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

[John Anderson]

On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 17:39, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 08:46:30 +0200, John Anderson <ardour at semiosix.com> wrote:
> <SNIP>
> > 
> > 1-input
> > pre-plugin
> > fader
> > post-plugin
> > panner
> > post-panner-plugin
> > width-panner
> > 2-output
> > 
> > for mono -> stereo tracks anyway.
> 
> I'm not in favor of a width-panner. AFAIK I can do what it does with
> the regular panner. It seems like added complexity.
> 
> <SNIP>
> 
> > But now the 1-in/2-out is interesting. In a sense a panner is a
> > 1-in/2-out plugin. 
> 
> For mono sources maybe, but not for stereo sources.

I see now that I didn't explain what I was thinking very well. The
panner for a 1-stream track turns it into a 2-stream track. The panner
for a 2-stream track has two panner widgets, which together control
panning and stereo width (IIUC). So when I said width-panner, I mean
2-input panner with 2 of the little red bars. And a panner is only
1-in/2-out when it's applied to a 1 stream track.

So maybe this makes more sense:

1-input
pre-plugin
fader
post-plugin
mono panner (1-in/2-out)
post-panner-plugin
stereo panner (2-in/2-out)
2-output

A couple of people have pointed out that this can be easily done with
busses (which is how I do it when I need to), except that having it
inline in one mixer strip is easier on screen real estate.

A random thought I had today was that maybe in an n-in/m-out
configuration, a panner is actually an n x m matrix of faders. In a
2-in/2-out configuration there are actually 4 faders: stream 1 L-R,
stream 1 R-L, stream 2 L-R, stream 2 R-L. Just more conveniently laid
out.

Another random thought I had was that it might be useful to have
different kinds of mixer strips, based on templates. Or something like
that. Definitely version n+1 stuff though. And heading dangerously close
to modular-synth-in-ardour territory.

What plugin hosts are there that let you arrange plugins arbitrarily, a
la modular synths?

bye
John