In this article you will learn why a graphic wiring view is easier than a channel strip model to comprehend and manipulate interconnected plugins.
Gig Performer eschews the channel strip model in favor of a graph view where a musician does not require a Ph.D. in audio engineering to construct his/her sounds. As one user has observed:
What could be simpler than an icon representing your keyboard connected to an icon representing your synthesizer/instrument connected to an icon representing your output?
Gig Performer’s visual “connect anything to anything else” approach has been praised by our users, which you can see in this older blog article. They find it simple and easy to modify and follow what’s going on.
Graphic interface vs Channel Strips
Consider the following scenario: I may need a piano that is routed through a chorus and then a phaser. That is pretty easy to do either with a channel strip or with a visual view. For example, these two views represent the same connections:
Next, I’d like to have a guitar that goes through a nice reverb effect. That’s also not a big deal with either approach. These two views also represent the same connections:
Benefits of the visual approach
Here’s where the fun starts! For whatever reason, I would now like to feed the output of the Chorus effect of the piano into the Reverb used by the guitar.
But, uh..oh, there’s no way to do that with the channel strip model – certainly no trivial way.
For a start, there’s no accessible output from that Chorus plugin – the emerging audio is routed directly into the Phaser plugin. So perhaps you could create an Aux bus and move the Reverb plugin into it. But that won’t help because you can only send audio from the Piano channel strip after it has been processed by both the Chorus and the Phaser.
You need a way to “tap” into the chain. Logic and MainStage do have an I/O plugin to help with this (albeit those are mostly for integrating external hardware – something that’s still easier with the Gig Performer Wiring view!) but you still need to deal with aux buses and the channel strips start to get more complicated.
On the other hand, with the visual approach, the solution is trivial. You just run connections from the output of the Chorus plugin to the existing Reverb plugin and you’re done!
If you want to control the amount of Chorus that feeds into that Reverb plugin, just drag a gain control in between. But what’s really important here is that you can easily see exactly where audio signals are going.
If you have any questions or want to share your feedback, please visit this Community thread.
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Related topics:
– Gig Performer Way vs. The Channel Strip Way
– Gig Performer is the best companion for all your musical efforts and more
– Music software has failed you and here is why