Re: FS ability to call .dll's question
Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 8:32 pm
Hi RJ,
Interesting to poke around in - I haven't really made much use of Reaper's new 'MIDI buses', but that's just the kind of routing tool that would make it useful.
Unfortunately, you couldn't really replace it with a VST directly - to access different buses would require a plugin with multiple MIDI outputs. Oddly, FS will let you make such a thing, but even inside Reaper, with it's super-flexible routing, only the first MIDI can actually be accessed.
That's a shame, as the MIDI busing system could solve a whole load of controller routing problems - but the guys at Cockos don't have any control over the VST spec', so it's not their fault (probably a reason why they offer JS as an alternative).
I do think that there is one useful trick that the JS plugin misses though - one which would combine very well with a FS 'front-end'...
At the moment, it just gives you the choice to route one Bus/Channel combination to another - an "advanced channel changer", so to speak. An alternative that routed, say, chan1->bus1, chan2->bus2... etc. might actually be more useful - a multiplexer in effect, taking a single MIDI input and routing each channel to a different bus.
A regular 1in-1out MIDI plugin placed before the 'splitter' would then have a lot of scope to re-direct data simply by manipulating the channels - which is relatively easy to do (and much easier to build a nice GUI if FS than JS).
At least that way, it would take only one Reaper track, one FS plugin, and the single 'splitter' JS to give a lot of flexibility - rather than the 'duct tape' solution that requires dozens of plugins, all split across multiple tracks.
I've not looked at JS for quite a while, but the code for using the buses looks to be fairly straightforward, so Ill see if I can knock something like that together - I can already imagine several things I could put it to use for.
Interesting to poke around in - I haven't really made much use of Reaper's new 'MIDI buses', but that's just the kind of routing tool that would make it useful.
Unfortunately, you couldn't really replace it with a VST directly - to access different buses would require a plugin with multiple MIDI outputs. Oddly, FS will let you make such a thing, but even inside Reaper, with it's super-flexible routing, only the first MIDI can actually be accessed.
That's a shame, as the MIDI busing system could solve a whole load of controller routing problems - but the guys at Cockos don't have any control over the VST spec', so it's not their fault (probably a reason why they offer JS as an alternative).
I do think that there is one useful trick that the JS plugin misses though - one which would combine very well with a FS 'front-end'...
At the moment, it just gives you the choice to route one Bus/Channel combination to another - an "advanced channel changer", so to speak. An alternative that routed, say, chan1->bus1, chan2->bus2... etc. might actually be more useful - a multiplexer in effect, taking a single MIDI input and routing each channel to a different bus.
A regular 1in-1out MIDI plugin placed before the 'splitter' would then have a lot of scope to re-direct data simply by manipulating the channels - which is relatively easy to do (and much easier to build a nice GUI if FS than JS).
At least that way, it would take only one Reaper track, one FS plugin, and the single 'splitter' JS to give a lot of flexibility - rather than the 'duct tape' solution that requires dozens of plugins, all split across multiple tracks.
I've not looked at JS for quite a while, but the code for using the buses looks to be fairly straightforward, so Ill see if I can knock something like that together - I can already imagine several things I could put it to use for.
