[ecasound] Planning user-defined buses for Nama

Hello all,

I'd like your opinions about uses for user defined buses. I
am posting this with regard to Nama, however buses have also
been proposed as a new feature for Ecasound, so your
suggestions may contribute to that development as well.

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2134191&group_id=4605&atid=104605

For newcomers, Nama is a terminal-based multitrack recording
app based on Ecasound. It also offers a simple GUI with
buttons and sliders for access to commonly used functions.

Nama accomplishes routing using an internal Bus abstraction.
There are a few cases that users may want to define their
own buses.

Here are two that I can think of... I'm interested if you find
them relevant, and if there are other use cases you think I should
consider.

#### Use Case 1 -- Musician's Monitor ####

Each musician wants to have her own choice of the instruments
and volumes she hears in her monitors.

Standard bus:

User tracks --> mix track ---> Soundcard channels 1,2

A musician's monitor bus (using virtual tracks, and no mix track):

Virtual user tracks --------> Soundcard channels 3,4 (monitor)

Comments:

1. Virtual tracks follow the REC/MON/OFF settings of the target
track, but do not record to disk. They have their own
volume/pan/effects settings.

2. No loop devices, so minimal latency

#### Use Case 2 -- Group Effects

It is fairly common to want to apply an effect, or control
volume or panning for an entire group of instruments.

Brass instruments bus:

User tracks (trumpet, etc.) ---> loop,brass ---> Mix track (brass) ---> destination

Comments:

1. Tracks no longer belong to standard bus, however they record
and playback as usual.

2. 'brass' track provides vol/pan/effects for the whole group
and allows recording to disk (intermediate mixdown).

3. The bus output can be anywhere in the signal chain: before the mixer,
before the mastering setup (if used), before the soundcard/mixdown node,
directly to the soundcard, or to a JACK client.

4. A loop device is required to route multiple signals into a single
chain for the mix track.

Thanks for your consideration.

Joel

-- 
Joel Roth
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