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Easier FX Routing Display Issue Tools
issueid=1018 08-21-2009 09:26 AM
Human being with feelings
Easier FX Routing Display
Rather than having to route each effect separately to each other, why not have one fx routing window to do it all in?

Rather than having to route each effect separately to each other, why not have one fx routing window to do it all in? Something like this would be great that you could access from the FX Chain view/window. This also makes it real easy and fast to be able to trace a tracks and all its channels signal path/route. The 'io' on the right side would open each fx plug-in pin connector.
[img]http://img259.**************/img259/2654/routingfx.png[/img]
(Edited image to add +/- instead of 'io' for pin adjustments and to add an extra pixel of border between stereo pairs for easier differentiation.)
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Issue Details
Issue Type Closed Issue
Project Deprecated REAPER issue tracker
Category Plugins
Status Duplicate
Priority 5 - Medium
Affected Version 3.102
Closed Version (none)
Yes votes 55
No votes 0
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)

08-21-2009 09:40 AM
Human being with feelings
 
What a great idea!

What are those tiny i/o buttons about when you could have a +/- button instead to increase/decrease the pin count.
08-21-2009 09:57 AM
Human being with feelings
 
... and if it were implemented for MIDI channels too :)
08-21-2009 10:03 AM
Human being with feelings
 
What DarkStar said, if it could have both audio and MIDI in the same window, it would result in a major workflow speedup.
08-21-2009 10:41 AM
Human being with feelings
 
*Just like the FX plug-in pin connector, it is for Audio and MIDI universally, so this would be as well. It is really up to the plug-in to decide whether it is Audio or MIDI only or both.

Airon, good thought on the pins...I edited the mockup.

*Found out that REAPER does not currently accept MIDI in the plug-in pin connector, only MIDI/fx outputs, which is audio. Maybe a future feature- would be cool.
08-21-2009 12:02 PM
Human being with feelings
 
I LOVE the routing flexibility that Reaper offers, and I HATE how difficult it is to dart through seperate windows to see what's happening. This FR would allow Reaper's routing power to live up to its full potential. Big fat +1.
08-21-2009 12:49 PM
-blänk-
 
Very nice idea. And I love the plus and minus buttons ;)

One thought: At least here the bigger lot of routing is done in stereo pairs of channels.
May I propose to have a (very) slight visualization of channel pairs (1/2,3/4 etc)? Maybe an additional pixel more space between channel 2 and 3, 4 and 5 etc. would do alright. I guess this would be yet another request, but while we're at it...

Ah, I see you edited your post re MIDI and the pins...

EDIT: Yes, that's exactly what I meant, labyrinth. Thanks for including it in the mockup :)
08-22-2009 07:25 AM
Human being with feelings
 
Good idea. It'd be even nicer to have visual for the entire FX chain similar to what's in the manual. Something like a visual chain builder.

I'm getting close to wrapping my brain around this routing, but a better visual/interface would go a long way to making it a no-brainer.
08-22-2009 09:55 AM
Human being with feelings
 
+1.This makes sooo much more sense.I can look at that routing matrix you posted & clearly see exactly whats going on instantly.The way it is now,I've had to get out pen & paper before (yeah I know,slightly embarrassing,lol).
08-22-2009 11:21 AM
Human being with feelings
 
I would like to suggest a different view of the connections:
-- rotate the grid by 90 degrees so that the track's channels are represented as lanes,
-- have a vertical gap (repeating the channel numbers) between Instruments and Effects
-- possibly, put the channel numbers in the connected pins boxes (see the lower mock-up).

Here's is a mock-up:

[img]http://img249.**************/img249/5968/r3102dsfxpins02.png[/img]

[img]http://img529.**************/img529/669/r3102dsfxpins04.png[/img]

With this view, I find this easier to see that the Vocoder is receiving channels 1+2 and sending on channels 5+6 and 15+16, Channels 15+16 are received by the EQ and sent on channel 13+14. Finally, channels 9-12 are compressed and the output is on channels 11+12.
08-22-2009 01:32 PM
Human being with feelings
 
I'm fine with this view, but what is all that stuff on the left? Are you combining channel routing (i.e. sends)?
08-22-2009 02:25 PM
Human being with feelings
 
That's a VSTi with 16 output channels, on a 16-channel track. No Sends
08-22-2009 02:47 PM
Human being with feelings
 
Nice idea with the numbers. Must admit it took me a few seconds to see the benefit of the rotated view. Nice development gents.
08-22-2009 03:32 PM
-blänk-
 
I definitely like the horizontal flow of track channels and the numbers. Maybe the pixel spacing between channel pairs should be horizontal then, to put emphasis on the horizontal aspect?

Doing the spacing in both directions could be consequent, but I am afraid it's going to look too plaid :-) .
08-22-2009 03:53 PM
Human being with feelings
 
Well, although I like the idea of adding VSTi routing to the matrix...this is a separate FR, no?
08-22-2009 04:27 PM
Human being with feelings
 
It wouldn't be VSTi routing, just plugin routing.

Must say, the numbers in the patch points do make a difference.
08-22-2009 07:14 PM
Human being with feelings
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by airon
It wouldn't be VSTi routing, just plugin routing...
So, are those just audio outputs for the VSTi?
08-22-2009 11:30 PM
Human being with feelings
 
If the following is viewed as a derail, then please accept my apologies. However, I think it is relevant:

Before revamping the existing system whereby everything would still be viewed through a matrix and not particularly visually intuitive, why not consider a Tracktion-style Racks view? I am not a huge fan of Tracktion, but one of the things they got tremendously right was having a built-in function for visually building complex series/parallel plugin chains. (And, for those familiar with Tracktion, you'll know that they also went a step farther and made Racks into multiple-instance-capable track-bridging monstrosities, which was a clumsy-ass backwards way of allowing sidechaining/external triggering. I'm NOT recommending that.)

Here is some additional discussion of this idea:

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=41221

I think this would make the routing supremely fast to work with (which is what the original FR was all about). That said, if all we got was a simple all-in-one-window way of viewing all the plugins in a given track (as mocked-up above), that would still be a hell of a lot better than the current plugin-by-plugin system of setting up channel routing.
08-22-2009 11:42 PM
Human being with feelings
 
Re: the original mockup idea - It's a good idea, but it overlooks one flaw - you assume that the VST outputs are sequential. Or that I even want to use all them. Suppose I want the VSTs 2nd output on the 3rd channel, and the 3rd output on the 1st channel.

The attached image isn't "typical", but it illustrates what I mean.
08-23-2009 12:39 AM
Banned
 
DarkStar, labyrinth

guys you are great!
Especially the numbered squares in DarkStar's suggestion. Absolutely easy on the mind!
(the default routng matrix in Reaper I do not like anyway)

+ ∞
08-23-2009 06:15 AM
Human being with feelings
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by imMute
Re: the original mockup idea - It's a good idea, but it overlooks one flaw - you assume that the VST outputs are sequential. Or that I even want to use all them. Suppose I want the VSTs 2nd output on the 3rd channel, and the 3rd output on the 1st channel.

The attached image isn't "typical", but it illustrates what I mean.
You can still reroute any output to another channel in DarkStar's mock-up.

***Maybe since there is all of this development going on (as I never expected) this should be moved to the forum....moderators?***
08-23-2009 07:51 AM
Human being with feelings
 
Better-looking representation of the numbers:

[img]http://img522.**************/img522/7793/r3102dstrackchannels05.png[/img]

-- keep the highlighted square indicating a connection, and display the numbers in the background colour (using ClearType here)
08-23-2009 01:46 PM
Human being with feelings
 
Nice addition.
08-24-2009 05:54 AM
Human being with feelings
 
I think something was confused along the way, but I want to clarify that I was proposing a way to route on plug-in to another, not mixing the plug-in's own routing and plug-in to plug-in routing.

I think that the plug-in's own routing is handled quite nicely as it is now within the Plug-in pin connector window.

Here's a mock
[img]http://img4.**************/img4/3705/clarity.png[/img]

I added the 'io' buttons so users could open a specific plug-ins internal routing (plug-in pin connector) from this routing window or access all plug-in routing from the plug-in pin connector (nice I thought).

Although it would be nice to route a plug-in's entire routing path (like in the Plug-in pin connector) from the fx to fx routing window (left) it will make things way too confusing and hard to trace a routing path easily.
10-22-2009 06:02 AM
Administrator
 
I'm marking this FR as a duplicate of http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=1326 (this FR was earlier, but that one is more general).

There is a discussion thread for that FR here: http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=44361
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