Switches

[tulamide]

I did some searching on Google and didn’t find a way to visualise a float automation as a switch in Reaper. I’m impressed that it’s possible in Studio One! Or maybe it’s a common feature in many DAWs but not Reaper. Dunno.

The thing that caught my eye was that S1User said other plugins showed their switches automatically. That implies that those plugins tell the DAW something. Could this be a feature of VST3?

No, it's not a feature of VST3. But it is a feature of FS alpha.

It is a mixture of existing features and ignored features on the DAW. Reaper for example, never accepts isBoolean and always has a slider (treating it as a float). Studio One goes the manual way. Only, and I said that already in a previous post, Presonus' (developer of Studio One) own plugins that ship with the DAW, have pre-defined switches. The only DAW that fully implements an automatic way is Logic. When 2 discrete values are defined for a parameter (like 0 and 1 for boolean), it displays a checkbox, more than 2 discrete values a combobox, and a checkbox if parameter names are "on" and "off". JUCE has some issues with this as well, because there is a structure in VST3, where you can define, how a value is to be used (discrete with number of steps or float), but most DAWs ignore it and always use it as a float (which is just natural, as it was that way with VST2).

[Spogg]

Thanks for the clarification tulamide.

I sort of expected all DAWs to respond to all possible dialogue with plugins. And if the plugin doesn’t offer some information, I would have expected the DAW to set a default. Goes to show how expectations can lead to disappointment!

[tulamide]

I wouldn't even mind the manual way (micro view for 3rd party plugins only exist since the last update in S1), if there were a way to save such settings. But there isn't, and so this work to setup a switch is only available in the current project. I know without even being at that point yet, that I will be too bored quickly to always make the same setup over and over again.

[tulamide]

Thanks for the clarification tulamide.

I sort of expected all DAWs to respond to all possible dialogue with plugins. And if the plugin doesn’t offer some information, I would have expected the DAW to set a default. Goes to show how expectations can lead to disappointment!

Oh, another slip I need to address:
The problem here is not so much the DAW. It is the loose VST protocol. There is only a way to define discrete values, there is no distinction between boolean, integer, array or whatever else. And so it is up to the DAW to somehow make sense of it. But when you have a switch for 2 filters, you would want to see the filter number or letter, and not a checkbox, as is the case with Logic. Automating it is not the best approach, as is ignoring it completely like Reaper. And S1 has no option other than switch or fader. And switch always means 0 and 1, nothing else.

This should be addressed in the VST protocol. Clear value definitions for the DAW to handle it correctly.