Routing pins: What do you do with them?

R

Robus

Well-known member
I've been using Reaper now for a couple of years. I have never had occasion to use the routing pins. Granted, what I do in Reaper is fairly simple.

Can anyone suggest a practical application for these pins? What can you do more easily using them than not?
 
Never used them either! Complex routing, I guess. I just looked at a couple of places in the manual where its demoed. Not even sure what some of them are doing! Side-chaining FX, mostly, and slaving track parameters together.

I probably take 2-3X as much time as needed when I'm mixing because I don't use the easy shortcuts (they're only easy if you know what/where they are!) I should re-read the manual some day . :rolleyes:
 
I've looked at them and puzzled on them awhile then gave up.

Was hoping someone would come along and answer the OP's question.
 
Side-chain compression, especially with multiple compression sources. I do it fairly often, usually to get the rhythm guitars to duck both vocals and the kick. e.g.:

route the main vocal bus to channels 3 & 4 of the rhythm guitar bus
route the kick channel to 5&6 of the RG bus
Put a compressor on the RG bus.
Set it's detector input to Auxillary input L+R.
Tune it.
Put a second compressor on the RG bus.
Set it's detector to Auxillary input L+R.
open the pin interface ("4 in 2 out")
Toggle off the current aux L+R and move them down into 5&6
Tune the compressor.
 
I use them for routing things. ;)

But seriously, I use the things all the time for all kinds of reasons to the point where it's difficult to think of a specific example. I guess in my case it's mostly for parallel processing and various types of what you might call side-chaining.
 
Yeah, I figured people were using the pins for that kind of thing. A convenience of Reaper but also something that can make it puzzling is the fact that there are multiple ways of doing things. I don't do a lot of side chaining, but if I wanted I could do much of what you describe just by using the Send/Return windows in the individual tracks. I can see a convenience to the pin grid as a quick way to set routings for multiple tracks, and for an at-a-glance overview.
 
Robus said:
I don't do a lot of side chaining, but if I wanted I could do much of what you describe just by using the Send/Return windows in the individual tracks.
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Not if you want to do something to the signal on the way to the sidechain that you don't want to hear in the mix. You could make a third track for that...

When I said "side chain", I more meant parameter modulation via audio signal. Imagine you have a chain of 3 plugins. You want some parameter on plug 3 to be modulated by the level of what's coming out of plugin 1, but don't want plugin 2 to affect that modulation. Pins is about the only way to do that.

Likewise if you wanted to "tap" a send from some point in the middle of a chain.

Again, there probably are ways to do those things by splitting the chain across multiple tracks and using sends, but that starts to get silly fast.

One pretty common example would be trying to get actual True Stereo out of ReaVerb. You have to send track channel 1 to one instance, take both output channels from that without overwriting track channel two so that it can go to the second instance and the outputs of that instance needs to be channel reversed and then mixed with the output of the first instance in such a way that the final stereo mix overwrites channels 1 and 2. I think the plugin pins are a lot easier way to do this than using multiple tracks.

In my live rig I run an instance of Superior Drummer. It has some toms, kicks, percussion that I want to come out basically clean and dry. It also has a ride cymbal that I want to feed to a delay before it gets mixed with the rest of it going into an EQ and compression chain. In SD, I route the ride's mic to channels 3+4 while all the rest go to 1+2. Then there's a delay with its input and output assigned to 3+4. Then there's a ReaEQ taking its L input from 1+3 and its R from 2+4. Instead of three tracks cluttering up my MCP, I have the one.
 
BroKen_H said:
Can't you just combine CV outputs into the compressor to do multiple input source side chaining?
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That's not exactly the same as VHS's thing. In practice, it might work out similar, possibly work well enough, but it ain't the same.
 
I see, he's doing parallel (although, not quite parallel...more like series parallel :confused: Looks like you're paralleling the triggers, yes?) compression into two compressors that are in line vs combining the inputs into one compressor. . If I used two compressors in line for two signals, wouldn't I just run the side signal from each to each?? This is something I've never played with. Please make this a bit clearer.
 
Looks like he's got the rhythm guitar ducking the kick drum and then the result of that ducking the vocal. I guess it makes most sense if you want drastically different settings for the two processes. Like, you probably want a pretty quick attack and release on the one ducking the kick drum so that it actually gets out of the way of those transients and then comes back without too much lag, but then you want it to respond to the vocal a little more smoothly with a bit longer time constants. Or maybe you really want it to dip way down when the kick hits so you set the ratio on that one really high but you want just subtle ducking from the vocals, so that ratio is set low. Or whatever. I'm not trying to speak for Steve, but it's pretty obvious to me how the two techniques could be noticeably different.

Edit - and again, this could be done using two tracks, but it's another situation where I would just as soon keep it on one to cut down on clutter, avoid pan law whackiness, etc.
 
Perfect. I understand completely. Thank you. Single compressor, single process: dual compressors when you need separate processes. :)
 
ashcat_lt said:
Looks like he's got the rhythm guitar ducking the kick drum and then the result of that ducking the vocal. I guess it makes most sense if you want drastically different settings for the two processes. Like, you probably want a pretty quick attack and release on the one ducking the kick drum so that it actually gets out of the way of those transients and then comes back without too much lag, but then you want it to respond to the vocal a little more smoothly with a bit longer time constants. Or maybe you really want it to dip way down when the kick hits so you set the ratio on that one really high but you want just subtle ducking from the vocals, so that ratio is set low. Or whatever. I'm not trying to speak for Steve, but it's pretty obvious to me how the two techniques could be noticeably different.

Edit - and again, this could be done using two tracks, but it's another situation where I would just as soon keep it on one to cut down on clutter, avoid pan law whackiness, etc.
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That's pretty much exactly it. (Though I certainly hadn't thought it through that thoroughly.)
 
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