This might be a foolish question but I was just wondering…
The new Properties Panel shows “Region Effects” for audio regions.
Yet it shows a “Piano Roll” for MIDI regions.
Why does it not show/offer “Region Effects” for MIDI regions for consistency?
Thank you to anyone who reads this
There are no plans to add regionFX for MIDI Regions at this point in time.
As opposed to Audio, MIDI region data in Ardour can be edited directly and there are powerful tools to do that.
Furthermore handling overlapping layered MIDI regions makes it difficult to implement MIDI regionFX. There are not a lot of MIDI filter plugins to begin with, and Ardour’s MIDI Transform tools can directly handle all common task directly with the added benefit that the result is immediately visible in the MIDI Region. So we chose not to spend developer time on this.
Thank you for reply.
I apologize I might not have been clear on how I mentioned this.
I was not referring necessarily to MIDI based effects specifically, I meant more like all audio effect plugins.
Like how you can apply for example a reverb effect to a MIDI tracks mixer channel effect chain.
One of the “Properties Panel” functions for audio regions is that it can apply an effect like an EQ to audio region.
So I was saying it more in this way, say user wanted to apply an audio effect such as a EQ to an actual specific MIDI region.
So that the “Properties Panel” would function the same way for both audio regions and MIDI regions.
Obviously I do not know so this might not make sense either, but only reason I can think of is maybe something with the single chain, maybe the “Properties Panel” is viewing the MIDI notes themselves, before the sounds are being generated by the instrument plugins, so you cannot actually apply audio effects to the regions?
As where an audio region already is sound, does not need to be generated by an instrument plugin, maybe that is the reason?
I was just more curious of why the “Properties Panel” would be for applying effects to audio regions, but show a piano roll for MIDI regions.
Hopefully I am making more sense then how I originally mentioned this.
Thank you again for reply
You cannot apply an EQ to MIDI data. It would have to be after the synth, at which point there is no longer the concept of a region. All layered regions feed the same synth.
So this is conceptually impossible.
It’s also no longer property of the MIDI Region, but of the resulting sound of the synth plugin. So this has to be handled on the mixer.
I had wondered about this myself. You have explained it perfectly and it’s completely reasonable and understandable why this cannot be done. Thanks.
Thank you for reply.
That is generally what I was trying to say, I imagined that it was because the audio was not produced yet to effect, at the stage of a region.
Also thought maybe the generated audio that would come out of the plugin instrument receiving the MIDI could be routed back in some way to the region, making it appear to the user that the sound was generated when playing that region.
so rather then
MIDI notes - instrument plugin - mixer channel - mixer effects
something like
MIDI notes - instrument plugin - region - Properties Panel effects
It is not something that I necessarily need but was just curious because of the inconsistency it appeared to be.
Okay good to know.
Thank you again for reply
Also thank you Lexridge for sharing that you had wondered about this as well. Yeah when you see it work with one type of region, you naturally expect this to be able to do the same for the other type of region, regardless of if it makes sense or not 