Could anyone explain to me the best setup for working with more than one port with Ableton Live? I figured I had to use the Event Input plugin for being able to work with multiple ports per instance, but I can't figure out the best way to route everything. The Event Input plugin is an instrument which doesn't output anything, so I would put it on a track by its own, route the MIDI of every instrument I want to use on that port to its input and then grab the audio from the connected instance, right? That would be easy to do, but I don't see the Event Input channels with the External Instrument device. I placed it on a track by its own and connected it to an instance, assigning it to port 2, but I don't see any option to route the MIDI to it with the External Instrument.
Does that mean I would have to route the output of my instruments' track to the Event Input track and then create another track for receiving the audio from the instance plugin? Hopefully not, as that would clutter up my set very quickly and make it very hard to manage.
Also, how much of a difference does it actually make to use multiple instances versus a single instance with multiple ports? Right now, I would love to have one instance per instrument family (woods, brass, etc...) for logistic reasons, but my percussions and strings will exceed 16 MIDI channels so I will either use the Event Input plugin or add one instance for each family, depending on how easy the Event Input setup ends up being. Which setup would you guys recommend in my case?