HeDaMixer v2.1.2 (2024-06-23)

[heda]

Hi !!! I've been working in this new script/app which is intended to be like a secondary mixer window. The idea was not to replace REAPER mixer, but to have another window that can be useful to always have some tracks at hand. For example, VCA tracks, or some BUS tracks, or whatever is needed. By default it shows the selected tracks, until you lock them on display. There is also integration with Track Inspector tags with special instances that always show tracks by tag.

Right now it has basic functionality, like meter and fader gain, solo and mute buttons, FX and I/O buttons. It is easy to change the width of all the mixer, or a single track to make room for multichannel meter for example. It is possible to hide/show different elements of the mixer. Like faders, to have only a meter window. The meters support gain reduction meter reported by the compression plugins.

small gif with two docked instances(one for BUS tracks and one for the rest):


Please check here with larger videos(I don't know how to embed webm videos here in the forum): https://reaper.hector-corcin.com/blog/hedamixer-preview

There is still work to do, features to add etc, and I occasionally get some crashes that I need to fix, but the main framework is working, hopefully, and I wanted to announce this preview to let you all know how it is going.

I hope you like it! Let me know if you think it is interesting, or any idea you want. I'm creating this thread to be the official support thread for the script and gather feedback.
And hopefully maybe new VIP members that can support investing more time to release this script Thank you !

[vitalker]

IT IS... PERFECT!!!

[X-Raym]

Very impressive ! It already has a lot of great idea like a (customizable) threshold value in the metter, the meter which have track color, the waveform... would need to be testd to see what is missing :P

[Philbo King]

Looks very cool! One suggestion: Replace the ".0" on the fader/level display with the track name parsed vertically. Like this:

B
a
s
s

D
I

[exidus]

Man, this is s(l)ick!
I remember that I signed up here just to congrat you for the Track Inspector script when it was in its first versions...
Now I see that you did another miracle add-on that I cant wait to incorporate in my workflow!

[DynamicK]

Nice work heda A great addition to your amazing scripts.

[raiirock]

This looks amazing , great work HeDa ! How do you think can it be used like monitor mixer ? I mean showing faders for motor buses and their receives . It can be super useful in conjunction with more me web mixer layout . Thanks in advance for reply .

[heda]

Thank you @everyone for the nice comments.

@Philbo King yes I need a better way to display track names. But I'm not sure if putting the letters there would be nice, but it's true that all the .0s are not telling much... all have the same .0. I may remove the .0s. If the track has enough width, there is a nice spot for drawing the track name there vertically as you say.

@raiirock Yes I think so. You can create as many instances as you want and each one will remember its set of tracks to show

[JHughes]

Awesome, who knew this was even possible? Thanks heda!

[Sumalc]

Very cool thank you Heda

[Robert Randolph]

My dream come true.

Will this be a VIP only script, or have a VIP version?

[Robert Randolph]

Curious if this has easy track send/recieve routing like Reaper's mixer?

[heda]

thanks! everything is possible! almost

Originally Posted by Robert Randolph

Curious if this has easy track send/recieve routing like Reaper's mixer?

What is easy track send/receive routing? like dragging to create sends? first it will be simple, more for meter and gain control only, than a full mixer with all the inserts, sends etc... That's why I said it is not to replace the main mixer. But who knows... everything may be possible. I remember Track Inspector script was going to be very simple...

[musicbynumbers]

Looks super useful and very cool! Would love to check it out along with some of the other new bits soon hopefully!

Love that the width is adaptable as then I can get it to match the faders on my hardware controller!

[hopi]

WoW Heda.... we knew you were thinking about doing this but it is so good to see it!

in terms of thoughts about it:

I both like and also wonder about the meters being the track colors...

In one way that is great... and then I think about it being used as a 'meter bridge'... and in that case I think an option to have all the meters just be a color that a user can pick would be nice....

I'm sure you will work out something great for track names before long...

So... whenever you are ready ... I'm in!

PS... what does it do for a track that is a separator? Like in a theme that includes them???

[heda]

Yes. The meter colors by track color is an option.
Right now it doesn't do anything to separator tracks. But I could add real separators that don't need tracks.

[skippertag]

What can I say? Amazing!!!

[saastara]

Heda, this looks amazing.

As a request, could it be possible to implement some sort of channel memory system with buttons for recall and hide, to bring forth and hide tracks as needed? For example: Drums, Vox, fx etc.

[hopi]

Originally Posted by heda

Yes. The meter colors by track color is an option.
Right now it doesn't do anything to separator tracks. But I could add real separators that don't need tracks.

so I guess my question goes like this.... imagine you have a project with a theme that does have separator tracks... like separators in both the tcp and mcp... obviously for organization...

they have nothing in them in the way of buttons or controls but they do have a color and they do have a track number because reaper gives them that number...

does your wonderful mixer 'see' them? does it display them?

I am very excited that your lua mixer can run instances and have several mixers open at the same time...
and as I'm understanding it, each can have all the tracks or only certain tracks showing in it...
IF that is true, it will take reaper into whole new worlds...
Cubase used to give us three mixers that could each hold only certain tracks... but your lua seems to take reaper far beyond that ability!

[Robert Randolph]

Originally Posted by heda

What is easy track send/receive routing? like dragging to create sends? first it will be simple, more for meter and gain control only, than a full mixer with all the inserts, sends etc... That's why I said it is not to replace the main mixer. But who knows... everything may be possible. I remember Track Inspector script was going to be very simple...

I was hoping for something easier than dragging When you have 100+ tracks, dragging to create a send is pretty unfun, and so is the send/receive window.

I'm sure that's a request for later, but it's important to me and I thought I'd mention it early on.

Thank you!

[heda]

Originally Posted by Robert Randolph

I was hoping for something easier than dragging When you have 100+ tracks, dragging to create a send is pretty unfun, and so is the send/receive window.

I'm sure that's a request for later, but it's important to me and I thought I'd mention it early on.

Thank you!

Do you mean create a send from 100 tracks to one track?
I use Track Inspector script for that. Select destination track. CTRL+click on one of the Send presets button. S1 for example. Then select the 100 tracks and click on the S1 button.

[heda]

Originally Posted by saastara

Heda, this looks amazing.

As a request, could it be possible to implement some sort of channel memory system with buttons for recall and hide, to bring forth and hide tracks as needed? For example: Drums, Vox, fx etc.

Yes this is possible. Right now you can create different script instances. One for Drums, one for Vox, etc... I am doing also a way to quickly change the track display to the tracks from other instances. This still needs to be done. But what can be done now is if you open all instances, you can have them docked in the same docker and each instance has its tab button to switch display. So, to switch it would be as easy as clickin in the tabs in the docker.

[heda]

Originally Posted by hopi

does your wonderful mixer 'see' them? does it display them?

I am very excited that your lua mixer can run instances and have several mixers open at the same time...
and as I'm understanding it, each can have all the tracks or only certain tracks showing in it...
IF that is true, it will take reaper into whole new worlds...
Cubase used to give us three mixers that could each hold only certain tracks... but your lua seems to take reaper far beyond that ability!

yes it would be the same as other tracks. I can make an option to convert them to separators in HeDaMixer automatically if they have a "Separator" in the name of the layout in MCP.

yes you understood it correctly. But we can have more than 3 mixers here.. as many as you want.. you may not want to have them all open at the same time

[heda]

Today I successfully added code to create another instance with its own configuration, from the menu without having to manually copy the lua files, and add them to the actions list.

Let's see if I can publish the first pre for VIP members this weekend or next week. good news is today it didn't have any crash

[hopi]

good news

Ok on the separators thing...

my separators don't even have a name field... can anything be done to work with that?

they don't have any of the normal fields and that is by intent so that they really are just a totally blank bar of color


PS... think I'll have to add a donation for this as it is amazingly great work

EDIT... I was just looking again at what I can do for a track name for the separators that would not mess them up...
IF I name them with a series of spaces that works OK but any other character does mess them...
So what if separators had a name that was space space space ...would that help in the mixer lua?

[heda]

@hopi... no I didn't mean the track name.. I was referring to the MCP Layout name for the track. Which is in the theme. Most of the themes name it "Separator" or "MCP Separator". So you don't have to rename the separator tracks.

Originally Posted by hopi

PS... think I'll have to add a donation for this as it is amazingly great work

thanks. I am a bit busy and I think I may release a first pre-release soon so you all don't have to wait more for testing. For more features I may struggle a bit to find time next month, but donations always help to organize my time
I am amazed that we are currently more than 100 VIP members! Thank you everyone! Trust me that donations help me to share it and develop it more. So we all gain.

[hopi]

well hey I am not surprised about the VIP member count... after all it is a great deal for us and for reaper

[raiirock]

Heda< i cant wait to try this script< looks more and more amazing ) Please tell is it possible to view receives as tracks in your mixer ? I'll explain. For example a i track 5 piece band, create 5 monitor mixes (5 tracks with hardware outputs and all track receives) + moreme monitoring web layout. If i want to adjust monitor mix 3 i can make custom action ctrl-shift-3 for example and boom i see small mixer for monitor mix 3 , main monitor track and his receives as tracks . Excuse me for my bad english , i hope you will easily understand that concept . Thank you ! And can we have pan , maybe optional ? because not having pan in more me is very frustrating ((

[Vagelis]

That's amazing!!

[daxliniere]

Jesus, Hector!! :O Amaazing!

[mschnell]

Really awesome !

And great that Reaper does feature the APIs that allow 3rd party geniuses to create such amazing stuff !

-Michael

[X-Raym]

Maybe this script can be the occasion to solve the custom gradient metter ? One of the only feature I missed when I switched from cubase :P



Don't consider this feature extra priority, I get used to my colors now. But it can help those who are trying to mimic some hardware meters etc.

Just an idea :P

[heda]

@X-Raym... In Track Inspector, you can customize the gradient png file in the theme. so yes. In HeDaMixer I still haven't done anything about theming yet. Give me time to make it work first I have been fixing many small bugs today. I'm still having a bug in 1 pixel rounding issue in the meters... argghh...
For now you can change color after a reference level, but yes, after I do the theming options, it will be logical that it can use the same gradient for the meter as Track Inspector. I don't know if I would use it. I kind of like that the meter color inherits the track's color

[X-Raym]

Originally Posted by heda

you can customize the gradient png file

Cool !

There is a gradient rectangle function for GFX though, if you want to experiment when all other important things will be fixed :P
(I just noticed it today !)

Good luck for the rounding issue !

[hopi]

Originally Posted by heda

@X-Raym... In Track Inspector, you can customize the gradient png file in the theme. so yes. In HeDaMixer I still haven't done anything about theming yet. Give me time to make it work first I have been fixing many small bugs today. I'm still having a bug in 1 pixel rounding issue in the meters... argghh...
For now you can change color after a reference level, but yes, after I do the theming options, it will be logical that it can use the same gradient for the meter as Track Inspector. I don't know if I would use it. I kind of like that the meter color inherits the track's color

I would be great to have both ways as options....
use the track colors AND\OR set your own colors

[heda]

so.. what's going on ?
it is almost ready for a first pre-release! I've been fixing so many boring bugs, I had to fix some things in Track Inspector too.. so I didn't have all the time for HeDaMixer.
I've added some layout support to be able to make a track different that others... for example.. changing fader color or shape, or make a separator track etc.
Added also auto separator layout from current theme MCP layouts... and gaps after tracks for separators without the need of a track. like this:


Also, multiple gain reduction meters with different colors work better now. Adding multiple gain reductions. for example here is red for general compression and blue for the de esser compression. So now.. the gain reduction meter in HeDaMixer is better than the one in Track Inspector!


I also have been starting to write the documentation page a bit. Before release I want to finish the layouts format to be able to update layouts in the future and be compatible format. nothing you should worry.. just internal things.

I also want to add an option to display specific channels for the meters. For example in some tracks I use channel 3+4 for special detection of something.. and I don't really need the meter of that. I want to see only the meter of the main 1+2 output. But that will be for future updates.

[hopi]

unholy cow Heda! what great changes and ideas... seems you have thought of about everything...

I do still wonder about the track names... they seem so very small and I imagine they will be difficult to read...

Remember I know NOTHING about what is possible so I'm just talking out loud when prolly I should shut up...LoL but I was wondering if it could be possible to a track names in a vertical text, say to the left side of the track..

and I'm only asking that question cuz it seems like the only space that could provide enough room
I mean we all like thing track panels so we can see more at once in a mixer.. but I'd think being able to clearly see the names would be very important...

[Gianfini]

Wohaaa great job. I believe a single track fly floating stripe layout will be possible as well, correct?

G

[heda]

Originally Posted by Gianfini

Wohaaa great job. I believe a single track fly floating stripe layout will be possible as well, correct?

G

That's correct.
By default is selected track or tracks. But then you can lock it to one or various tracks.

First pre-release will have limited layouts, and I am building a framework to allow different layouts in the future.
I have received some new donations this weekend so I can push it a bit more this week and hopefully release this first test version already!
Thanks for the patience!

[Gianfini]

Originally Posted by heda

That's correct.
By default is selected track or tracks. But then you can lock it to one or various tracks.

First pre-release will have limited layouts, and I am building a framework to allow different layouts in the future.
I have received some new donations this weekend so I can push it a bit more this week and hopefully release this first test version already!
Thanks for the patience!

Ok I donated too...