SilkTone

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk] 
Hi no sure I follow why this is even necessary. All outputs that are assigned to a given sidechain input of a plugin are automatically mixed by SONAR prior to delivery to the plugin SC input. So all you need is a dummy pass through plugin that has a sidechain input. Assign as many track or bus outs to that input and you get auto mixing. The level of the individual inputs is controlled by the send gain. This will allow you to route tracks to other tracks.

Noel, the topic of a bus in the track view has come up a few times in the past. Sometimes it is convenient to have everything visually together (including a dedicated bus). I realize this isn't a high priority feature and that there probably aren't many people that need it, but it would still be nice.
 
The reason I started this thread was that after thinking about LJB's thread and how easy it would be get the desired functionality with a very simple plugin, that I would just go ahead and take a stab at it.
 
I've been playing around with it, basically a plugin that has 4 inputs and 2 outputs. Inputs 3 and 4 then becomes available as a side-chain input for any other track. And as you mention, we can assign as many tracks as we want to those two inputs and all that is required would be a simple block memory copy of channels 3 and 4 into the 2 output buffers. So there isn't even any mixing required in the plugin (not that it is hard or would add any artifacts or use a lot of CPU). I'm wondering what should happen with inputs 1 and 2. They should probably just be ignored, in which case any input directly into the "track bus" would not make it to the output. But that seems fine.
 
Noel, somewhat unrelated, but maybe you can give me a quick tip... I noticed Sonar Platinum is extremely sluggish under the debugger. It starts up extremely slow (a few minutes each time), and it keeps freezing up. It was never like this. Any ideas? Are there a special mode I can put Sonar into or something along those lines? I am using AD2 as a signal source, maybe it is causing this behavior?
 
Edit: Haha, just deleted all the empty lines. It was actually my cat that stepped on the keyboard. At 1st I thought he somehow deleted the whole post, but it just scrolled off the screen.

Me, I want it for two scenarios.  
 
Yes, I like to have a general level bus mix next to the instruments that are going to it.  It keeps me from having to jump to another view or screenset just to bring up the acoustic guitar tracks for example.  Or I might have three tracks of one guitar - close mic, one maybe back a bit or a different mic and a room mic.
 
The other is where I am parallel processing a track and blending it back in with the original.  I'll create an aux next to the snare track and then crush it, distort it or EQ it in a different way and then blend it with the original.  

Silk, in my case I don't know if I want any further mixing of the source tracks but I see it may be needed to accomplish the first scenario I posted.  I just want a clone of the source track that is convenient to get to and doesn't require twice the editing (if it is needed) that cloning the track does.
 

I think it would be great. With the sophisticated software we have I don't think there's a reason to stick with the hardware mixer model where buses and inputs have fixed locations. The flexibility of being able to have everything in a folder would be great. Also in console view it would be great to see the "bus" next to the tracks

I can see the logic of using a layout like a hardware mixer, it's nothing if not intuitive, but it has its downsides.
 
Let's say I want to add a modulating, panning delay to a guitar track. Something I do fairly often as it happens.
 
So I create a bus and a track send to it, put a delay on the bus and set it 100% wet, follow that with chorus/vibrato/phasing/whatever then put an autopanner after that. Sure, there are all in one plugins that can kind of do this but not with the flexibility and combination of components I want.
 
Add other busses to other tracks for similar purposes and that busses section starts to get rather full, with busses feeding busses as well just to complicate things.
 
It would make far more sense to have that bus (or whatever you want to call it) sitting next to the guitar track it applies to in a track folder.

Wouldn't being able to output a track into another track input be the same?  Just select from the input/output pull down menus.  Then you can label the track whatever you want of course, as there are some differences between tracks and busses, as slight as they might be. (such as the PC compressors, setting wet/dry levels typically....etc)  I don't use Reaper, but I believe that feature is available ??
 
Then you could also easily position it anywhere in the console/track view as well.

What I think would be cool and useful is to have the slide out bus and master views allow any combination and maybe allow the user to add additional slide able sections. For example. I would love a slide out to contain all my individual drums tracks and buses, another for rhythm, another for vocals , etc . Then have a slide out that has all my stems and master bus. This would definatly aid in managing complex projects, especially if you can name the slide outs and have the name as a "flag" at the top, anchored to the slide bar. Maybe even a right click on the flag would present a drop down of the names where picking a name pops the slide into view. Heck, maybe even right clicking a bus and selecting "create submix console" would put all the associated tracks and busses attached to the seleted bus into its own slide out. That would make it real easy for the user to set it up.

A user configurable "hyper" submix console view, in other words. ;)

You may be able to pull this off with hidden tracks and screensets, but that would take a lot of effort to set up, and it would be difficult to manage.

SilkTone
I've been playing around with it, basically a plugin that has 4 inputs and 2 outputs. Inputs 3 and 4 then becomes available as a side-chain input for any other track. And as you mention, we can assign as many tracks as we want to those two inputs and all that is required would be a simple block memory copy of channels 3 and 4 into the 2 output buffers. So there isn't even any mixing required in the plugin (not that it is hard or would add any artifacts or use a lot of CPU). I'm wondering what should happen with inputs 1 and 2. They should probably just be ignored, in which case any input directly into the "track bus" would not make it to the output. But that seems fine.
 
Noel, somewhat unrelated, but maybe you can give me a quick tip... I noticed Sonar Platinum is extremely sluggish under the debugger. It starts up extremely slow (a few minutes each time), and it keeps freezing up. It was never like this. Any ideas? Are there a special mode I can put Sonar into or something along those lines? I am using AD2 as a signal source, maybe it is causing this behavior?

 
Inputs 1 and 2 should be passed through unmodified otherwise in the default case it would silence the track it was inserted on :) If 3 and 4 are present they should be summed into 1 and 2 respectively.
 
Not sure why its sluggish, for you since we don't have that issue - maybe you have your symbol server set up to go to the MS servers. That will be slow since it goes out to the internet to get symbols. 
 

SilkTone
OK I think the slow debugging was due to AD2.
 
BTW I realized I was using the VST 2.3 SDK, which doesn't support 64-bit processing. So I downloaded the VST 3 SDK and am using that instead. It might take a bit longer as I need to get up to speed with it first. I think VST 3 supports side chaining directly so I'll need to figure out how that works.

I think there is a SC version of AGain. If not its trivial to do. I have one lying around.

microapp
 My suggestion (and Mod Bod's) is simply to remove the UI limitation of buses only positioned in the bus panes. This would not add additional audio routing and overhead and involve just a UI change.

Its not quite as simple as you might imagine. Buses and tracks in the UI are vastly different entities and the UI that manages them is quite different. This is because tracks existed eon's before buses did in SONAR. Changing that logic would take a lot of re-architecture of the UI, so it would be hard to justify the cost.

Hi SilkTone,
That would be fantastic. Color me super interested.
 
Dean