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

[Paul Winkler]

On Wed, Nov 24, 2004 at 08:46:30AM +0200, John Anderson wrote:
> AFAIK mixer strips on consoles are essentially 1-in/2-out (in my mostly
> theoretical understanding), excluding sends. (And excluding 5.1
> configurations, which I know nearly nothing about) So maybe using a
> 1-in/2-out mixer strip design in an architecture that handles things
> other than 1-in/2-out (as ardour does) is creating, er, cognitive
> dissonance.

I think you've hit on something there.
On physical consoles, the concept that corresponds closest to
plugins is an "insert".  Inserts may be pre-fader or post-fader
but AFAIK are pre-panning.  If the mixer strip is for a mono channel, 
AFAIK the insert is *always* 1-in/1-out. Nothing else makes any sense.

Likewise for stereo channels, the only plugins that make sense are
2-in/2-out.

I'm now wondering if all this do-what-i-mean architecture/code isn't
biting off a bit much.  Maybe we should reduce the feature set here
rather than enlarge it. Define some simple constraints,
raise an error dialog if the user attempts to violate them,
and rely on busses and/or external JACK apps for anything more
complex.

I personally would prefer a rock-solid Ardour 1.0 with a simple
plugin system Real Soon, to ardour 1.0 with a really complex DWIM
plugin routing system later. This could always be revisited for
1.2 or 2.0 or whatever.

-- 

Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com