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

[Doug McLain]

gerard van dongen wrote:

> On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 06:29:24 +0000, Doug McLain <nostar at comcast.net> 
> wrote:
>
>> I am replying to Paul's original post here, even though I have read 
>> thru  most of the replies.  I'd like to say right off the bat that I 
>> agree  heavily with Florian Schmidts concept of not hiding the 
>> complexity from  the user.  I am going to try and provide examples of 
>> this below.
>>
>> 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).
>>
>>
>> What if the concept of 1in/2out was ditched completely?
>
>
> There are more than 2 channels possible. Not just 5.1 surround, but 
> also  maybe ambisonic encoding decoding plugins
> that would be 4->8 or 8->4, or a stereo compressor with a side chain: 
> 3->2.
> This is one of the things that make it complicated


Hmm, probably over my head here, but they couldn't follow the same idea 
of say, an 8/8 plugin taking care of making routing adjustments if it2 8 
inputs were exposed to 4 outputs? (to use a 4/8 example)

>
> <snip>
>
>>  I shirley don't want to stick a 1/1 EQ after my Stereo Echo creating 
>> a  wonderful haas effect for all the world to hear!
>
>
> Wouldn't it make more sense to have the EQ applied to both channels  
> independly.
> If you don't allow parallel mono plugins you would have to route your  
> stereo output to 2 mono busses just to apply eq after a stereo plug.

I implied that the natural location for the 1/1 EQ would be *before* the 
2/2 plugin.  The mono track gets EQ'ed by a mono eq, then into the 2 
channel dynamic plugin, creating dynamically different L and R 
channels.  My point from there was that if it was allowed to stick a 1/1 
plugin and either merge 2 into 1 or drop 1 channel, the effect of the 
2/2 dynamic plugin would be lost.

Doug