Topic: Extend Podium’s track hierarchy concept

Here’s my 2 Eurocents:

1. You asked for it! Just a simple mockup for a kind of reverse group track with a thinner group bar, a little like a shadow of the receiving tracks. It’s not unlike Frits’ “ghost play” idea. (With and without “input arrows” – arrows coming from below looks even worse! :lol:)

The biggest downside to this is that there’re as many limits to these specific kind of group/ghost tracks as there are newfound freedoms. Just for example, you can’t have a few tracks from your drum group routed to the same ghost track as tracks from your guitar and synthesizer groups.

2. The other idea I had is this: Like group or composite tracks, you could configure a track to function as a “relay track.” After you set it as such, this track doesn’t feed its output into the normal signal chain anymore, but instead is available as a source or input mapping to other tracks. This mapping remains only as long as the track acts as a relay track, and is removed when the track is deleted or reconfigured. Filtering MIDI notes would probably need two of these in sequence: one to generate, one to filter and a normal track to recieve – assuming you can’t put a MIDI plugin before a track’s input any other way.

With this you can route tracks freely from one end to another – just without cables. And that’s the downside, of course… There’s no visual indication of what flows where. Simply because of this, I think it’s just not a good idea to mix and match real modularity with a linear visual/signal flow like we have in Podium. Bar something like the zGrid, or the routing window in Reaper, which are totally separate from the ‘normal’ view of the tracks. This is after all probably the best way. But really… press TAB and get to see lots of cables dangling? Ohh no, thank you! 😛

For those of us who’ve never used Tracktion, would somebody mind explaining a bit about those racks?

The more I think about it the more I think that T3’s rack idea would not work in Podium. This is because they may be just a bit too different to pull it off.

I didn’t reread the entire thread, but is there a reason why a midi out of a plugin can’t be connected to the midi in of the plugin in the parent track (if it has a midi in)?

If I want to put an arp before a synth, I’d chose the arp in the source slot, and then the synth in the first “effect” track. (if this gets implemented, maybe create a midi fx slot in the rack that goes before the source, which is just a matter of labeling)

This would allow midi plugins, but not parallel routing.

Thanks for the screenshot, UncleAge! Though this particular setup with a multi-out plug-in I believe you could do in Podium easily, too.
What I can’t tell at all is how the rack(s) relate to normal tracks. Do you assign a complete rack to a track (are all the outputs downmixed then?), or can you assign separate “rack inputs/outputs” to tracks? :-k

@thcilnnahoj wrote:

Here’s my 2 Eurocents:

1. You asked for it! Just a simple mockup for a kind of reverse group track with a thinner group bar, a little like a shadow of the receiving tracks. It’s not unlike Frits’ “ghost play” idea. (With and without “input arrows” – arrows coming from below looks even worse! :lol:)

The biggest downside to this is that there’re as many limits to these specific kind of group/ghost tracks as there are newfound freedoms. Just for example, you can’t have a few tracks from your drum group routed to the same ghost track as tracks from your guitar and synthesizer groups.

2. The other idea I had is this: Like group or composite tracks, you could configure a track to function as a “relay track.” After you set it as such, this track doesn’t feed its output into the normal signal chain anymore, but instead is available as a source or input mapping to other tracks. This mapping remains only as long as the track acts as a relay track, and is removed when the track is deleted or reconfigured. Filtering MIDI notes would probably need two of these in sequence: one to generate, one to filter and a normal track to recieve – assuming you can’t put a MIDI plugin before a track’s input any other way.

With this you can route tracks freely from one end to another – just without cables. And that’s the downside, of course… There’s no visual indication of what flows where. Simply because of this, I think it’s just not a good idea to mix and match real modularity with a linear visual/signal flow like we have in Podium. Bar something like the zGrid, or the routing window in Reaper, which are totally separate from the ‘normal’ view of the tracks. This is after all probably the best way. But really… press TAB and get to see lots of cables dangling? Ohh no, thank you! 😛

For those of us who’ve never used Tracktion, would somebody mind explaining a bit about those racks?

Thanks for the effort. I appreciate it. Maybe it’s just me, but I think offering this kind of functionality will scare many users away. I know I’m scared 😯

@thcilnnahoj wrote:

I wouldn’t say no to the kind of feature Mike suggested in the opening post. As far as real modularity – which isn’t the topic though, I guess – is concerned, I stand by my comment that it’d better be kept (visually) separate from the normal tracks view.

Every host is a bit different in this regard and I for one don’t miss the modularity of an app like energyXT when I’m working in Podium.

The link for the video (about 5 minutes long) below shows how routing is handled in Reaper and Live for those who have never used those apps. I still don’t have an answer for how it should be displayed in Podium but maybe there’s something to glean from seeing how its presented to the user in two other apps.

Warning: It’s about 20MB so if you are on a slow connection beware 🙂
http://www.uncleage.com/ftp_music/Routing.wmv

@thcilnnahoj wrote:

it’s pretty much perfect in both apps already for the kind of use you presented, isn’t it?

True, but I was wondering how some version of this would be achieved in Podium. I would like to see it implemented one day. One of the significant differences in Podium (Tracktion too) compared to most apps is the visual signal flow. Like in the video, there aren’t any visual indicators other than a drop-down menu or a matrix showing the flow. Maybe Fritz could do the same. Maybe there’s a way to implement it by using the idea behind sends. But in this case its sends without returns. I dunno… I’m just throwing more stuff out there I guess…

Its a lazy Sunday in Phoenix 🙂

@Zynewave wrote:

…As I see it, what you achieve with the “from” combobox on a track, is that you move the setup of send/return entirely to the target track. You get an implicit return on the target track, and a hidden send on the source track.

Yes, I agree.
@Zynewave wrote:

Q: It looks like the Reaper routing window allows to mix the output from multiple tracks onto a single target track.

Yes, I failed to show that part. But in the picture below you can see that a single track can have multiple sends coming in.

@Zynewave wrote:

Can you do that in Live also with the combobox?

Sort of… Each track can have sends (hidden in the picture below) to the FX/Return tracks. And they can also have their output directed to a track other than the Master Output. In the picture below you can see tracks 1 & 2 feeding track 4. And the option to feed only the sends (read: FX/Returns) is available as well. And there is one more thing to notice in the picture. After the drop-down box “4-Audio” there is another window “Track In”. That window will list all effects on the receiving track that can accept an audio feed as well. This function helps in directing audio to a compressor (for instance) as a side-chain feed.