Feature Request / Bug Fix (not sure which applies)

[A Quiet Traveler]

I've been talking with some good folks in the Cakewalk Facebook user group.  I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to bypass all instances of any given plugin across all tracks in a mix.  In particular, this would be very useful for anyone using Channel Strip plugins, where it is the overall cumulative effect of the plugin that has such an amazing analog sounding impact on the final mix.  Being able to A/B the before and after by bypassing all instances of the channel strip plugin as a group would allow the user to hear the full effect.  ProTools and Reaper both do this, I'm not certain about other DAWs.  Cakewalk has several unique ways of bypassing fx, but they all amount to the same thing, which is bypassing all plugins within an FX Rack on a single track, or bypassing all FX altogether, either via the Bypass all Audio FX button in the control bar, or the Bypass All FX Racks of This Type function within any of the FX Racks.  It seems to me that perhaps the latter one is either a bug, or is entirely redundant.  Would it be possible to create a Bypass All Instances of This Plugin function?

I found one workaround, which involves adding an FX Chain module within the ProChannels and adding the channel strip plugin there.  In this case, I am able to bypass all FX Chain Modules together by selecting all affected tracks and doing a ctrl-select bypass on the FX chain module.  This is far from ideal, obviously because where the plugin sits in the plugin chain matters.  To do it right, I could add a second FX chain module either before or after the one I am using for the Channel Strip plugin and move all the plugins from the FX Rack of each channel into the FX Chain of their respective ProChannel.  This is an extremely convoluted way of doing something that should be simple and easy straight-away from the FX Racks of the Channels.

One idea I thought of would be to add the ability to add multiple FX Racks to individual tracks.  This would then give us the ability to use the Bypass All FX Racks of This Type function perhaps the way it was intended?  It would solve the issue, in any case and would add the ability group plugins together and separate from other groups of plugins.  I can see where this might also be useful for enabling the bypassing of groups of stem limiters, or groups of saturation plugins, or groups of compressors to hear how they are impacting the mix cumulatively.

Anyway, one kind and knowledgeable user in the FB group mentioned this discussion forum as being a good place to suggest the idea.  I had no idea this forum even existed until today, and I've been using Calkwalk since it was acquired by Bandlab, lol.  I look forward to hearing others thoughts, and whether or not this is a doable or desirable addition to Cakewalks already impressive array of functions.  Cheers.

[Starship Krupa]

Well, welcome, Trav, if I can call you that?. Cakewalk, ever the feature-packed behemoth. I'm going to point a small thing out for the sake of humor in the spirit of "I do it too:" go to Help in Cakewalk's Global menu, and you'll see that the 5th menu item is....a link to these forums! And yet....people still can't find them. You're not the only one who has no idea that this huge body of knowledge sits here.

Me, I'm a forum nut, I'm probably among the first 100 or so to register here. By a fluke, I was, I think, the only user on the old Cakewalk/SONAR forum to have started with CbB. I had a Cakewalk, Inc. account because I registered for the CA-2A giveaway and that got me on the forum. Everyone else were SONAR Platinum diehards who had thought at one point that all things Cakewalk were dead.

As for your feature request, I would request this as I have to a few other things, as an addition to the controls that can be adjusted via a Quick Group. See p. 887 of the Cakewalk Reference Guide for an explanation of Quick Grouping.

I use Quick Groups all the time, and often run into controls that for no reason that I can think of are not part of the list that may be Quick Grouped. It's so useful, why not make everything in a Console strip Quick Groupable? I just tried and was disappointed to discover that FX bin bypass is not.

So if implemented, the way this would work would be that you would select the tracks you wanted to bypass your channel strip effect on, and assuming that the Quick Grouping would go by the order that the plug-ins were installed in the FX bin, the channel strips would be first in line, so no confusion there. Then you'd hold your Ctrl key and click on the Bypass button and Quick Grouping would engage bypass on the first plug-in on all of the selected tracks. E-Z P-Z.

Since Quick Grouping is an existing feature, I think extending it is doable, and I'm all in favor of extending Quick Grouping, so, yes, also desirable. I might use it if I knew it were there.

Thanks for dropping in with a good idea.

[Josh Wolfer]

Not exactly what you're looking for, but I did just confirm that Mix Scenes (in the control bar) *DO* honor enabled and disabled plugins. 

So this might get you one step closer to A/Bing, even if it's not as convenient as having a carte blanche way of disabling all X plugins. 

[chris.r]

How about Ctrl(or other modifier)+click on plugin's on/off to turn on/off all plugins in the same row (in console)?

This makes setting plugins order in every track the adequate way on the user, since we cannot put plugins freely in slots the arbitrary way in Cakewalk.