POLL: Should gain slider affect bypassed plugins?

Cantabile
1

For the longest time, a plugin’s gain setting has affected the output level even when the plugin slot is bypassed.

This has the following unfortunately side effect:

  1. Suppose an effect plugin alters the perceived volume of an incoming signal.
  2. You adjust the gain of the effect to bring it make to normal.
  3. You bypass the plugin - the perceived volume changed again.

Would it be better if when a plugin is bypassed it’s gain is internally set back to 0db and when unbypassed set back to whatever it was before?

It’s an easy change to make, but I’m reluctant to do it as it might mess up too many existing setups.

Brad

btw: one work around is if the effect plugin itself has it’s own internal gain setting - use that instead of Cantabile’s.

2

I totally understand your concerns about it.

Might it be an option to add an entry into the context menu when right clicking a plugin? Like “True Bypass” which can be checked? This would give the users both options and would not mess up other people setups.

To me it makes more sense if a plugin doesn’t have any influence on the sound if it’s bypassed.

1 Like
3

I agree, bypass should mean the rack or plugin has no effect at all - 0dB gain.

My only concern would be how to handle not breaking people’s setups. Add a new “Bypassed gain” defaulting you zero, then the upgrade process migrates existing gain to bypassed gain?

Neil

4

Do you mean when you toggle bypassed on/off the slot’s gain setting toggles between two different values that the user can adjust?

That could work, but wonder if it’s too unintuitive?

5

Yes - and it feels wrong to me. It’s not a “feature” people would expect, I think. So it would just be an ugly hack for backwards compatibility.

I think @FantomXR’s suggestion is better, especially if newly-added racks/plugins defaulted to “True Bypass”, to gradually move people over to the more standard behaviour.

Neil

6

The poll has 3 options I guess:

  1. Yes, change its behaviour without backwards compatibility
  2. Yes, change it with backwards compatibility option
  3. No, leave it as it is.

I vote for option 1.
I can live with changing some songs, when neccesary.

Jan.

7

I guess in some cases the “old” behavior is useful. So if there is no reason to let the user decide about the behavior… why not? So I’d vote for option 2.

8

Because adding options for things like this in the long run causes confusion.

If the correct behaviour should be to ignore the gain setting when bypassed then I’m tempted to just make the change and warn people about it.

1 Like
9

I wonder if there’s any value in the idea of switching to the correct behaviour, but existing gain controls on bypassed slots keep their current gain effect until they’re modified, and from then on they behave in the “correct” way? So some hidden gain value that’s applied, but reset to zero as soon as the control is touched.

Neil

10

Hi @brad,

I just noticed this issue and was going to report it as a bug. I found this thread while checking if it had already been reported. I assume you have never changed the behaviour? i.e. the gain slider of a bypassed plugin still affects the gain.

I also noticed a similar thing for plugin parameters - they are still being changed even when the plugin is bypassed and suspended. I have a couple of CCs that I use to change the Gain and Reverb on the Leslie. I want to the CCs to change the values on the T-Racks Leslie, except when it is bypassed (in which case the VB3 values should be changed). I wasn’t expecting these parameters to react when the plugin is bypassed (or suspended).

image
image1229×500 108 KB