New & General Questions

[InLight-Tone]

Hi guys new to Reaper and pissed I hadn't looked at it sooner! It wraps everything I've wanted in a sequencer in one environment especially including the ability to script custom functionality.

I have some scripting ambitions, some extremely lofty, but to start have some general questions.

1-If I were wanting to script real-time midi based plugins that alter the incoming midi stream, can you use Lua for that or does it have to be Eel?

2-If I were crazy enough to want to code something that lets one script out midi such as Symbolic Composer, OpusModus and similar, would Lua be appropriate for that use? (Non real-time kinda compute sequence and then listen).

Thanks for any feedback and many many more questions to come!

[Time Waster]

No. 1 I would do as a JSFX.

No. 2 I would probably also do as a JSFX, but I have no experience with Lua. The choice may depend on what exactly you are trying to do and how you intend to input the parameters.

[mschnell]

Welcome, InLight-Tone, to the world of Reaper and DAW scripting.

To be clear, for scripting Realtime modules ("JSFX"-plugins usable in the same way as VST/VSTi plugins) generating and modifying Midi and audio streams in (FX-chains of the) tracks, your only option is using EEL. LUA and Python only can be used to do "automation" and helpful non-realtime stuff.

I suppose, theoretically, you could use LUA or Python to "offline" generate or modify audio (or Midi) data in a file and then within a project play same after pressing "start". (I seem to remember that there is a Compressor done in that way.) But, IMHO, in most cases, "realtime" is more appropriate for such stuff. You can rather easily even use FFT in realtime JSFX modules.

-Michael