Topic: Virtual Groups

jpleong & Frits, thanks for the ideas. I’m going to keep noodling around and see if I can use a different workflow here as suggested.

Any ideas from others are still welcome 8)

@Zynewave wrote:

Of course this approach may not be practical if you want to keep both EQ settings in your arrangement for the future.

Edit: I did not see jpleong’s post before I wrote my reply.

As a mattrer of fact, keeping the EQ settings is the goal. The more I played around with this idea last night the more I thought about how beneficial to the mix/mixdown workflow.

*Warning: Short Rant*
I have several DAW apps as I am sure quite a few others do. Each has worked its way in to some part of my routine because “it” does something better than another app. But the more I dig in and get used to each environment the more I wish I didn’t have to switch between apps.

In my mind my workflow is broken down into three areas. And those three do have a little overlap. And it is this overlap that brings the frustration when I am trying to do a project and have to switch between apps. And it seems as though most of the suggestions or feature requests, made by most users here and in other company forums, are to drive their app of choice in that direction while also hoping it does not become so bloated that it starts getting in the way.

The first area for me is when I am creating my music, the composition stage. I seem to gravitate towards Live,Tracktion and sometimes FLS during this stage. I am seldom concerned with cpu usage and RAM limitations at this point. Most of my projects are 50/50, audio/midi, and usually start on the guitar or piano. At this stage for me things like routing and busses are not as important.

The second area is tracking. Most times I track in two different programs. I use Tracktion for audio (exporting later for mixdown elsewhere) and either Live,Podium or Reaper for the midi depending on what the track requires. At this stage good midi tools and things that help me perform multiple takes easily are important. For me there is no app *yet* that nails this part quite as easily as Tracktion in the audio department. The setup is simple and the app just stays out of your way. And for simple midi recording its ok too.

The third area is mixdown. I usually spend almost as much time here as I do tracking. And it is this area where I think the above functionality I mentioned could be huge. Its in this area that I am worried about cpu useage, freezing/bouncing tracks, flexible routing of sends/busses, project mgmt (even though is a concern throughout) and believe or not, the interface for the app. The interface has to stay out of my way when tracking but becomes such an integral part of mixdown process because I am staring at the screen for such long periods of time. My main apps for mixdown are Podium, Reaper and Audition. And out of these I prefer Podium because its easier on the eyes and its lets me work they way “I” want to.

Please keep in mind that in almost all areas mentioned I see the ability of Podium surpassing all the above apps. More and more I am moving my work into Podium for all of the above. Its flexibilty is its strong point. But even with all the apps out there that address so many items in a user’s workkflow I can’t believe none has addressed the issue I pointed out. One case in point is to look at jpleong’s workaround. And in my workflow its almost as important as automation. And I know the industry has not always had automation ITB or OTB. And I am sure it was welcomed with open arms when it did arrive.

Usually in the mixdown process, time allowing, an engineer is constantly jumping back and forth between tracks trying to get everything to sit in the mix. Its an art form unto itself and no two engineers approach this process the same. But some things are common in most of their workflows. A/B’ing parts is a big part of this I think. At least it is for me and most people that I have seen. And the killer part is that it is so overlooked by almost all developers.

The implementation on a small scale would allow the user to select multiple FX or FX chains, in the case of Podium that would mean actual tracks, and allow the user to make adjustments to those that are common amongst the sets or Virtual Groups. By this I mean literally clicking on successive EQ’s, from the example above, and identifying them as a group. No need to add anything visual other than a quick confimation that it happened. And this group may only have the common ability of being enabled or disabled (maybe via a right click menu). This would save me and probably quite a few present/future users a lot of time during the mixdown stage. If you have ever had to work with orchestral pieces or tried to get an electric bass/kick drum/Rhodes piano and male vocal to play nicely in the mix you would really appreciate the added functionality this type of enhancement would bring.

Is not having it a showstopper? Of course not. Is the functionality available anywhere else? I don’t think so. And I don’t think it should be added just for the sake of adding it. I think it would be useful and used often. Is this a feature request? Yes. And even if you don’t add it sometime in the future Frits, I would still like to thank you for reading through the entire post 🙂 If nothing else maybe it will gel with some of you other plans and give you new/fresh ideas.

*End rant/request*

@Zynewave wrote:

Your idea with the virtual groups requires that you set up multiple plugins for each A/B set. If you plan to use the same plugins in the A/B sets, then it could be more efficient to A/B with a single set of plugins but using different programs (less CPU/memory usage, fewer fx tracks).

Thanks for the feedback Frits. I’m not sure that I would save that much on resources though since in effect the same number of plugins would still be in memory, just split across two different programs (and I would have to have two sets of audio files in memory as well). But even if that did work and the hit I take on resources decreased, my next problem would be that I could only use one program at a time since the drivers are ASIO and by default only one program can use the audio device ( Echo Audiofire8 ) at a time. However your last point…
@Zynewave wrote:

All you need is then a menu on the group track which will change the program on all plugins within the group. What do you think of that solution?

…has me thinking of a different solution. I’m going to try a few things out and if they work I’ll report back to this thread.

Thanks!

@Zynewave wrote:

I’m not sure that I would save that much on resources though since in effect the same number of plugins would still be in memory, just split across two different programs

I don’t mean two different applications. I mean swapping between two different programs/presets for each plugin. If you’re using zPEQ, then it won’t work currently as it only has one program in its bank. But I can increase this to e.g. 16 programs in a future update of zPEQ.

(Yes, I did misunderstand you at first.)

That is an awesome idea! And controlling that from the group track would still be a big time saver. I’ll definitely appreciate this one if/when you get to rolling it out. Thanks for giving it some thought Frits!