selig wrote: ↑23 Jul 2023
I suggest going back to what buddard said, earlier, the classic way to start a design is by asking: what (and who) is it for?
Basically what are the exact use cases in order of importance.
Well let’s start with me, since I started the thread. Theres a lot of assumptions and some situations that have changed since my OP.
In my 2020 OP, Combinator 2 wasn’t released yet, nor was the Combinator Mixer a thing that existed. So let’s start there.
There’s been a lot of assumptions about what I suggested that could just as easily be solved with the expanded CV inputs and the programmer of Combinator 2. CV control over level and pan per channel seems to be standard across Reason devices, so that’s not unreasonable IMHO. Direct CV control over sends or any additional
potential features isn’t critical to my ideal mixer/channel strip.
That said, I think 2 sends is an absolute minimum, and one of the should be switchable to pre/post fader (and the “fader” can be a knob or a slider… I don’t care which).
I didn’t originally have a HPF in mind, but I do think it’s useful, even if it’s a fixed frequency HPF like some real world consoles have (usually at around 75-100 Hz). Continuously variable is totally fine. LPF isn’t something that I can recall ever seeing in a real world analog console, so I would leave that out.
Is EQ even necessary? I don’t think it is, and I would almost rather see an insert/return path for EQ/dynamics processing (switchable pre/post fader). I’m not a coder, so I don’t know if it makes it easier to not have to come up with good EQ code, but if it is… then leave it up to other devs who have made good EQ’s and utilize the inserts.
My typical use situations:
Mixing multiple synths stacked/layered in a Combinator, with common sends.
Taking a mixer from a master FX output and splitting that, such that one path goes back to the normal master return path, but also feeding that into another master FX (utilizing another mixer to mix its inputs).
Using only a single channel of a mixer, utilizing its FX send for “throws” of FX that only get used on one sound source (mainly because you can’t use CV to control the SSL mixer sends yet).
At a minimum, I could see needing a 4:2 type mixer that’s a simple as Reason’s 6:2, bit with some of the features of Reason’s 14:2 mixer.