Much as I agree that this would be nice, surely it's down to the hardware manufacturer. Reaper addresses things within the bounds of the application. These bounds are: beyond the MIDI hardware device driver in terms of input and before the driver in terms of MIDI output, Beyond the audio device driver in terms of recording and before the audio device drivers output in terms of playback. It is only a driver extension written for a specific device which can address monitoring the hardware directly because it would be peculiar to that specific device. In turn, this would imply that if Reaper was to echo back the information from hardware inputs or outputs from every available soundcard, every manufacturer would have to agree on and implement a protocol by which hardware reporting was monitored, so that Reaper(or any other DAW application) could make use of it. RME cards for example, have a hardware mixer onboard. This has nothing to do with ASIO or WDM. It is proprietory to the cards. Totalmix controls and monitors the hardware mixer, not the I/O devices. Tell me if I'm wrong, but this is my understanding of the issue.
Illacov, I was an SX3 user until some time ago. Now I see what you are asking for. The 'output meters' in SX3 are really monitoring the output of SX to the driver. I can see the usefulness of having a seperate floating window which just meters the output of Reaper through each available hardware output. My FR. for a comprehensive Control Room channel covers some of this, but a 'full' meter bridge would be nice too, even perhaps the ability to set the meter scale parameters as with the master outputs and to control the over-all output of each, as in SX3. I think I'd be campaigning for per-channel plugin capability for analysis and processing as well, but then I'm just a power hungry rodent! *I*
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Ok. The thing is, from an engineering point of view, hardware outputs are summing busses just like the master bus. While there are times when we send individual tracks to individual hardware outs 1-to-1 - like when mixing analog - and can gauge the level of the *output bus* by the *post fader* meter of the daw track - if it has post fader/pan metering and the sends are post fader - when we combine and sum many signals to a single hardware output bus - like the master or any other summing bus - you have to be able to meter it to see the resulting level of those summed signals. Right? Here you can't do that directly. Only with the master LR. If the sends are pre-fader you're just screwed... no metering at all even in the 1-to-1 situation since the channel meters can't switch to meter pre-fader. My headphone amps for instance don't have meters on them (aside from being in another room) so I need to see that level - the sum of multiple tracks that will differ from the summed tracks going to the master - that's leaving those hardware outputs. If I'm building a cans mix starting with the drums that's the only way to know where to start? Cubase automatically adds any available hardware inputs and outputs to the mixer(s) (you can hide them if you want or dedicate one of the 3 mixers to only I/O or both and just make a meter bridge separate from the working mixer) so you can always meter those hardware I/O's. In addition, there is pre and post "mix channel" dsp on each hardware input/output before and after the mixer channels. Insert slots and the built in EQ, for obvious reasons... changing the send mix sound without affecting the other tracks. More bass to the cans, limiting whatever. Same as the master channel in Reaper. All of this is outside of the Cubendo control room which takes all of that to another level and deals with the monitoring issues. This is just the basic I/O setup from some years ago before it had a control room section. Below is a short vid with no sound showing the hardware I/O channels. Keep in mind that the issue here with Reaper is that sending directly to a hardware *summing bus* (important point) is a black hole. Unless you use a summing group before you hit the hardware output with summed signals there is no way to gauge the level of the summed signals nor apply dsp to cans etc. The only way to meter a hardware output in Reaper is to hit a group channel first and then go directly to the output. Manually create a metering and processing pre-output bus for each output. Of course that assumes that nothing else that isn't going to that summing group is going directly to that hardware output of you're out of luck since that signal won't be included in the metering. So the FR is really simple from where I stand, optional / hideable channels just like the master channel for any enabled hardware outputs. Or make a template with 10-16-24 group channels to represent the hardware outputs and never send directly to the hardware, only to the groups that represent them. A little bit of a hassle but workable. You can do it with Reaper but it should be just optional default behavior. Hardware outputs should have dedicated mixer channels with faders and meters. Switchable metering (input/post-fader/post-pan) is also a big part of the overall value of it. I hope that clears it up. Just like the Master channel but for any mono or stereo hardware output. The dedicated input channels strips that represent the hardware inputs are another thing altogether and not relevant to this particular FR... but also handy.
Sorry, it just occurred to me that you can't *assign* a channel in Reaper directly to a hardware output that's not the master, only send to it. I say this because the metering of Reaper's channel strips are tied to the master LR send bus which is an assignment of the meter and fader, not a send per-se. This is relevant since even if you use a pre-summing bus in a project (to meter the hardware output level) you still have to "send" that audio to the other hardware output bus and the group metering of the channel is only valid for the hardware output if the send is left at unity 0. Not a problem... but.. the hardware metering should be a final stage thing. It should always represent the summing bus level no matter what you do elsewhere. So if you use the pre-summing bus method, which will work fine, put it's post fader send to the hardware output at dead 0 or it will be pointless. The pre-groups are a workaround and are metering mid-way so the send level has to be gain staged to unity or the metering won't be accurate. Something to consider. A bus 'assignment' is a default unity gain stage while a send has to be manually set there. Not a big deal though. There are monitoring issues with this method also like how to hear a bus - the pre-summing group / metering bus - that's not assigned to the master where the speakers are connected. They'll work it out I'm sure but talking it through thoroughly beforehand will avoid those little problems later. Monitors also need to switch to any hardware output summing bus... inside the daw. I'll shut up now...
are you just asking for a good ol' meter bridge ? it would be useful, really. in DP, you can open up a floating meter bridge and choose what to display : inputs, outputs, send levels, etc. = cool. +1
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RE: Hardware Output Metering...
