[ardour-dev] issues with plugin in/out counts

[John Anderson]

On Tue, 2004-11-23 at 15:38, Paul Davis wrote:
> in the last few days, i've been staring down some of the problems
> people have reported when using plugins that change the number of
> active streams in a track (e.g. a 1in/2out reverb).

My personal biggest frustration with the way plugins work is related to
panning. I have a mono track, and I pan it. Then I add a 1-in/2-out
reverb. Now I have to redo the panning. Say I then remove the plugin and
add a second 1-in/2-out reverb. I have to redo the panning again.

The other thing that seems to me doesn't work here is that stereo
panners operate as stereo-width as well as panners. That sounds vague
because I haven't really managed to get my head around stereo panning
yet.

So maybe it's worth having a post-panner plugin stage where 2-in/2-out
(n-in/m-out?) plugins can go. Maybe then the ganging of 1-in/2-out
plugins could fit in here as well? So the mono-ness of the track is
enforced until the post-panner stage. Then you can rearrange plugin
ordering easily. Possibly after the panner, you can add 1-in/1-out
plugins but only to one side at a time. Or ganged to both sides at the
same time?

Or even (OK, this is starting to get complicated) 2 panner stages, one
for mono and another for stereo (width control). I have no idea how to
generalise that to >2, er, streams? for one track.

Hmm. Treat a panner as a kind of flow-control plugin every time you go
from n to n+m streams?

bye
John