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Old 04-16-2008, 10:10 AM   #44
inthepipeline
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Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Bristol, UK. Slowly sinking island next to mainland Europe
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Norbury(tee hee)

I was getting a little fed up with inthepipeline. That too was the name of my studio. Shortly it is to be the name of my little recording school and I also own inthepipeline.net (nothing there at the moment), but it seems Ian is just as sensible to use, except on the whole *I* is slightly more memorable, and the buttons are right next to each other on the keyboard. Perhaps a sign of lazyness!

We are talking about the same setting. This sets the range over which the Reaper faders operate.
Your mention of this has interested me in the way the envelopes and faders function in relationship to each other.

This a little hard to explain, but I'll have a crack at it.
Set a track up in Reaper to display the volume envelope and move the fader around so that you can see how the envelope moves relative to the fader movement.

The fader tracking law (that is to say, the law used to control Reapers internal faders)don't seem to be either linear or log in its behaviour.
[edit: previous remark is a load of bo****ks! It would be more accurate to say that it can be log, greater or less than log or set at "1", Linear]

Whatever law is used, seems to be biased toward easily obtaning an output of unity gain. In other words the difference in output level changes far less around odB than at the top or bottom end of the travel. As I know that you still use "X" you will know how hard it is to set a fader to 0dB without the double click, or entering "0" into the numerical display below a fader.
I'm not quite sure why Justin and co decided to do this. We can double click on the numeric level on Reapers faders to set them to 0dB as well.
[edit:Stupid remark!]

It does however have implications for editing envelopes, because the envelopes display a linear fade regardless of how the fader law is set.

[edit:The automation point, however, moves with a log relationship toward the linear movement of the fader.
So, if the fader is set to Log, the automation point moves with a curve which is twice Log]

So, the fader position is not accurately represented on the envelope curve. This is quite peculiar behaviour. Perhaps the most important parts of the fader are represented IMHO in quite a bad way, much as I hate to put Reaper down in any way at all.

To begin with, it would be much better if the envelope for the fader appeared with its 0dB line relative to where 0dB is on the fader, rather than in the middle of the lane.

At the top of the fader (+6dB upwards) the envelope does not represent any movement in the fader at all. Above this level you can see any points at which the level was changed, but you can't edit them because the envelope information will always reflect a change of less than +6dB. So the automation curve can only be edited by physically moving the fader, not on screen.

The same thing applies to the travel at the bottom of the fader.
Everything below around -30dB (around 30% of the fader travel) is represented in around 3% of the envelope at the bottom of the lane.

The combination of these two factors is not a good one.
This amounts to lack of control of both "volume" and automation in the most sensitive parts of the loudness spectrum.

I'm obviously aware that it is possible to change the range over which the faders work. If this is set to "1" the faders function in a linear fashion, but relative to the automation envelopes, the only options presently available are to display between inf. and 0dB or inf. and +6dB. To work more effectively we would require an option to have "display envelope relative to fader position(linear)".

I do hope that Justin and Co. consider this as an option. It would certainly make volume automation much easier.

[edit: Also now entered on the "Feature Request" forum]

*I*
Ian
inthepipeline
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Last edited by inthepipeline; 04-16-2008 at 11:28 AM.
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