[linux-audio-dev] provding plugins with various in/out counts vs. using splitters-mergers

[Paul Davis]

>I agree, it sounds ridiculous -- on first hearing at least.  I'm going 
>to have to go and read some of this ardour-dev discussion (it's not a 
>list I subscribe to) and see if it makes any more sense to me then.

ardour-dev has nothing. we do almost all discussion on IRC these days.

>I realise it's not easy (or even always possible) to do the Right Thing 
>in the host -- my own host has some way to go too -- but I don't 
>understand why it should be better to create dozens of spurious plugins 
>than to give the user the information they need and let them decide how 
>a plugin should be handled.

definitely. for the record, i intend to have ardour do the right thing
post-2.0, but right now when i am putting out fires that prevent us
from turning the corner to 1.0, a solution is required, or maybe i
should say "decision" :)

right now, ardour just requires the user to set this up manually. the
only argument i can see in favor of at least some 2in/2out plugins
having a 1in/2out cousin is that their DSP algorithms are actually
different in each case. whether thats true for the typical cases under
discussion, i don't know.

--p