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Old 05-01-2012, 10:23 AM   #1
mc clipsalot
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Apr 2012
Posts: 2
Default Feature requests - FX Folders, scale/range control on graph for ReaEQ, labels

I'd put this up on the QA section to see if anyone knew how to do these things with out adding a new feature but didn't get a response after a few days so I'm re-posting it here.......

Quote:
I've been using Reaper now for the past month as the recording and signal analysis system for R&D work I've been doing into sensor designs for musical instruments. Reaper has been a *fantastic* tool and I fear how much progress would have been impeded if I had to use something like Cubase. To put it another way, Reaper works great so far in the role of scientific analysis of the signals coming out of sensors, except (and perhaps I just don't know how to do this yet) ……….

Feature suggestion 1: allow the end user to adjust the scale and range of the x and y axis on ReaperEQ

I had some pretty severe infrasonic components coming from one of my sensors with a frequency of just a few hz. The infrasonic component was so strong that even with high pass filtering at 20hz it was still dangerous to amplify. Due to the range of the ReaperEQ graphs any kind of visual indication of the infrasonic components was very very minimal. I eventually caught it because I could see a few pixels of a ~45 degree line going up in magnitude right at the edge of the graph. If I could set the range of the ReaperEQ graph to include everything above DC it would have been immediately obvious that I had audio components that could be dangerous to equipment. In other experiments related to interference on a bass guitar pickup I could have used a scale parameter for the Y axis so I did not have to boost the input/output gain to get the graph that I wanted to see, which made the output signal unusable while I was analyzing it, unless I undid the gain changes, which is a step that shouldn't really be necessary.

Feature suggestion 2: FX folders

As part of my research and I have come up with some large FX chains to perform DSP of my captured signals. Some times I use the output of one FX chain to go to the input of another FX chain. When I insert a lot of chains on a single track it turns into a large list of individual FX plugins which I can interpret if I sit and think about what effects are a part of which chain and in which order but if I want someone else to be able to turn a chain on or off and they don't have an intimate understanding of what is going on it becomes pretty much undoable with out a significant time investment. I'm a competent computer nerd, no one else on the project is, so this is becoming an issue on shared equipment.

This would be like track folders but implemented in the FX plugin list. My thoughts would be that instead of inserting a single fx plugin, you could insert a folder instead, then insert plugins before or after the folder as well as inside of it. The folder would have a checkbox to turn it on and off like the other plugins do and folders could be moved around in the list like standard plugins. A folder would shrink down to showing only it's user customizable title and when expanded would show all plugins inside it. Folders might as well be recursive and able to hold other folders. FX chains should be insertable into the standard FX plugin list or inserted directly as a new folder.

Feature suggestion 3: arbitrary labels on controls in a track for parameters inside FX plugins

Back to the idea of non-experts being able to use what I give them in reaper I have had very good luck giving them knobs exposed on the track controller that adjust parameters inside the FX plugins. One good example is an FX chain built out of a set of band pass filters and the controls on the track change the output gain of each bandpass filter. Using that concept I was able to implement a set of simple virtual guitar cabinet knobs that can be used by anyone to improve tones when mixing. When there is a large number of knobs on the track the labels stop being very useful for non-experts and it becomes pretty hard to figure out what's going on if you have multiple instances of the same plugin configured different ways even when I'm using it. If I could just set the label on the knob to some arbitrary text value it would be so much simpler and easy to use at a glance with out having to remember absolute offsets of knobs, which can change depending on FX ordering.

Feature suggestion 4: arbitrary labels on mixer sliders for the 16 channel mono 8 channel stereo mixing plugins.

Pretty much the same deal as arbitrary labels on the track knobs but inside the mixing plugin itself. This can be done by adjusting the slider names in the JS source but that's non-optimal to be sure.

So long and thanks for all the great software!

MC Clipsalot
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