[ardour-dev] A little of the ol' In and Out...

[Paul Davis]

>Im confused about Ins and Outs, mostly regarding plugins.  The sessions 
>I typically create are mono tracks, with a 2 channel (stereo) Master 
>bus.  This makes each of my tracks a 1in/2out track, correct?  (each 
>input has one source, each output goes to master/in1 and master/in2)

sounds right.

>The plugins i've been using to date are either 2in/2out or 1in/1out.  If 
>I add a 1/1 plugin to post fader by itself (or with other 1/1 plugins), 
>nothing changes, correct?

correct. the plugin's single output is split in the same way as the
original mono input stream. there is single active stream in the
signal processing pathway, so you have a single panner to control how
it is distributed to the 2 outputs.

>If I add a 2/2 plugin to post fader, what happens here?  I get confused 
>trying to imagine the connections here.  Does the track's mono audio 
>just get routed to both of the plugin's ins? Then the 2outs of the 
>plugin connect directly to the tracks 2 outs?

no. if you add a 2/2 plugin, there are 2 active streams in the signal
processing pathway. you now need 2 panners to control the distribution
of each active stream to the 2 outputs.

>OK as I write this I think I may be starting to understand the madness a 
>little better.  TAP Stereo Echo for example, actually does stuff to the 
>L and R channels independently, so it naturally needs to be a 2in/2out 
>plugin.  And in the case of one of my 1in/2out tracks, its fine to put 
>any 1/1 plugins in front of it, but puttign a 1/1 after it would defeat 
>any L/R specific stuff it did to the audio signal; is that correct?  In 
>my case, though, im using TAP Stereo Echo with SC4 so it probably doesnt 
>matter much which one is first?  Any thoughts/ opinons there?  And most 
>importantly, am I uderstanding this correctly?

if you use a plugin with 2 outputs on a track with 2 outputs, you
probably want to pan the two streams hard left and right, since this
will correspond to what the plugin author probably had in mind. there
will always be exceptions to this, of course.

--p