Compressor featuring offline GUI time-compression graph

[Oliver Carstens]

Hi everyone,

So I have been curious about this for a while: why do no compressor plug-ins (of what I'm aware) feature an offline GUI time-compression graph, visualising the level of compression over the whole track that the compressor is to process? To be able to have such an overview would be a definite advantance in using digital compared to analog compressors. I'd be very surprised if the case is that it just hasn't been thought of before, since it seems like an obvious feature to implement, visualising the effect of a plugin that acts non-linearly over time, just like some eq's can visualise the frequency spectrum, over which the eq acts non-linearly (though that is obtained by real-time processing, I know (3d time-frequency graphs would be cool, though (especially for multiband compressors!))).

Would it be hard to program? If so, what would be the challenges?

Looking forward to your response, thank you.

[rafa1981]

This is because each track can't see the audio that is coming in the future without processing the chain that generates it.

1) The plugin API (DAW-FX communication) just passes small blocks of data to process in real time.
2) For seeing audio on the future it had to be pre-rendered.

This feature is either:
1) Suitable for an audio editor (not real time).
2) Only visualizable for past samples.

[PeterP_swe]

If the plugin used the ARA extension then it could see the audio for the whole track.

Stock plugins could still pull something like that off if they wanted to.

I agree that it would be a nice feature.