In trying out the new version 5 I was playing around with the VCAs and was wondering if you might consider changing how it works in future versions.
Instead of having the VCA be a remote control for the channel fader, set the VCA to be an independent fader node in the channel strip. Movable the same as the current fader is.
Besides being closer in operation to how VCAs / DCAs in consoles work it would offer a lot more flexibility.
More importantly though, I realized that if I have fader automation set up and in “play” mode, it is no longer possible for the VCA to influence that channel. (Unless I’m missing something) With the VCAs each being it’s own amp node, you can still remotely control the channel without having to disable the automation in the channel fader.
The VCA operates on the slave faders, but augments their current value rather than taking them over. This design is based on the way both SSL and Harrison consoles operate, based on discussions with people who know those console architectures well. I don’t really see any extra flexibility in what you’re suggesting.
There is no work yet on anything related to VCAs and automation. There are difficult technical design questions to resolve before this can be done. If you take a look a ProTools and the things users can/have to do to make automation with VCAs semi-sane, you’ll see what I mean.
I don’t have any experience with either SSL or Harrison, so my experience with VCAs may be different than what they offer. My experience is that the VCAs in consoles were each independent little amps sitting in series just below the input gain on the channel strip. But this may be showing that I have much more experience with live consoles than studio consoles, and the workflow needed for each may result in very different design in how the internal routing works. I could understand that in recording consoles in might be desirable to limit the number of gain stages to the absolute minimum.
The flexibility is that if the VCA is a separate node, it can control levels being sent to Aux patches and plugins that are pre-fader. I would think that it would also make dealing with automation easier since you just have multiple gain/trim nodes in a series rather than trying to sum the result multiple faders controls that interface with the same gain/trim node. But I know very little of how you’ve designed this internally so I may be way off on that assumption.