Take a signal follower meta device and try to target a plugin that is above in the same track or in a track left to the current: It is currently not possible.
I understand this problem from the view of a programmer, that this linear signal processing is more easy to implement.
But maybe there is a way to get completely flexible, objective routing, so the arranger doesn’t have to care about this (and will be therefore much more intuitive)†?
If it was implemented in a way that the engine will look for all devices that target this track while processing a track… If the target track is already processed, it will simply get some delay compensation…
Isn’t such flexible routing (maybe causing feedback) possible in Buzz for example?
If the calculation was samplewise then the meta device could use a buffer which stores the result of the last calculation, so all targets above and left to the device would get the buffer content instead.
You can achieve this via a hackaround by routing into a hydra, and then making the hydra target “any” device
But - it will break the PDC accuracy, so you might not get the exact same result each time
If you ask me, Renoise is one of the most intelligent DAW systems. Most DAWs do not have conceptual evolution at all!
But I agree that it would be much more comprehensible for newbies, if it was possible to target everywhere within signal follower. Instead of writing “N/A” on the selection box, you could write (+2 ms) for target on top and left to show it would introduce additional latency there. Just my two cents… Also working with some kind of feedbacking signals could be very interesting.