Leave off-line plugin window open AND continue DAW control

Here is another scenario where “fixing” this would actually provide yet another benefit elsewhere in the Nuendo app. It would create a possible workaround which would make it possible to do an faster-than-realtime offline loudness measurement of any source not routed to the main mix, which is desirable in some situations:

  1. Nuendo currently (as far as I understand it) actually renders a temporary mix and then analyses that mix/file to get loudness data. So step #1 is rendering a mix offline. We can do that ourselves.

  2. Mix is imported to appropriate track.

  3. Use loudness measuring plugin of choice - click process:

  • here is where the current window management just destroys this workaround (as well as other workflows) in that it a) doesn’t allow me to choose options in my plugin (iZotope Insight) because my plugin uses a floating window, and Steinberg programmed the plugins to not allow any control outside of the main plugin window when used offline, and b) it automatically closes the plugin window after processing.

  • what should happen is that a) control is retained of the DAW in general when opening the plugin offline, which would allow us to pick whatever presets we need, and b) after “applying” the plugin and it is done with its measurement the plugin window would remain open.

So, a three-step process which is clearly more than a one-step process, but at least we’d have a workaround to offline loudness measurement of sources other than the “main mix” output.

The feature request for assignable loudness measurement source is here.