New EuCon project

[Funkybot]

Originally Posted by Nick Morris

Noticed metering is still not there yet, and lot of talk about custom knobs. What are custom knobs? I am testing on an artist mix so it might not even apply?

Custom Knobs is new Eucon functionality that allows you to remap parameters on the surfaces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF-1TUzlaAU

It sounds like these are only for newer surfaces and won't work on the Artist Mixes. Found this...

https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=415978

[Geoff Waddington]

New build is up.

EuCon Exp.zip

Hopefully meters are back for everyone

Going to have to think about the best way to do Custom Knobs, so in the meantime, other than the fact that Inserts will be totally broken for now, please report any bugs you find.

[reinaldo]

Originally Posted by Geoff Waddington

New build is up.

EuCon Exp.zip

Hopefully meters are back for everyone

Going to have to think about the best way to do Custom Knobs, so in the meantime, other than the fact that Inserts will be totally broken for now, please report any bugs you find.

Meters are working perfect here on my S1 and on the app as well. Thanks so much for this update!

[RobinGShore]

Meters are sort of working in the sense that I can see them moving when there's signal on a track, but theres a few weird things about them.

For starters I'm only seeing one channel of metering no matter how many channels a track has. I would expect the channel count of the eucon meters too match the gui meters in Reaper, which means at minimum they should all be two channels since Reaper doesn't do mono meters, and that the number of channels on the meter should increase if the channel count of the track goes up.

Also panning makes the signal level shown on the meters go down. The more I pan in either direction, the less signal the meters show. Panning hard left or right makes the meters show no signal at all.

[Geoff Waddington]

Originally Posted by RobinGShore

Meters are sort of working in the sense that I can see them moving when there's signal on a track, but theres a few weird things about them.

For starters I'm only seeing one channel of metering no matter how many channels a track has. I would expect the channel count of the eucon meters too match the gui meters in Reaper, which means at minimum they should all be two channels since Reaper doesn't do mono meters, and that the number of channels on the meter should increase if the channel count of the track goes up.

Also panning makes the signal level shown on the meters go down. The more I pan in either direction, the less signal the meters show. Panning hard left or right makes the meters show no signal at all.

Thanks, yeah, just had a look at the underlying code, it needs an upgrade

[Geoff Waddington]

New build is up.

EuCon Exp.zip

Meters are now stereo.

Not ideal, but it's a start.

Ideally we will get dynamic updates when Reaper channel counts change, but that's a bit more work

[Geoff Waddington]

EuCon meter dynamic response to Track channel count changes in Reaper is expensive, resource wise -- not unlike deleting a Track in the old beta version, hopefully not quite that bad

So, how do you use channel count ?

Would it be sufficient to have a parameter -- e.g. 8 (aka 7.1) means all Tracks get 8 channels.

Is it more likely you have a mix of channel counts ? -- most Tracks with 2, some with more.

We could do a poll of Reaper Track channel counts on startup, and change when Reaper changes, but there would be a performance hit -- not sure if it would be noticeable.

That would also mean a rebuild on project change, Track deletion/addition/rearrangement, etc.

You can see this is a balancing act -- raw performance vs highly dynamic meter channel count updates.

I am totally open to suggestions on this implementation -- how do you envision it working ?

[RobinGShore]

I think most people are probably either working exclusively with stereo tracks, or using a mix of different channel counts. That's how it is for me at least. I'd be surprised if people working with multi channel projects actually have the same channel count for every single track, so I'm not sure a universal channel count parameter would be that useful.

I don't think anyone wants to go back to the unresponsiveness of the old beta, but I'd at least be curious to see just how bad a performance hit dynamic channel count updates would cause. Geoff, how much of pain would it be for you to post a version that adapted to the channel count, knowing that you might end up rolling it back if everyone is dissatisfied with the performance?

A couple ideas for compromises:

• Make dynamic channel count updates optional. It could be an on/off parameter in the ini. If you're working on a project that only uses stereo tracks (or if you just don't care about the meters) you could turn it off and not have to worry about the performance hit. If you do need multi-channel meters you could switch the parameter on, with the understanding that performance would suffer when doing things like adding and removing tracks.
  
  
• Reaper recently added a few new metering options that may be useful here. Namely combined RMS metering and LUFS metering. These show the combined RMS or LUFS value of all a tracks channels in a single channel of metering. If eucon could use this style of meter instead of peak meters, it could show useful metering for any number of channels without having to change the channel count of the meter. The downside here would be that if you prefer to see peak meters, you'd be out of luck. Personally though, I think this might be the best way to go if it's possible.

[Geoff Waddington]

Originally Posted by RobinGShore

I think most people are probably either working exclusively with stereo tracks, or using a mix of different channel counts. That's how it is for me at least. I'd be surprised if people working with multi channel projects actually have the same channel count for every single track, so I'm not sure a universal channel count parameter would be that useful.

I don't think anyone wants to go back to the unresponsiveness of the old beta, but I'd at least be curious to see just how bad a performance hit dynamic channel count updates would cause. Geoff, how much of pain would it be for you to post a version that adapted to the channel count, knowing that you might end up rolling it back if everyone is dissatisfied with the performance?

A couple ideas for compromises:

• Make dynamic channel count updates optional. It could be an on/off parameter in the ini. If you're working on a project that only uses stereo tracks (or if you just don't care about the meters) you could turn it off and not have to worry about the performance hit. If you do need multi-channel meters you could switch the parameter on, with the understanding that performance would suffer when doing things like adding and removing tracks.
  
  
• Reaper recently added a few new metering options that may be useful here. Namely combined RMS metering and LUFS metering. These show the combined RMS or LUFS value of all a tracks channels in a single channel of metering. If eucon could use this style of meter instead of peak meters, it could show useful metering for any number of channels without having to change the channel count of the meter. The downside here would be that if you prefer to see peak meters, you'd be out of luck. Personally though, I think this might be the best way to go if it's possible.

Thanks, lots of good ideas and things to consider...

[Geoff Waddington]

New build is up.

EuCon Exp.zip

First cut at improved meters.

Seems to work fine with dynamic updating of channel count changes.

I only have stereo Tracks, I don't see any bars beyond 2 channels, but I can see the meter tops indicating there are as many Tracks as configured (2, 4, 6, 8, 10).

Could someone with better content check that the meters do work properly beyond 2 channels.

I have a feeling it's not quite there yet.

[RobinGShore]

Originally Posted by Geoff Waddington

Could someone with better content check that the meters do work properly beyond 2 channels.
I have a feeling it's not quite there yet.

Working pretty well actually. I tried with some quad and 5.1 material and the meters look good. I also tried some Third Order Ambisonics (16 channels) and that broke things, the meters didn't increase the channel count, and all the others tracks started doing werid things as well. it makes sense that 16 channels might not work, as I'm not even sure there's enough screen resolution in the app to display 16 meter bars in one track. In Pro Tools, 3rd Order Ambisonics tracks only show one channel of metering (channel 1), so if it's possible to mimic that behavior I think that's probably the way to go for anything above 10 channels.

A few other small meter nitpicks that are unrelated to multichannel stuff:

• If a track is soloed the meters for all the unsoloed tracks still show signal
• Is it possible to get the numerical readout at the top of the meters in the app working? Right now the readout is just stuck at 0.0
• Red clip indicators go away after a few moments. Would be nice if they could persist until they were manually cleared in Reaper.

[Geoff Waddington]

New build is up.

EuCon Exp.zip

Meter channels now clamped at 10 -- maybe going to 1 if it's over like PT is better, dunno...

Meters now follow solo.

[RobinGShore]

Originally Posted by Geoff Waddington

New build is up.

EuCon Exp.zip

Meter channels now clamped at 10 -- maybe going to 1 if it's over like PT is better, dunno...

Meters now follow solo.

Thanks. Meters are working great with solo now, but I'm still seeing problems with channel counts over 10. If I have a track with a channel count over ten, the meters for that track as well the track directly above it just stop working completely.

[Geoff Waddington]

New build is up.

EuCon Exp.zip

This time, made to sure to clamp the value to 10 in both places in the code

Hopefully channel counts over 10 should behave now.

[RobinGShore]

Originally Posted by Geoff Waddington

Hopefully channel counts over 10 should behave now.

Working perfectly now. Thanks

[BenMeyers]

I used Reaper successfully for the first time today to do the live stream of our service at church, using the Avid Control app on our iPad and the new Eucon plugin. It worked great! Only thing is an issue I had with the CSI one also, which is that you have to hit the solo and mute buttons twice to unmute and unsolo a track.

I can confirm the track names did not disappear on me at any point like they did with the old CSI Eucon stuff. Meters all worked fine as best I could tell.

[Berg]

Hi there, I am just trying the Avid Control App for the first time, it's great ! Thanks Geoff for doing that
Stereo Pan works, what about Reasurround Pan ? The question was already asked, but is it technically possible (in the future I mean...) to control graphically the surround pan with Reasurround Pan FX inserted ?

[Geoff Waddington]

New build is up.

EuCon Exp.zip

Hopefully fixes double press issues with Control App.

CSI VCA needs some attention, probably bounce over there to do that if there are no outstanding show-stoppers, please let me know, aside from Plugins -- will have to think a bit more on that.

After that will look at adding some features, please indicate any priorities you might have from these, or anything else you would like to see:

• Track Colors S1, S3, and the app are capable of showing track colors, tracks all show up as uncolored (or I guess you could say black) in eucon regardless of how they're colored in Reaper. In my mind this feels like the type of thing that would be fairly straight forward to hook up, but then what do I know
• Input Monitoring not controllable from any of the hardware surfaces as far as I know, but it's in the app on both the mixer page, and the tracks page. Again feels like the type of thing that should be pretty simple to hook up
• Layouts Creating layouts is already working, but it looks like they don't save with the Reaper project. Here's a short video demonstrating eucon layouts in case you need a refresher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgbKNwiO3Zg
• VCA/Folder Spill Here's some videos demonstrating vca spill in eucon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1yPrDSzHzQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzId8T6QQtY
• Automation Match Indicators This helps show where your fader is relative to the underlying volume envelope when writing automation. Their meant to help you end a fader pass smoothly without any jump in level when you stop writing automation. They appear as little up and down arrows on the meters page of the app to show you which direction you need to move the fader in order to match the underlying envelope.
• Automation Writing Indicators These are lights on each channel of the S1,S3, and in app that illuminate to let you know that some parameter on that channel is writing automation, particularly useful in latch and latch-preiview mode, and for alerting you if you accidently touch a knob or fader.
• Pan-graphs pan graphs are being displayed in the app already, but they show the pan as hard left no matter what the pan position in Reaper (these are seperate from the thermometer display for pan which is working correctly)
• Gain Reduction Meters Should show up on the meters page in the app for any track with a dynamics plugin that reports gain reduction
• EQ Graphs Should be displayed in the meters page and channel page in the app for any track that has an eq plugin loaded
• Surround Panning Wondering if it's possible for eucon to detect if a track has the ReaSurroundPan plugin loaded and to replace the normal pan controls for that track with the plugin parameters and allow controlling the plugin from the app's surround panner

[Berg]

Originally Posted by Geoff Waddington

New build is up.

EuCon Exp.zip

Hopefully fixes double press issues with Control App.

CSI VCA needs some attention, probably bounce over there to do that if there are no outstanding show-stoppers, please let me know, aside from Plugins -- will have to think a bit more on that.

After that will look at adding some features, please indicate any priorities you might have from these, or anything else you would like to see:

• Track Colors S1, S3, and the app are capable of showing track colors, tracks all show up as uncolored (or I guess you could say black) in eucon regardless of how they're colored in Reaper. In my mind this feels like the type of thing that would be fairly straight forward to hook up, but then what do I know
• Input Monitoring not controllable from any of the hardware surfaces as far as I know, but it's in the app on both the mixer page, and the tracks page. Again feels like the type of thing that should be pretty simple to hook up
• Layouts Creating layouts is already working, but it looks like they don't save with the Reaper project. Here's a short video demonstrating eucon layouts in case you need a refresher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgbKNwiO3Zg
• VCA/Folder Spill Here's some videos demonstrating vca spill in eucon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1yPrDSzHzQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzId8T6QQtY
• Automation Match Indicators This helps show where your fader is relative to the underlying volume envelope when writing automation. Their meant to help you end a fader pass smoothly without any jump in level when you stop writing automation. They appear as little up and down arrows on the meters page of the app to show you which direction you need to move the fader in order to match the underlying envelope.
• Automation Writing Indicators These are lights on each channel of the S1,S3, and in app that illuminate to let you know that some parameter on that channel is writing automation, particularly useful in latch and latch-preiview mode, and for alerting you if you accidently touch a knob or fader.
• Pan-graphs pan graphs are being displayed in the app already, but they show the pan as hard left no matter what the pan position in Reaper (these are seperate from the thermometer display for pan which is working correctly)
• Gain Reduction Meters Should show up on the meters page in the app for any track with a dynamics plugin that reports gain reduction
• EQ Graphs Should be displayed in the meters page and channel page in the app for any track that has an eq plugin loaded
• Surround Panning Wondering if it's possible for eucon to detect if a track has the ReaSurroundPan plugin loaded and to replace the normal pan controls for that track with the plugin parameters and allow controlling the plugin from the app's surround panner

double press issues fixed for solo and mutes

Please see above some priorities to share of course with people interested !
[*]Track Colors S1, S3, and the app are capable of showing track colors, tracks all show up as uncolored (or I guess you could say black) in eucon regardless of how they're colored in Reaper. In my mind this feels like the type of thing that would be fairly straight forward to hook up, but then what do I know
[*] Pan-graphs pan graphs are being displayed in the app already, but they show the pan as hard left no matter what the pan position in Reaper (these are seperate from the thermometer display for pan which is working correctly)
[*] Surround Panning Wondering if it's possible for eucon to detect if a track has the ReaSurroundPan plugin loaded and to replace the normal pan controls for that track with the plugin parameters and allow controlling the plugin from the app's surround panner
[*]Layouts Creating layouts is already working, but it looks like they don't save with the Reaper project. Here's a short video demonstrating eucon layouts in case you need a refresher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgbKNwiO3Zg
[*] Automation Writing Indicators These are lights on each channel of the S1,S3, and in app that illuminate to let you know that some parameter on that channel is writing automation, particularly useful in latch and latch-preiview mode, and for alerting you if you accidently touch a knob or fader.
[*] EQ Graphs Should be displayed in the meters page and channel page in the app for any track that has an eq plugin loaded

[RobinGShore]

please indicate any priorities you might have from these, or anything else you would like to see

I ranked all my requests from earlier in order of what I personally would like to see the most

1. Layouts This is one of the flagship features of eucon so I feel like it makes sense for it to be the next thing to tackle after fx
2. Track Colors Wouldn't have expected it, but aside from FX and layouts this is by far the thing I miss most from Pro Tools
3. VCA/Folder Spill
4. Automation Writing Indicators
5. Pan Graphs
6. Surround Panning
7. Automation Match Indicators
8. Gain Reduction Meters
9. EQ Graphs

[Funkybot]

I've only got the one lowly Artist Mix so I don't have too strong a set of opinions on some of the nicer new features, so I'd say outside of FX...

1. VCA/Folder Spill and
2. Layouts

...are the the things that would benefit everyone and have the widest potential impact. The VCA work may have some overlap with the CSI VCA work that was recently discussed, so there may be some benefit to be gleaned perhaps from working on VCA's for both around the same time?

So I'd basically re-order the top 3, move Track Colors to the #3 position but otherwise, I think Robin's list makes sense.

[Geoff Waddington]

New build is up.

EuCon Exp.zip

Very primitive Track colouring -- just to see if we are on the same page -- it just displays the Track colours at startup -- changing colours, reordering, etc., all broken.

Just want to make sure we all mean the same thing when we say Track colouring

[Berg]

Originally Posted by Geoff Waddington

New build is up.

EuCon Exp.zip

Very primitive Track colouring -- just to see if we are on the same page -- it just displays the Track colours at startup -- changing colours, reordering, etc., all broken.

Just want to make sure we all mean the same thing when we say Track colouring

Yes, it takes the good colors
I confirm reordering changes don't respect the colors.

[RobinGShore]

I can also confirm that colors looks good so far. Looks we are indeed on the same page about what track coloring means.

[Geoff Waddington]

New build is up.

EuCon Exp.zip

Track colouring should be fully functional.

[Berg]

Originally Posted by Geoff Waddington

New build is up.

EuCon Exp.zip

Track colouring should be fully functional.

Yes it is !

[Heb]

Originally Posted by Geoff Waddington

New build is up.

EuCon Exp.zip

Hopefully fixes double press issues with Control App.

CSI VCA needs some attention, probably bounce over there to do that if there are no outstanding show-stoppers, please let me know, aside from Plugins -- will have to think a bit more on that.

After that will look at adding some features, please indicate any priorities you might have from these, or anything else you would like to see:

• Track Colors S1, S3, and the app are capable of showing track colors, tracks all show up as uncolored (or I guess you could say black) in eucon regardless of how they're colored in Reaper. In my mind this feels like the type of thing that would be fairly straight forward to hook up, but then what do I know
• Input Monitoring not controllable from any of the hardware surfaces as far as I know, but it's in the app on both the mixer page, and the tracks page. Again feels like the type of thing that should be pretty simple to hook up
• Layouts Creating layouts is already working, but it looks like they don't save with the Reaper project. Here's a short video demonstrating eucon layouts in case you need a refresher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgbKNwiO3Zg
• VCA/Folder Spill Here's some videos demonstrating vca spill in eucon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1yPrDSzHzQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzId8T6QQtY
• Automation Match Indicators This helps show where your fader is relative to the underlying volume envelope when writing automation. Their meant to help you end a fader pass smoothly without any jump in level when you stop writing automation. They appear as little up and down arrows on the meters page of the app to show you which direction you need to move the fader in order to match the underlying envelope.
• Automation Writing Indicators These are lights on each channel of the S1,S3, and in app that illuminate to let you know that some parameter on that channel is writing automation, particularly useful in latch and latch-preiview mode, and for alerting you if you accidently touch a knob or fader.
• Pan-graphs pan graphs are being displayed in the app already, but they show the pan as hard left no matter what the pan position in Reaper (these are seperate from the thermometer display for pan which is working correctly)
• Gain Reduction Meters Should show up on the meters page in the app for any track with a dynamics plugin that reports gain reduction
• EQ Graphs Should be displayed in the meters page and channel page in the app for any track that has an eq plugin loaded
• Surround Panning Wondering if it's possible for eucon to detect if a track has the ReaSurroundPan plugin loaded and to replace the normal pan controls for that track with the plugin parameters and allow controlling the plugin from the app's surround panner

Personally, I would like the latch preview function prioritized.
Right now that automation mode cant be used if eucon is active and connected to a control surface, it makes Reaper crash.

[MixMonkey]

Originally Posted by RobinGShore

1. Layouts This is one of the flagship features of eucon so I feel like it makes sense for it to be the next thing to tackle after fx

What does a Eucon layout let you do?

[RobinGShore]

Originally Posted by Geoff Waddington

Track colouring should be fully functional.

Nice! Thanks

Originally Posted by Heb

Personally, I would like the latch preview function prioritized.
Right now that automation mode cant be used if eucon is active and connected to a control surface, it makes Reaper crash.

Latch Preview is working fine with eucon for me. Must be some difference between our setups that's causing the crash. Are you on Mac or Windows? What version of eucontrol are you running?

[RobinGShore]

Originally Posted by MixMonkey

What does a Eucon layout let you do?

It lets you choose which tracks are assigned to which faders on the control surface. You can have a fader be auto assigned based on banking, have it be locked to a specific track, or have it follow the selected track in Reaper. You can create and recall up to 50 different layouts and save them with the project/session. It's similar to Reaper's own screensets feature. Here's a few youtube videos about it if you're interested:

https://youtu.be/Szhk6UQKuDU
https://youtu.be/kgbKNwiO3Zg

[Geoff Waddington]

Originally Posted by Berg

Yes it is !

Excellent, thanks for testing !

[Geoff Waddington]

Originally Posted by RobinGShore

Nice! Thanks

Cool, as you suggested, it wasn't that hard after all, so please don't expect the rest to be that easy

[Geoff Waddington]

Originally Posted by MixMonkey

What does a Eucon layout let you do?

A thought just occurred to me -- yeah I know rare moment

Do you have the Avid Control app ?

It's free -- you also need the aforementioned EuControl app for it to talk to.

You could then use the Avid Control app on your tablet -- I see 2 possible positives here:

1) You could (and likely will) come up with some great ideas for CSI

2) You could help with consistency (aka keeping me honest), pointing out where the EuCon/CSI implementations differ -- sometimes we will be able to rationalize behaviour across the two

[MixMonkey]

Originally Posted by RobinGShore

It lets you choose which tracks are assigned to which faders on the control surface. You can have a fader be auto assigned based on banking, have it be locked to a specific track, or have it follow the selected track in Reaper. You can create and recall up to 50 different layouts and save them with the project/session. It's similar to Reaper's own screensets feature. Here's a few youtube videos about it if you're interested:

https://youtu.be/Szhk6UQKuDU
https://youtu.be/kgbKNwiO3Zg

Thanks I can see why it would be a popular feature! I'll check out those videos.

Where it departs from the CSI paradigm (I do get that this is the Eucon thread) is the ".... and save them with the project/session" bit.

Will the Eucon development be saving setup information to the Reaper Project File?

The thing that kinda bugs me about CSI's TrackPin is that if you try to use it as an organisational feature, you end up having to re-pin the tracks everytime you open the project, so I usually don't I'd be all in favour of being able to save stuff with the project

[MixMonkey]

Originally Posted by Geoff Waddington

A thought just occurred to me -- yeah I know rare moment

Do you have the Avid Control app ?

It's free -- you also need the aforementioned EuControl app for it to talk to.

You could then use the Avid Control app on your tablet -- I see 2 possible positives here:

1) You could (and likely will) come up with some great ideas for CSI

2) You could help with consistency (aka keeping me honest), pointing out where the EuCon/CSI implementations differ -- sometimes we will be able to rationalize behaviour across the two

Great idea! I wasn't aware that I could use the Avid Control App with Reaper. I'll download it and try and get it working.

[Geoff Waddington]

Originally Posted by MixMonkey

Will the Eucon development be saving setup information to the Reaper Project File?

Yes.

Originally Posted by MixMonkey

The thing that kinda bugs me about CSI's TrackPin is that if you try to use it as an organisational feature, you end up having to re-pin the tracks everytime you open the project, so I usually don't I'd be all in favour of being able to save stuff with the project

Yup, been holding off until things are stable -- we should probably move this over to the CSI thread, but yeah, time to talk about what CSI states to persist

[Geoff Waddington]

Originally Posted by MixMonkey

Great idea! I wasn't aware that I could use the Avid Control App with Reaper. I'll download it and try and get it working.

I installed the Mac version on my iPad and it was unbelievably easy -- uses bonjour, there wasn't even any IP address config -- EuControl saw it right away -- all automatic

[MixMonkey]

Originally Posted by Geoff Waddington

Yup, been holding off until things are stable -- we should probably move this over to the CSI thread, but yeah, time to talk about what CSI states to persist

Awesome!

[MixMonkey]

Originally Posted by Geoff Waddington

I installed the Mac version on my iPad and it was unbelievably easy -- uses bonjour, there wasn't even any IP address config -- EuControl saw it right away -- all automatic

So not the TouchOSC battle then

[Heb]

Originally Posted by RobinGShore

Nice! Thanks


Latch Preview is working fine with eucon for me. Must be some difference between our setups that's causing the crash. Are you on Mac or Windows? What version of eucontrol are you running?

I'm on windows and the latest eucon.
When I put one or all tracks (doesn't matter) in latch preview reaper crashes.
I even did a fresh portable install of reaper to check if that would help, latest version of eucontrol, reaper and Geoff's eucon plugin.
Still crashes.
All the other automation modes works fine
If I remove eucon in Preference control/OSC/web latch preview works as expected