The Live Channel
Live is the performer. Every other ring on the deck is finished audio, and finished audio does not go through an amp. Live is the one channel with an input, a plugin chain, monitoring, and MIDI. The recorder gives that to every track. Here it is gathered onto one strip, because there is one person playing.
The rack under the platter is the chain. The first strip in the console is the level. They are the same channel.
Where Live is listening
The first pill on the rack is the source. Tap it to open the input picker, the same one the recorder uses.
| What the pill says | What Live hears |
|---|---|
| Mic | Nothing has been chosen, and there is no instrument plugin loaded. The phone’s microphone, or whatever is plugged in and left as the default. |
| In, with a channel pair | An input you picked: an interface channel, a specific mic, a stereo pair. |
| A piano icon and a plugin name | An instrument is on the chain, and you have not picked a hardware input over it. Live hears that instrument. |
An instrument and a hardware input cannot both be the source. If you pick an input, that input wins, and the instrument’s own output is no longer what gets monitored. Pick the instrument again, or clear the input, to come back.
You cannot change the source while a take is recording.
Monitoring
MONITOR is the header of the Live strip. Orange means you can hear the input. Red means a take is in progress. Dim means Live is silent, which is the right state for a microphone in a room with a speaker.
A microphone is never monitored unless you press the key yourself. Arming it automatically would put the speaker back into the mic. An instrument is different: it cannot feed back, so turning MIDI on, or playing a note into it, will monitor Live for you.
Recording always monitors. If you press record with monitoring off, it comes on before the take starts. It stays on after you stop, so the next take does not begin with a hunt for the key.
Headphones are the practical answer for a mic. The orange key is doing what the recorder’s monitor state does on an armed track. See Arming Tracks & Input Monitoring.
Plugins
Live has four slots, in a row, the same number a recorder track has. The rack shows only the ones that are loaded, in order, and one button to add the next.
- Tap an empty add button to open the plugin browser.
- Tap a loaded plugin to open its editor.
- Hold a loaded plugin for Open Editor or Remove Plugin.
A new plugin lands after the last one, which is where the add button is sitting. Order is the order of the chain: an amp before a delay is an amp you then delay.
These are the same AUv3 plugins as the recorder, including homecrate’s own. Loading, bypass, and the editor work the same way. See AUv3 Plugins Overview and Loading & Removing Plugins.
What is different is where the chain sits. It is only on Live. A layer you already recorded will not pick up a plugin you load afterwards. If you want the amp in the loop, load it before you record the loop. If you are playing over stems, a dry mic take is the exception: it plays back through this chain, so you can still change the sound after the fact. See Recording.
MIDI
The MIDI pill on the rack opens MIDI to Live.
| Row | What you set |
|---|---|
| On / Off | Whether notes and CC reach Live at all. |
| From | Any device, or one connected controller by name. |
| Channel | Omni, or a single channel from 1 to 16. |
| To | Which plugin on the chain receives them. |
The To row lists instruments, and effects that actually have a MIDI input. homecrate amp’s MIDI version is one of those: notes and CC move its controls. The ordinary audio version of the same plugin does not appear, because it has nothing to receive. If nothing on the chain can take MIDI, the row offers Add an instrument, which opens the browser into a free slot.
Turning MIDI on also turns monitoring on, and only when Live is hearing an instrument. It will not open a microphone for you.
The keyboard button in the header appears once there is somewhere for notes to go. It is the recorder’s on-screen keyboard, and it plays whichever plugin MIDI is aimed at. It follows the left-handed setting from the recorder, so a keyboard that opens on the right over there opens on the right here. Its record key starts a take when the deck is stopped. Playing a key will arm monitoring, on the same rule as a hardware note: instruments only.
A controller you already use with the recorder works here. Bluetooth and USB MIDI both show up in From once the system sees them.
Takes
The reels pill at the end of the rack opens Takes. The badge is how many you have. A number on the badge, rather than a count, means one of them is the take currently playing.
Live input only clears the selection. You hear the input, if you are monitoring, and nothing you recorded.
Tap a take to play it on Live. It shows up as the inner ring of the deck, placed where you recorded it in the song. On a stem set this is how a performance comes back: the stems stay put, and your part rides the inner ring through the Live channel.
On a performance, recorded loops are listed above the takes, with their color and length. They are layers, not Live takes. Deleting one takes it off the deck and off the console. Clear all removes every recorded loop and leaves imported audio where it is. You cannot delete a loop or a take while recording.
Sharing a take is covered in Recording.