Deaktivation Plugins

#1

Is it possible to temporarily disable individual plugins in a project so that processing power is freed up again?

It often happens that, while working on a project where I’m recording with a small buffer size to minimize latency, I switch to a larger buffer size temporarily to do some mixing. When I try to resume recording, the processing power isn’t sufficient to maintain low latency with all the effects I’ve already added.

So far, I’ve been getting around this by taking screenshots of the settings in the plugins and then deleting them.

It would be easier if I could just deactivate these plugins while recording and then reactivate them afterward.

Edit: Oh, and by the way: I DON’T want to boot into Safe Mode and disable ALL plugins. Just a few of them.

#2

I don’t understand this problem, every plugin has a button to disable/enable. Is it more complex than that?
And also you can open the Plugin DSP Load window to figure out the most DSP-intensive plugins.

#3

It depends on the plugin. Some plugins still run in the background, others are truly disabled, not needing CPU.

They are built to run in the background so that there are no audible clicks when enabled again.

It would be nice if Ardour had a Hard Bypass and a Soft Bypass like option.

EDIT : Maybe ‘Replace with Stub’ would be an option to add to Ardour ?

#4

Yep, most allow bypass to be automated, in fact that is a requirement for VST3. Only the plugin knows how to properly bypass itself.

The added benefit is that DSP load is also constant, and you don’t risk adding load that produces x-runs simply by enabling bypassed plugins.

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PS. If you must, It is possible with a Lua script, directly calling PluginInsert::deactivate(), which hard-bypasses any plugin. Use at your own risk.

#5

Another simple solution is to disable non-essential tracks during recording to free up CPU (plugins on disabled tracks don’t consume DSP). This is what I do when I’m short on DSP power.