Virtual DAW Controller Device

Hi,

i had the following idea :
a virtual DAW Controller inside Renoise where u can add knobs, buttons and faders and then link them to any controller of any VST device or Renoise controller you use in your actual Renoise session, which could get wired to another program too for external control.

Atm it is just that way, that u have tons of controllers spread all over the Interface, and most of them you don’t want to use, but you always have to search for them and then manually move them or bind them to an external DAW controller. It would be much easier, if we had for example in the bottom half of the browser area a Device which u can Design how u want, and link the controllers to those important controllers u want to use. It would make it possible, to save a template with this Device in it, and speed up work a lot. Also it would be easier to bind those controllers to a midi device because they are all in just one central element all together. I am atm photoshopping an example to make it visible, what i am talking about and make it easier to understand, i will upload it later. Your comments are welcome.

5118 Virtual DAW Controller Kopie.jpg

You see what i mean in the bottom right corner, just a field where u can add controls like those faders, knobs, buttons, labelfields and multifunction buttons with several binds to various diffrent settings (which don’t even need to be in the same target controller) or multiknobs, that control more than one bound targetcontrollers at the same time, when u turn it, you could change all bound controllers at the same time. Maybe giving that thing it’s own presets to quickly load and save them.
Oh and a record on/off button to make this device draw lines if you use the controllers :)/>/>

You can already do this with the hydra, doofer or the instrument midi devices and have the necessary sliders set visible in the mixer. If labels are necessity then use the latter two. If you’re only controlling a single controller simply make that one controller visible in the mixer. If you don’t plan to have a ton of ‘multi’ controllers, simply make a hydra and name it accordingly. Rightclick and hold will record the current value to automation to the current line.

There’s a manual, you know…

Thx for your reply.

It is not the same having a fader visible in the mixer section, which is getting quickly crowded if i would do it this way.
I would have to pick the right fader in the right track between the effects etc. My idea offers a field to centralize all that
controllers in one place and you could sort it that way, you need it to have a good overview.

No i can’t do the same with hydra, doofers or the instrument midi device, the midi device offers me tons of faders, where i have to search for the one i want to control, which is often just one out of a dozens. The virtual DAW would only offer the one i want to use and would always be visible to me no matter in which section of renoise i am working atm !

Keep your hydra’s at the top of your effects chains and use the track plugin parameters tool?

If you really need it you could get someone to write you a tool that would draw the first hydras their sliders and names in a floating window. Though seems kind of a waste to make something that you can already pretty much do with the mixer, it’s not one to one, but by the time this would get implemented you might have just gotten used to going to the track which parameters you want to edit. You can keep the hydras in the master track/send track if you want, have them sync one another if that part is too much of a hassle.

Maybe I just can’t understand what you’re aiming that, good luck nevertheless.

I admit, that i maybe don’t understand how the hydra works, until now i just saw it being used for some weird lfo automation.

But it is still a lot more work to just bind one controller of let’s say a VST to a fader i want to use for it,

  1. i have to find out which one of the dozens of faders it is
  2. i have to (?) create a hydra into the track effects and wire it to the right fader ?
  3. i have to go to the mixer section and make this fader visible

and i always have to switch to that section to do it. AND i can’t control it with another sequencer software.

While the above idea of that virtual Daw would work this way :

  1. create knob in the right bottom area of Renoise (2 clicks)
  2. (for example) rightklick or shiftclick the knob to learn the controller in the vst - use the controller of the vst - then it is bound

The Knob is always visible. The knob could be controlled externally by anything, because the virtual DAW has it’s own
interface one side to the internal controllers and the other way to the external control.

internal controllers → VIRTUAL DAW CONTROLLER INTERFACE ← external controllers

I had this idea when i wrote in a thread, where i wanted to know, how to control a VST knob in another application like Fruityloops or something and i learned, that this is never and will never be possible with how Renoise actually works. This would be the solution for that problem and would improve the workflow. It would replace that awful instrument automation effect and maybe also Hydra (but not necessarily). The devs could give this new unit a more central meaning and create a new powerful core part inside Renoise to improve the workflow and possibilities of Renoise.

Instr. aut. device is not awful! It is very strong thing with other meta devices. I´ve worked with almost every other daw and just two or three can be compared with renoise about it.

What i miss is:

  1. Posibility to select GUI parameter of VSTi by right click, assign it to the controller
    and renoise would ask on what track instr. aut. device. with assigned midi parameter should be created.
    So steps like find instr. aut. device, find parameter, select parameter, assign midi controller to it would be optional…

  2. Posibility to save instr. aut. device with assigned midi and parameters of vsti. Then i should just open synth, create instr. aut. device, select preset and my controller is ready to go.

I’ve shoehorned linking the plugin parameter to the selected Instrument automation device. It only supports 10 outputs and there are no error messages because I didn’t bother, don’t have the time, not because it’s impossible wink.gif. Many plugins support midi mapping, so you could just use a instrument midi control device instead.

It is very awful, it gives you every possible controller of the targetdevice as a fader and you have to find the ones, that you are interested in, instead of letting you chose and get only this ones you want (Quantity instead of Quality). It doesn’t even have presets, which could be created and shared for every VST Instrument by users to allow the fast control of what u want. To get a use of the Instrument automation, you have to get into details a lot, and this time is wasted, taking away your focus of the creative flow, instead you are searching for the right fader in this endless horizontal field where you have to scroll all the time and have no clear view. I always get annoyed, when i have to look thru this faderhordes, so for me is now the “solution” (which i don’t like) to buy Cubase Elements and “outsource” the VST action instead of keeping it inside Renoise, which i would really prefer, and rewire the audio signal to Renoise. This way i can get it done a lot faster and spare myself the annoyance while still being able to use the wonderful Renoise effect and mastering modules.

The list is searchable and it indeed does have presets actually.

I will take a look as soon as i get time for it and i will also take a closer look at the midi control device.
Thanks dude.

But generally, what speaks against my idea, to centralize all those functions into one new core element, enhance the accessibility to it and increase to possibilities with it? Is there anything not good at it ? How about improving my idea with your possible ideas to make it even better ?

I have already listed some arguments in this thread, why this thing would improve the workflow.
Nobody withspoke against it yet. And we all want to improve Renoise constantly i think, we love it and don’t want to use another software instead, i love trackers and i already used them many years ago, it started with Impulse Tracker and then i used FT2. Now i am very happy, that there is Renoise, and it has the potential to make other seqencers unnecessary.
I am not that kind of guy, who likes to use a software like Buzz, where you have to work hard, to get closer to the result, which is a finished track. To achieve this target, i want to produce as comfortable and simple as possible, so i can focus my energy on the tonal creativity, while simultaneously exhausting the possibilities.

I expected this answer already.
It has the option for it, but what exactly can you do with it ? just save that it is connected to a device, which can be done with a simple click aswell selecting it from the dropdownfield. This is probably faster than selecting the right preset for it ^^

Because showing the parameter you want in the mixer already does what you want, you in fact loose the ability to overlook several controllers at the same time.

Yes, you can save the currently mapped parameters, if you automate a certain set of parameters all the time on a certain plugin, you’ll have 36 controllers ready for use.
But what more would you need?
If you want to save the plugin state use the appropriate plugin preset system.

EDIT: I’m sorry man, I just don’t understand what you want, good luck.

Nope, you don’t lose it, only if the devs would remove the other option, which is not necessary as i already mentioned. It would just give you that DAW Central on top of the actual possibilities.

Well, what would that be good for, if i never use the same sound configuration again.
If it would give you an individual interface alignment with it, then i would accept this as a real preset system of use.

Tamtam: you have tool that will tell you what parameter are you pointing at (get plugin parameters tool) so that part about searching is not right. I understand problems with instr. aut. device but on the other hand this solution is much more flexible than how different daws do it. But you are absolutely right about breaking workflow…

Thank you, i already know about the “get plugin parameters” tool, it tells you which fader the one is, that you need to use. but you still have to search for it .

So this is not really a lot of help imo.

This is why i wanna tool / posibility that will automaticaly create instr. aut. device with assigned parameter also :wink:

The tool I posted does that pretty much. :c

Wow, this is really a useful tool now, thx a lot gova.
Still my idea would improve the situation, but you really got me a big step closer to an optimized workflow.

Edit :

nope sry, but it’s almost completely useless to have those faders in my mix section, because i need sight on the edit section, when i want to record them. Impossible.

Great tool Gova, thanks!
Have you already upload it to the tools?

I don’t upload my tools, they don’t meet the quality standards of being able to handle unsuitable conditions with an error message instead of a scripting terminal eror message. ;p
More over that’s not my tool I’ve only edited VV’s, you’ll have to ask VV to do a proper implementation and upload it.

Try something like this: