How Best to Pan 8 Channels?

Cantabile
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I am looking to control the Left/Right pan of the 8 primary audio channels in my rig. (**) Pan controls (inside of a linked rack) that I can affect using C4 Bindings seem to be available for Plugin Outputs and Media Player outputs. So …

On a route where I want to insert a bindable Pan control, do I need to insert a placeholder plugin? Is that the best approach?

If so, is there some kind of built-in or usable Null plugin? I would really like to not impact latency or processing just to accomplish this Pan feature …

(**) Why would a guy playing solo have 8 audio channels? Well four are taken by HW and SW rendering from MIDI generated from a NDLR, which I use in some solo settings …

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yes

yes

No built in one, I recommend DMG TrackControl. Its free, very low latency and has useful extra features. If not it something like it would be my choice.

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I’d wire it into the linked rack like so ( of course you would have your 8 stereo ports in & out configured for the other plugs and routed accordingly)

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I’d put a binding for each plugin in the bindings area of the rack like so.

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I will look for other alternatives for the placeholder plug bit for now I would build something like this.

Dave

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This was even simpler and lower resource use. Also free.

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TrackControl is very nice! I installed it into my signal chain and it does have things I may want to include in the future … however …

What I think is needed is a VST that does nothing at all (since Pan is provided by Cantabile) except to pass a stereo signal (**) (I’m not sure if VSTs are hardwired for the number of in/out audio channels). No controls needed. No GUI needed. Minimal footprint preferred.

Was directed in a KVR post (Noop VST? - Effects Forum - KVR Audio) to BitShiftGain64 from Chris Johnson’s AirWindows plugins. This open-source VST collection is quite interesting: ultra-lightweight, no GUI, and quite techie (in keeping with Chris Johnson - from his YouTube posts). Available at:

https://www.airwindows.com/vsts/

VSTs
for 64 bit, 32 bit and PPC Macs and 64 and 32 bit Windows
Airwindows plugins are modular, graphic-less, stripped-down, VST plugins, for Mac and PC. The Mac VSTs are all 64 bit- triple binary, i386 / x86_64 / ppc. The PC VSTs come in 32 and 64 bit versions.

why no GUI?
Airwindows’ reputation was built out of generic-interface plugins, which typically focus on doing only one thing, often with very simple controls, labelled to help understanding but not to encourage formulaic work. There are two reasons for the generic, non-GUI interfaces. One, because it improves reliability a huge amount (many audio plugin bugs, including showstopper bugs, have to do with the GUI part). Two, because time that could be spent debugging the GUI or tweaking its look—or writing copyprotect code—can be better spent improving the sound. That’s how Airwindows rolls, since 2007.

I have inserted BitShiftGain64 in my signal chain, hooked the output Pan to an EC4 encoder, and it and it works perfectly!

(**) One thing I’m not clear on is how VSTs deal with the number of channels on an audio input port. Are VST audio input ports hardwired for a given number of channels or can they pass “however many channels are in the input”. And how can we tell what their behavior is. (This is all reminiscent of staring at a 1/4" port and wondering whether it’s Balanced, Unbal Mono, Unbal Stereo, or even TRRS.)

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Sonalksis FreeG is after almost every VSTi in my routing diagrams. It seems to have no problems with accepting bindings. FreeG looks to be between GGain and DMG Trackcontrol in functionality.

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They are hard wired and they are sensed by Cantabile when you load the object (VST). You can’t alter the audio ports on the VST without a re-write of the plugin.

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