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

[vanDongen/Gilcher]

After thinking too long on this, I found out that most of my ideas were 
allready posted. 
votes++ for the multimono/use previous plugins outputcount otherwise concept.
So some additional spare change:

On Tuesday 23 November 2004 19:38, Paul Davis wrote:
> >I think all of this can be extended into Ardour's N-width track
> >structure. A J-in/N-out plugin creates a N-out track. From there on I
> >can only use plugins that are:
> >
> >1) N-in/M-output plugins. The track is now M-output. (where M is any
> >number - greater, smaller or equal.)
> >
> >or
> >
> >2) 1-in/1-out plugins. The track remains N-out. Ardour does multi-mono.

> the implementation nightmare in that rule arises from another common
> user desire: plugin reordering

Why is that so complicated. You can only drag one plugin at a time, the 
evaluation should be really simple, and if the number of inputs does not 
match the available outputs at that destination , undo and tell the user they 
are trying to do something impossible.
A visual indication of the number of streams coming out of each plugin would 
be nice:


audio 10

eq      |
reverb  |\
eq (x2) | |

With an indication that the second eq is present twice, and that it is really 
a mono plugin.
You can always drag a 1->1 plugin anywhere. Any time the "graph" changes each 
mono plugin has to be checked and copied or copies deleted as needed.

Another exception could be that zero-input plugins, (vstI f.i.) can always be 
inserted. Breaking the signal flow ,throwing everything before that away.
mm, not so good an idea, how about adding zero-input busses to the add 
new-track/bus dialog?

I am not in favor of complex modular synths as a plugin router inside ardour. 
There are programs out there that will do that, and the power of jack (TPOJ) 
allows you to use them with ease inside ardour.

One thing one my wishlist is the ability to use sidechains directly.Plugins 
should tell their hosts what audio inputs are key-inputs (no idea if they do 
or don't) and ardour makes the key-inputs are jackports, so you can easily 
add a send to a track to control the gate on another track.

Of course that breaks the idea of only being able to add N inputs when there 
are N streams.....
So an extra could be:
when trying to add N+M input-plugin when there are only N streams, add M jack 
ports that access the extra inputs and treat it like a N input plugin until 
deleted.

cheers

Gerard
   







> if plugins could never be reordered, applying those rules is fairly
> easy. as soon as we allow (and i think we should), applying them gets
> really hairy really fast.
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-- 
electronic & acoustic musics-- http://www.xs4all.nl/~gml