As we probably all know, some plugins have hundreds, sometimes even thousands (e.g. REAKTOR) of parameters. Still, we may only be interested in controlling a few of them. Since we want to minimize flooding, it makes sense to use a modest number of plugin parameters for a control surface. Yet, if the parameters we want to access become spread out across 'pages', they can not be used simultaneously, and navigating back and forth disrupts the workflow. Also, even for plugins with small numbers of parameters, the parameters are not always ordered in the manner which would best fit our personal preferences.
To solve these problems, the user should somehow be allowed to re-order the parameters of any plugin according to custom preferences. [
EDIT: on second thought, using vstxml may not be such a good idea at all; see my next post below.
EDIT2: Hmm, or maybe it still is after all.] Thus, I think it would be really useful if REAPER could support
vstxml (for more information, see e.g. this document on
VST Parameters Structure;
this documentation from Mackie's Tracktion also explains it quite well). It also seems to be supported in Studio One, and presumably in Steinberg's own products).
Such a feature has been requested
before on this forum, but imho the matter has gained a lot of significance with the current developments, so I'd like to bump up those FRs here as well. Imho such a feature would instantly remove the biggest practical downside to the current 'moving window' approach (i.e. showing a number of adjacent tracks / plugins / plugin parameters) to control surfaces, as opposed to customizing each knob's function at the cost of losing flexibility. It is easy to reorder tracks, sends, or receives - but it's not possible to do so with parameter numbers.
Or perhaps, if Cockos can think of an even better way to handle these issues, a similar feature could be added to its
VST extensions?
(I also looked briefly at using
mGUI, but unfortunately that seems to be Windows only, so I'll have to check it again when I'm on a Windows machine.)
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On a related note, in an attempt to tackle the above issues, I have created a bit (no more than a proof-of-concept atm) of dynamic parameter remapping, which is implemented on the control surface side or an intermediate layer. I have been thinking of some approaches where it would be very useful if REAPER could be configured to send the total number of parameters for the currently selected plugin. So I'd like to put up a FR for that as well, if you please.