Master track can't receive MIDI ?

[AtmanActive]

Am I crazy or the Master track indeed can't receive any MIDI?
What on earth?

[ivansc]

I would guess that you misunderstand how the Master track is used in Reaper. Are you trying to send MIDI to a plugin that you have placed in the master track? If so, the best bet is NOT to put effects directly in the Master track.

Don`t ask me why.

But if you make a sub-channel and route the mix to this submix channel, add your plugin and associated MIDI & then re-route the output to the real Master Track.

Works for me, but I rarely need to put any plugins in the Master track in the first place

FWIW this situation may well be helped if we could ask the devs WHY there has traditionally always been the advice on here to NOT put plugins directly on the Master Track.

Maybe we should offer up a feature request instead of calling it a bug?

Hopefully someone smarter than us will respond & shed some more up to date light.

[Coachz]

Not a bug

[AtmanActive]

Yeah, this is not a noob misunderstanding here.
I know very well how to create tracks, folders and route whatever wherever.

This sounds like an artificial limitation to me, hence I posted in bugs and would like, if possible, to understand why and what.

In recent PDC (Plugin Delay Compensation) optimizations, Master Track got a new PDC mode which results in substantial CPU savings. Having a folder track with some mastering FX chain (especially a long and a complex one), at least in my experience, makes for much higher CPU usage in Reaper. There is simply something going on in the audio engine, that makes Reaper struggle to process a lot of tracks when they are in a folder, but not so much when they are not (given the folder has a long FX chain).

On my Intel Core i9-9900T, around 200 tracks and 200 FXs, all in a folder, right before the Master Track, Reaper can't play back. Without that folder, but all of that FX on the Master Track, runs, no problems.

Hence, to be able to absolutely maximize my CPU in Reaper, I recently started using Master Track FX Chain (which I always kept empty for last 15 years). And I needed to automate last FXs output volume via MIDI. Turns out I can't.