Live’s ‘In / Out’ Section is a flexible tool that i use everytime i make a tune.
With it you can route audio & midi signals from one channel into another which will decrease CPU load as you will be able to use less effects & vst’s.

So lets take a look at the ‘In / Out Section’.

1: This is where you can define where you want the audio / midi signal to come from whether its from an another track or an external source such as other software or a soundcard.
2: This is where you can select a channel or subcategory of the input ( defined in 1. ) for this track.
3: This setting is generally left on ‘auto’, unless you are routing audio into the track, where you would then choose ‘in’.
4: This is where you can define where you want to send the audio.
5: This is where you can select a subcategory of the track you are sending audio too.

Now onto two ways you can use the i/o section…

Say you wanted to add a reverb effect onto your drums and a vocal sample… instead of dropping a reverb effect onto each track you could route the two tracks into a third track with a reverb effect like so:

Now onto a method that involves ‘Impulse’:

Drag an impulse preset into a midi channel.
Create a new audio channel by pressing ‘Ctrl + T’.
Now set your i/o section up like so:

As you can see above, ive chose the subcategory of ‘A-Snare Black’ which means that only the snare drum from the ‘drums’ channel is being routed to the ‘reverb fx’ channel.

So as you can see the i/o section can be used for a number of things so go and experiment and have fun!