Re: [ecasound] cascading LADSPA plugins with ecasound

Hi,

On Mon, 21 Jul 2008, Sergei Steshenko wrote:
> I am having difficulty relating your command line to my example:
[...]
> 1) where are my plugin names in the command line ?

ecasound supports two ways to identify LADSPA plugins, either by name or
by unique id. I used the latter in my examples:

ecasound -f:16,2,44100 -i foo.wav -o bar.wav -eli:123,a,b -eli:456,c,d

... so plugins with ids '123' and '456' are instantiated. This is
equivalent to:

-el:pluginA,a,b -el:pluginB,c,d

> 2) which command line items relate to mu plugins inputs and outputs names ?

That's a good point. Ecasound doesn't allow to freely connect individual
ports of plugins. Instead, plugin ports are mapped to chain channels, one
port per channel. If a plugin has only one input and one output, and the
chain has multiple channels, ecasound instantiates multiple instances of
the same plugin (one for each channel). So it tries to do the "right
thing" in these two different cases. With your plugins, the inputs are
mapped to channels 1-N in the order they are enumerated in the LADSPA
plugin descriptor.

> 3) is it that LADSPA plugins input and output ports are accessed by number
> rather than by name (probably yes) ?

Yes, sort of, so they are mapped to channels 1, 2, ..., N in the order
they appear in the descriptor. If you want to route specific channel of
audio to a specific LADSPA plugin port, or route audio from a specific
LADSPA plugin output port to a specific channel of the output audio
stream, you have to utilize the channel routing operators offered by
ecasound (-chcopy, -chmix, -chmove, etc).

...

The reasoning for current design is that it would be quite difficult to
offer a command-line UI for free routing of plugin ports. Just the names
are a bit challenging, as they are long, commonly contain special
characters and whitespace which would require a lot of escaping when
referred to from the command-line or script. Additionally ecasound adds
another layer of complexity, as there are quite a few ways plugins can be
used, which would add to the overall challenge of providing a sensible UI.
The current approach makes simple things simple (applying mono plugins
to both mono and multichannel chains), while still allows more complex
use-scenarios (use of N:M in-out port plugins in multichannel chains).

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge
Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes
Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world
http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/
_______________________________________________
Ecasound-list mailing list
Ecasound-list@email-addr-hidden
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ecasound-list