[Traverso-devel] Routing concept

[Nicola Doebelin]

Hi Remon,

I'll try to explain my ideas for a routing concept (although it's probably too 
late, after midnight...). Also have a look at the attached illustrations if 
you can't follow my explanations.

Let's start with the patch bay shown in the first illustration (print1.pdf). 
This is my suggestion for a dialog which lets the user manage the routing 
setup (heavily inspired by the connection dialog of qjackctl). It's devided 
into three parts, the input routing (left), the internal routing (middle) and 
the output routing (right). The input routing section assigns hardware 
channels to tracks for recording. Accordingly, the output routing section 
assigns track / main outputs to hardware playback channels. The central part 
defines the internal signal path. Ignoring the AUX busses for the moment, 
this part should also be rather self explaining. If it is possible to pipe 
the output of several tracks to the input of one track, the latter acts as a 
sub group. (Outputs must not be connected to their own input in order to 
prevent feedback loops.) So different types of input signal can be connected 
to a track's input port: audio coming from i) a hardware input channel, ii) 
output ports of several other tracks, and iii) the track's own audio clips. 
All signals should just be mixed together.

Each song should have a variable number of AUX busses. Internally, AUX busses 
are almost normal tracks, as they have an input port, plugins, panorama, gain 
and an output port. Their input port, however, is hard-wired as shown in 
illustration 2 (print2.pdf).

The normal tracks, on the other hand, should be able to send a copy of their 
audio stream, either splitted before (pre) or after (post) processing, to the 
AUX bus. See screenshot1.png for a faked example of a song with 1 AUX bus. So 
for each track it should be possible to determine how much of it's audio 
content is sent to each AUX bus (pre or post processing).

AUX busses should have certain restrictions as compared to normal tracks:

- Since their input is hard-wired, it should not be possible to connect 
anything to their input port in the patch bay.
- It should neither be possible to record into AUX busses.
- They should not contain audio clips.

I hope you grasp the concept. It's not that difficult actually, but it seems 
pretty difficult to explain.

Finally: Good night!
Nic

print1.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

print2.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

screenshot1.png
Description: PNG image