Thread: Adjusting multiple pluggins at same time

Well you are missing something here. For instance, you can utilize an Avid/Digi console, live while also controlling the software or vice versa. On stuff like the Avid Icon and other similar permutations, you are not only talking about a standalone device but also a control surface that is completely automatable along with having internal multitracked recording and playback capabilities even without an outboard computer. And there are plenty of others like that all smashing into the market. This is stuff they've been already utilizing for shows on Broadway, network television, the lot. It's however all based upon how large your control surface and/or digital console integration with software is. There's only so much you can do um at one time with a mouse. I mean video games, still require a sophisticated F-16 like joystick. Not a whole lot of fun with just a mouse. Most people wouldn't know what not to turn on a sophisticated mixing desk or control surface. Hell, they wouldn't even know what knob to turn. But when you have a nice control surface with comprehensive integration into a deep multitrack program, your cooking up 21st-century audio engineering.

I'm still stuck in the 20th century
Mx. Remy Ann David

Originally Posted by kmetal

Anyone know why in any of the daws i've used (DP, PTle, Audition2.0, Reaper, Ableton) it's not possible to adjust 2 different pluggins at the same time. For instance an eq feeding a compressor? i do this in a live/analog setting where say i may want to eq the say 10k on a vocal while adjusting the attack on an in series compressor. It seems kind of like an ignored feature that should be added, or am i missing something? thanx. kyle

Short answer: because you only have one mouse.

Obvious solution (as Remy pointed out) would be to add a physical control surface so you can adjust two encoders at the same time. Perhaps in the future we'll all be using tablets with multi-touch screens and will think nothing of using both hands at once...

It is actually possible to link parameters in Reaper however: parameter modulation section -> link from parameter. Not sure I'd want to link an EQ gain with a compressor attack time, but I find it useful for creating emphasis / de-emphasis filter pairs around saturation effects, or compressors with no side-chain inputs. Simply link frequency and Q for as many bands as you want to use, then inverse link the gains (scale and offset both at -100%). Now everything you do on the first EQ will be mirrored in reverse on the second. You need to make sure you use EQs with symmetrical cuts and boosts for this to work well of course. And unfortunately the linking is not bi-directional: you have to adjust the master EQ not the slave. But still very useful!

Thanks. my studio has a digital mixer (d8b) that runs in hui mode but its older and doesn't adjust pluggin parameters in DP, to my knowledge, just pannig/fader movements, i'll give it a shot at my mix session tomm. i'm going to try at home w/ my alpha track/nocturn to see if i can do what i'd like to in ptmp. If i can, i'll just bring the nocturn to the studio and leave the alphatrack at home, and be happy. Very interesting capability in reaper tho. Hopefully one day i'll be sucessful enough to afford something like an icon, or i'll just have to wait till this kind of technology is in my price range. How cool would it be to have an analog console with motorized pots so you didn't have to stare at a screen. (or did i miss that too Crossing my fingers that the grayed out pluggin window will react, as well as the uh not grayed out one. much appreciated.
-rant- Interesting point tho about the most current crop of new engineers. My generation is the last that will ever know what it was like before the internet, what a portastudio is, and how to punch in by, well, listening. i'm not like boasting or anti-tech, or anything like that. i just find it interesting that one of the kids i work w/ who is a mere 4 years younger, very very quickly uses shortcuts for literally every function we normally use in the DAW, but was very unsure of himself when patching a keyboard into and eq then compressor, using the patch bay. My buddy who started last year is still baffled by basic send/return/buss routing, but remembers more shorcuts than me (yeah i know, i should try harder to remember more of them). i console myself (no pun intended), by using mic placement, making people sing in tune, not just 'close enough so it won't "sound digitally pitch corrected". My older cousin had me build/outfit him a modest home studio a couple yrs ago. has a command 8 for which he uses purely as a volume controller. thinks i'm the crazy one for riding faders, instead of using his "more accurate" method of mouse automation. I am not all for/against the new or the old stuff, i personally think a combination of the two isnt perfected quite yet, but is pretty cool, and neither is perfect anyway. it just baffles me that some people are running 40+ trk sessions, wouldn't know what an aux send, or group does if it were laid out in front of them w/ knobs. That, i can at least tolerate cuz im couple seconds slower at some stuff they're good at. But i will end this with rant by saying the thing i despise the most about the most current new engineer stereotype, is the dude who says "ay this sound bangin' right man, i killed this track" of which is full of stock loops from Logic, or whatever. ugh. I feel lucky to have at least gotten into this recdording hoopla at the very last moment, of an era, cuz it's never going back. (oops tape ran out)