Per-Item Routing

mort_subite · 07-11-2018, 08:04 AM

Not sure if this idea has been offered before, I did a few searches and nothing substantial turned up in post titles, so unless it's been discussed 3 pages into some semi-related topic, I'm not aware of anyone suggesting this before, so here goes:

It's a simple idea, but I think it could potentially present quite a bit of flexibility in very novel ways, much like Reaper's general idea of one track performing many functions, or using a folder concept as a bussing system being something that doesn't hit the user as particularly powerful or exciting from the description (as opposed to some flashy VST synth or bundled, big name plugin) until you realise just how much freedom that affords you, and how much your workflow is impacted if you're willing to dig in and adapt to new methods of functionality.

Just as we have per-item fx (not to be mistaken with "pre-item"), per-item routing could be huge. The way I envision this working is a collapseable portion of the "sends" and "receives" drop down menus (maybe a little plus and minus sign, or an arrow that animates from pointing left when folded and down when unfolded) in the existing I/O options window, allowing access to a list of all items in a project (this keeps send and receive drop down menus tidy, as adding items to the list could make the list prohibitively long). Additionally, this list could cascade or tile in an offset manner, with extra collapse point markers to allow for maximum ease of management and readability in projects with many items. This would probably necessitate a small change in the look of the I/O send and receive drop down menus, perhaps to a more material type design, sans scroll bar, or just a flatter design type altogether (maybe make them look the way they do before you unfold them as they are now, just a longer rectangle, with a single rectangle on the right hand side, sans the arrows and border they currently have... just a thought and a bit of a technical digression...)

In addition to all that, a new mini-icon above all items, next to the track lock, mute, FX and info icons that already exist on the top left corner of all items. This icon could be marked "I/O" and would open the same menu as the one accessible from the TCP I/O button. Alternatively, it could be three dots that change color depending on whether or not an item has a send or a receive, or niether on it, to let users know at a quick glance which items have sends and receives on them.

Of course, these items would be interchangeably routed to or from tracks, or any other destination Reaper already allows routing to or from, and each send and receive would have the full compliment of Reapers already established set of options for I/O (pre/post fader options, mute, phase reversal, sub-channels, MIDI, etc.), except now we can more completely sort of treat items themselves as tracks, with tracks kind of metaphorically being a summing element in the hierarchy there.

With how Reaper is already set up, it seems to me this would be fairly trivial to introduce (though, Im no computer programmer, so I have no idea if what I said is true or not, lol... for all I know it could take ages to do, or not even be possible), but it seems like it's largely just copying a system employed by one part of the program to another, so, I dunno... no idea if there's even any support behind this idea, or if people think it's bullocks and rubbish and I should be ashamed of myself for even suggesting it.

Anyway, hopefully this is something people find interesting or useful, and even more-so hoping to find this in a future release of Reaper, because I think the potential is really vast, and people could do some really cool things with it (in fact, this could completely eliminate peoples requests for an Ableton-like system of "effects racks," as items themselves would effectively become effects racks.)

Now that I think about it, it seems like there could be a whole world of "per-item" options here that could reeeeeally speed up and make Reaper unique in a ton of ways... gonna have a think on that and see if this even takes off. Per-Item VCA's could be a useful tool as well! Lots of stuff to cogitate.

Let me know what you guys think! Cheers!

MonkeyBars · 10-15-2021, 07:05 PM

The "Routing help" dialog indicates misleadingly that this is already the case with the statement that "Take FX can receive audio from any media item or track channels".

However, routing happens only between Tracks in Reaper, not items or takes . . . as far as I know.

CPacaud · 08-09-2023, 11:35 AM

Hey, resurrecting this thread - this is exactly what I'm looking for at the moment, for a game development interactive music workflow.

MonkeyBars · 08-09-2023, 02:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MonkeyBars

The "Routing help" dialog indicates misleadingly that this is already the case with the statement that "Take FX can receive audio from any media item or track channels".

However, routing happens only between Tracks in Reaper, not items or takes . . . as far as I know.

My conclusion was correct and Justin has since fixed this incorrect text, but routing between track and take channels is still disallowed. Justin has said this was because Reaper's signal flow is currently hardwired so that items are always in the signal chain before the track they're on. That's the feature that would enable the OP's FR.