays unaffected where it's placed. This looks really wrong to me. Same with Cyan. Weird. When you add Cyan (FX) or Carbon (Synths), do they behave differently in your setup?

 

how are you loading these in?

 

Drag and drop from the browser into the structure pane

 

Are you dragging an ensemble into another (empty/new) ensemble? That is allowed, but maybe not what you want?

 

I am.
Right now, I am not actually trying to accomplish anything. I am just following tutorials and the manuals. And this odd behaviour is something I can not clear up following either of those ressources. The video tutorials on reaktortutorials for begginers are done on Reaktor 5 and there, for the added ensembles in the lessons on how to wire up instruments and how to build using macros this problem does not exist.

There is a difference between those instruments where switching the header on leads to the header and the instrument showing up in the same pane and those where the header shows up detached from the instrument. And I am baffled by this and want to understand the difference. I would still love to hear if this is just the case on my setup or a general behaviour, hence the two specific examples I gave.

I feel like I have not understood something very basic, maybe? Or is this erratic or cryptic behaviour normal?

 

Each ‘instrument’ in Reaktor has its own panel. An Ensemble is a collection of instruments or other objects. An ensemble has its own panel that is separate from the panels of the instruments it contains. The ensemble’s panel will show objects, like knobs or macros, that are in the top level of the ensemble.

An ensemble can’t contain another ensemble. Therefore If you drag and drop an ensemble file into the structure view of an ensemble, Reaktor will convert the drag and dropped ensemble into an instrument.

I’m not sure, but I’m guessing that the ‘Carbon’ ensemble you are dragging into the structure view contains an instrument with simple audio connections in and out of an ensemble. And the panel of that ensemble is not visible. Only the ‘Carbon’ instrument panel is set to visible (but no header).

By dragging the ensemble file into the blank ensemble ‘Carbon's’ containing ensemble will have been converted to an instrument. So you need to open this converted instrument up by double clicking on it, then you will find the actual ‘Carbon’ instrument inside it. Select this instrument and make the header visible.

Hopefully that makes sense.

 

That made sense and it also worked! Thanks! I feel I can finally close that file, hahaha. It just bugs me when I don't really understand something when I am learning stuff. I could basically have waved it away while continuing with the tutorials, but I just wanted to know what is going on. Indeed there is another level inside that converted instrument and I can switch on the header on that.

Thanks a lot!