At the moment it can be quite tedious if you want to send all tracks but one, of a fifteen track piece to a send channel. You have to go to each of the other fourteen tracks, add a send device to each, adjust the send amount etc. A thing I think would improve send track usage a lot would be if you could assaign and manage the tracks allocated to them actually from the send track itself. This as an addition/ alternative to using meta send devices.
This could be as a normal send meta but it would be say a ‘recieve meta’ only available in the send tracks. On this recieve meta you would have:
-Send amount sliders one assigned to each track you are recieving. The number of these would be expandable
-Mute and keep source buttons (These could be made a lot smaller than on the send device to save space here due to larger number of sliders required)
-Track assignment buttons to say which track you are routing from.
So basically all the functionality of the send meta from the other side. It could also work that a send device is put in the the relevant tracks when assigned from the recieve device and vice versa (with the option for the second functionality to be disabled here) . The only problem I can see here is if you have the send not at the end of your DSP chain and accidental unwanted deletions occur. To stop this happening you could have:
-An undo specifically for the recieve device may work here or
-Disabling removing all sends not at the end of a DSP chain from the recieve device.
-Not allowing the recieve device to remove any send metas it has not inserted itself
-Use with care
…Just a thought actually instead of having scrolling number buttons for the track assignment buttons you could have add/remove buttons for each send assigned. i.e. once added the assignment can only be removed and not changed. This would then work with an undo.
Note: Excuse any mess above, this idea turned out to be more complicated than I thought, so have done some thinking on the fly. Will try to explain better if anyone wants anything I`ve put unclearly, clearer
I haven’t time to read the whole post, but this sounds to me like the
programming language “intercal”'s feature “come from”
In other words, sounds quite messy…
From a user point of view, it seams much easier than to place senddevices on all the tracks.
The device does not have to show all tracks at once, you simply add which tracks you want to go through the send device. It also has to be able to recieve from other sendchannels.
I think if it was implemented well the mess would only be in the thinking through and the programming (the messy jobs we pay you for ) .
I know for me using one recieve device rather than fourteen send devices would be easier. Hopefully when you`ve got time you can have another look
With your first point think this could be easily done with a DSP collapsing expanding arrow/ triangle like on most of the renoise DSP interfaces, think this would make it neat enough. And agree send channels should be included.
Sorry, but this sounds extremely messy. A visual editor for all the VST(i) and track routing would be the best way to solve all those problems. I do hope that when the dev’s decide to extend Renoise’s routing capabilities, they’ll go for a visual editor and not new metadevices - but that’s just MHO.
Have to say that I haven’t used a modular graphical GUI so cannot comment on the effectiveness, but from what you are saying if this could solve the prob I have mentioned then I would be in favour of it. If however this would take a long time to program I wouldn’t mind another meta device in the meantime, (given that it in itself didn`t take relatively lots of programming)
sounds more like a matter of convenience. I don’t have a problem with renoise’s send channel approach. yeah it’s kinda linear and orthagonal would be kind of neat…but…
you also can’t use renoise’s effects stack to clean TOILETS
(though i’ve found it to be an effective laxative when you run 5hz sinewaves through the phaser on a good sound system ) ahhh…bowels…
Yep consider it a problem to be solved if I can see a better way could be done.
I might consider this a problem also… By the sounds of it you might need renoise’s fx stack to do the job of cleaning your toilets, don`t know how many would fancy the beta testing tho …
I like this idea, however I think it got a little messy once you got to the “undo part”.
Wouldn’t it be easier to make send devices (SD) override recieve devices (RD)?
For example, if you put a RD in send channel 0 set for channels 1, 2 and 3 this would be equivalent to putting SDs at the end of the chain in channels 1, 2 and 3, if I understood you correctly.
My idea is that if you now were to put a SD in channel 1 pointed to send channel 0 this would override any RD in send channel 0 that is set to channel 1… not exactly a crystal clear explanation
Another way around the tedious work of adding severeral SDs would be to add some kind of keyboard shortcut. Maybe one shortcut for adding a SD, another two shortcuts for changing the target send channel… I don’t know.
Ofcourse, in the end a visual interface is the best solution but this is probably much harder to do so maybe a recieve device would be nice to have in the meantime… ?
Frankly I find all the proposed ideas much too messy… although it would be nice with an easy way to send many tracks to a send track, as it would be used quite often.
In lack of a good solution (visual interface/modular thingy/whatever) I have a simple solution that at least would speed up the process a bit:
A button in the advance edit: “Send active tracks to current send track”. Clicking it would simply add a send device (with mute source) to the end of each effect chain, for all tracks that aren’t muted.
Yep thats what I meant, but the idea also was a SD would also be added at the end of 1,2 and 3 automatically.
I think I get what you are saying here but the problem I was thinking about with the undo was that with a recieve device you should be able to delete sends with the recieve device or otherwise you have to trawl across tracks again to to delete the unwanted device you just added.
Just a thought now here (including other`s points made) … If sends and recieves worked completely independently (was this what you were thinking anyway Phonkey?) it could be as:
[b]-The recieve would only be able to recieve the final routing of each track (i.e. like having a send as the last in your chain of DSPs but nothing actually there).
-It would be possible to to still adjust the levels of the recieve as I said in my first post with the sliders.
Any more complex routing i.e. Middle of DSP chain Sends, could continue to be done with send devices as they are now.
Sends would over-ride the recieves. They would automatically remove the allocation from the RD sliders when placed at the end of the DSP chain. They would live happily along side by side when placed earlier in the chain or when at the end routed to another send channel.
[/b]
I think this would work.
I think this could work also but would actually be more steps than the newer RD ideas.
or, too keep it a bit less messy,
a “routing device” that could be located on the master track, giving you a matrix where all tracks can be routed to whatever sends. so you see all song routings on one view.
this could later be expanded to be displayed in a visual style with cables and stuff.
and step by step we get closer to the great intuitive buzz approach.
(also it should be taken into account on which position of the effects chain you wanna grab the signal (obsolete in case you have checked “mute source” of course))
i don’t know if the changes would have to be that big, after all it’s “just” a change in the gui… internally, everything would still work as before, there still would be send devices on the tracks. it’s just that the user wouldn’t see them anymore, and kinda remote-controlls them from one central point.
) .
) ahhh…bowels…
not exactly a crystal clear explanation