Make 'Bypass' a button, not a switch already

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mbfrancis
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09 Nov 2015

It's time to retire the Bypass / On / Off switch on effects and Combis and do what rest of the works does, have a proper Bypass button. Bypassing an effect should be easier than clicking on a little tiny switch and moving it. Make it a button. You can preserve the little-used "off" functionality with a smaller override button.

Who's with me?
Producer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist. I make indie pop as Port Streets, 90s/shoegaze as Swooner, and Electro as Yours Mine.

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selig
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09 Nov 2015

mbfrancis wrote:It's time to retire the Bypass / On / Off switch on effects and Combis and do what rest of the works does, have a proper Bypass button. Bypassing an effect should be easier than clicking on a little tiny switch and moving it. Make it a button. You can preserve the little-used "off" functionality with a smaller override button.

Who's with me?
You are being FAR too logical!!! ;)

Practically speaking, this will require all developers going back into all the existing REs and replacing all switches with buttons and finding the space to add a button for "off". I am not 100% sure, but I think this is something the devs will have to do themselves, not something the Props can do - could be wrong though. Biggest issue will be finding the space for the extra button, especially on the folded view.

But besides all that, I'm 100% with you on the frustration in trying to quickly bypass an effect. In addition, adding an "off" button (or a key command?) to ALL devices could be handy for saving CPU (if the button TOTALLY disabled the devices). Add to that a "freeze" function and now we're talking!
:)
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jonheal
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09 Nov 2015

The top left button on my Reasontalk.com-hated Behringer 2000BCR is mapped to that nutty slide switch. 'Course I got to press it multiple times to step through the switch's three states but it still beats trying to grab it with the mouse! :puf_smile:
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JNeffLind
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09 Nov 2015

Agree 100%. This is annoying. One of my few peeves about Reason.

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JiggeryPokery
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10 Nov 2015

Why not do what I've been doing for years, run the effect through either a) a ReMix unit mute button, or more recently, b) a Shelob/Mordred/Anansi channel and simply map the Remote button to the appropriate channel to toggle it off or on?

Shelob/Mordred were partly designed with that useage in mind, with their ability to add an autofade, which is preferable to using instant off or bypass, which can create always unwanted zero-cross clip artefacts if the device is processing at the time of the control's state change.

You clearly cannot have PH now make a Bypass switch into a button (for reasons selig mentions). In hindsight, yes, the 3-stage switch was a mistake (and don't get me started on TS8450 programming that defaults Bypass switch toggles to an off state of "Off" and an on state of also off (i.e, Bypass), no-one, Propellerhead, ever, has needed a toggle of those two states for an effects device! :evil: ). But that's what we've got. So, workaround it with the tools available.

PH could theoretically add a new widget that was just a two-state button that devs could use for future products. But i suspect PH would argue that Bypass means the device is still on but in silence detection, whereas Off the device is shut down and thus saving CPU). Locating the Bypass switch is one of the annoying parts of effects design, cos it never looks right to me. Having to add that for two required buttons (bypass/process and off/on) just doubles that annoyance.

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mbfrancis
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12 Nov 2015

JiggeryPokery wrote:You clearly cannot have PH now make a Bypass switch into a button (for reasons selig mentions).
Why not? The existing real estate for the switch and labeling is more than enough to accommodate one large square button (bypass) and another smaller button either flat underneath or on the side. Maybe you'd have to skip the labeling or simplify. Also, because this is standard on all insert devices, I assume this change *could* be pushed by PH and it would propagate throughout REs.
Producer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist. I make indie pop as Port Streets, 90s/shoegaze as Swooner, and Electro as Yours Mine.

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Benedict
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12 Nov 2015

Today I was doing something where the Bypass:On:Off switch made perfect sense.

:)
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JiggeryPokery
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12 Nov 2015

mbfrancis wrote:
JiggeryPokery wrote:You clearly cannot have PH now make a Bypass switch into a button (for reasons selig mentions).
Why not? The existing real estate for the switch and labeling is more than enough to accommodate one large square button (bypass) and another smaller button either flat underneath or on the side. Maybe you'd have to skip the labeling or simplify. Also, because this is standard on all insert devices, I assume this change *could* be pushed by PH and it would propagate throughout REs.
That would be a really small button. The fact is any replacement would have to fit, to the pixel, in exactly the same space.

But you're forgetting the more serious reason this is unlikely to be a one-for-one replacement. (I had a brain fart and genuinely thought selig mentioned it above! I must have started dreaming this shit)

The bypass controls are a built-in system (so I'm not entirely sure here PH couldn't find away round it, I confess) but with standard RE controls the fader is a numeric control, while a button is boolean, and these two state types are utterly and completely incompatible: you can't turn a fader into a button (or vice versa) without breaking the device patches/Combis/songs. The difference is that with a fader you can add additional states with no compatibility issue: 0/1 simply becomes 0/1/2/3, were you to add two more options, hence you see this a lot with device updates. But a button is boolean: true or false. A fader that acts like a button would be odd.

Now in repatches, Bypass Faders aren't saved, so replacing them with two buttons in devices is possibly viable, depending on how device code responds to them, so I don't know whether devices would automatically work here (coders feel free to chime in here) . However, in songs and Combinators, the songfile/cmb does saves the Bypass Fader state, so that would be expecting a three-state switch, not a pair of two-state buttons.

Probably the only viable option is to deprecate Bypass Fader entirely and introduce a new system for future devices. One has to be realistic with proposals and consider the consequences of changes: I could be wrong, but right now I just can't see how it would be possible to retro-fit two buttons to replace a 3-state switch on upwards of 200 devices.

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selig
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12 Nov 2015

IF this was to be done, and as previously mention it would be a BIG "if", the way to do it (ignoring ALL technical issues) would be to put the bypass button on the front, and the on/off switch on the back. It's not like it's that uncommon to have on/off switches on the back of rack devices IRL, so this should make logical sense to most.

But it's also not that uncommon to have MIDI jacks on the back of rack devices IRL, but that doesn't seem to have impressed the Props very much… ;)
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mbfrancis
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13 Nov 2015

Thanks for all the replies guys...obviously if it can't be a simple replace and pushed by PH then it won't work. Assume it would have to be something that developers updated as the updated devices.
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SteveDiverse
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13 Nov 2015

mbfrancis wrote:Thanks for all the replies guys...obviously if it can't be a simple replace and pushed by PH then it won't work. Assume it would have to be something that developers updated as the updated devices.
Disclaimer: I don't know how the bypass switch is actually implemented (coded).
[but]
IF it is implemented as a class with a unique name, that class could be rewritten (by PH) to inherit from 'button' instead of 'switch'.

It would not impact the GUI if the button configuration occupied the same shape/size as the current switch.

It would, however, require a recompile of RE's - but no code change.
(and it would create an inconsistency due to devices that don't get recompiled by the developer, for whatever reason)

AND

In the current switch implementation, if you point to the position in the switch 'track' where you want the switch to be and click, the switch will move to that position - same user semantic as a button.
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Creativemind
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19 Nov 2015

Does anyone else find the bypass switch slow when automating in a track? sometimes it's slow to work. It should if say on the 16th bar you want a fx device to come on, should be automated to exactly on the 16th bar shouldn't it? I increasingly find that I have to keep automating earlier to accommodate for this.

Would a button be quicker?
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selig
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19 Nov 2015

Creativemind wrote:Does anyone else find the bypass switch slow when automating in a track? sometimes it's slow to work. It should if say on the 16th bar you want a fx device to come on, should be automated to exactly on the 16th bar shouldn't it? I increasingly find that I have to keep automating earlier to accommodate for this.

Would a button be quicker?
Not necessarily. The main problem (and it's not just Reason) is that automation is a 'second class citizen' with regards to timing accuracy. The CPU needs to first insure audio is played back accurately, and some CPU needs to go to the display (which is typically third in line with regards to accuracy). Automation will not only be late, but also inconsistent as the overall CPU load varies. I can hear this with a simple bypass test and a drum loop (and see it by recording it to a new audio track).

LONG ago I stopped using automation for "timing critical" muting/bypassing tasks. For muting of audio tracks I use clip muting, which as the advantage of being visually more obvious exactly what is muted and where. Instrument/FX tracks are more work, sometimes bouncing to audio and sometimes creating an additional track with the desired FX and switching back and forth by muting note data where appropriate (not that I need this to be super accurate very often). Hope that helps.
:)
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Creativemind
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22 Nov 2015

What do you mean by clip muting Selig, are you talking Reason here or another daw? what were you muting audio with before?

I just noticed as well, you can't automate the little volume raising arrows on audio clips. Should be able to, and what is being raised then, in sound terms with those arrows? must check the manual.
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selig
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22 Nov 2015

Creativemind wrote:What do you mean by clip muting Selig, are you talking Reason here or another daw? what were you muting audio with before?

I just noticed as well, you can't automate the little volume raising arrows on audio clips. Should be able to, and what is being raised then, in sound terms with those arrows? must check the manual.
Long time ago I was muting with the mute button (for automation). Now I just mute the clip, in PT, Logic, and Reason.

You can't automate the audio clip level since it's a static level.

:)
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raccoonboy
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26 Nov 2015

Can they not just make it so that you click in the bypass/on/off area and it cycles through the different options rather than click and drag. This could be an option in the settings.

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Vince-Noir-99
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08 Dec 2015

raccoonboy wrote:Can they not just make it so that you click in the bypass/on/off area and it cycles through the different options rather than click and drag. This could be an option in the settings.
That's exactly what I thought.
Or!
That AND remove the Off function and put a proper I/O switch in the back panel, near the power socket. A handy shortcut to switch off any device would be nice too, and of course, any lights should switch off accordingly ;)

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