Preview Waveform with FX

[jemtman]

Request:
I want the ability to see my waveform with FX applied. Doesn't have to be high-res or anything, I just want to be able to see the gist of what the FX are doing.

Benefits / Reasons :
I've run into two situations where this would be really helpful
1. Whenever I record interviews in loud or bassy places, it can be really hard to figure out where the words start and end, because the the bassy waveforms make everything look loud, even though I'm killing the bass via EQ at the item or track level. I prefer not to glue everything because of all the extra files. And finding stuff in spectrogram view is doable, but not particularly pleasant. So, having the ability to just see what the waveform looks like with an EQ applied would let me edit all these field interviews at the same pace I edit stuff from the studio.
2. I do a fair amount of teaching. Whenever I teach compression, I wind up gluing the same file a zillion times over with varying levels of compression to show the effects of threshold/ratio/knee/etc. It gets the point across, but its time consuming and so much less illustrative than watching the resultant waveform change in realtime (or anything faster than gluing and ungluing over and over again).

Implementation suggestion:
I think an action would do the trick.
"Preview post-fx waveform for selected item/track"

Happy to explain this further if needed.

[Masi]

To show the waveforms Reaper has actually to render the track. So currently you could either freeze the track or render (and mute) to a new track.

This may be enough for the teaching purposes you talk about if you use item FX and not track FX. Set up an item with an FX, duplicate as needed and tweak the FX on each item. Then render/freeze the track.

Masi

[azslow3]

FXes are real-time processors by design (except ARA). REAPER will have to render to get the waveform in any case. So you ask render implicitly in the background, just to show you the waveform, on any parameter/fx change (REAPER has no idea what any change is going to produce).
That is extremely heavy behavior, will keep your computer busy all the time. And for many plug-ins it make no sense at all since FX is free to produce different output every time it is called, even without changes in the source signal or parameter.

[MaXyM]

Originally Posted by jemtman

Request:
I want the ability to see my waveform with FX applied. Doesn't have to be high-res or anything, I just want to be able to see the gist of what the FX are doing.

What about using Osciloscope VST?
s(M)exoscope is decent and free: http://bram.smartelectronix.com/plugins.php?id=4
You can freeze the resulting waveform, or setup values to retrigger its re-drawing

Does it help satisfy your needs?

[Masi]

Originally Posted by MaXyM

What about using Osciloscope VST?

Or the free MAnalyer by Melda. As all Melda plugins it has a graph section (at the right hand side of the UI, hidden by default) where you can monitor the waveform input and oupt of the plugin.

Masi

[kenhepen]

+1

Cubase can do it if we talk about take fx, not about track fx.

[vicnest]

+1. Cakewalk Sonar could do this 10 years ago.

[vitalker]

You can do this using subprojects. Not same, but the best we have for now.