I often find when opening an insert plugin that it has been sitting there with its ins and/or outs overloading. This doesn’t show up in the mixer because later elements have attenuated the problem. While I never actually set them up like this (of course!), subsequent fiddling introduces the problem.
I don’t know enough about VST architecture to know how possible this is, but could an overload light be added to the mixer? One per slot would be great but one per in/out per slot would be even better. But one for the whole chain would be enough.
Are you sure it’s overloading. VST plugins have floating-point I/O. They are not neccessarily overloading even though they may indicate > 0dBfs I/O levels. Of course, if plugin is poorly written, it may be a problem.
All I’m going on is red numbers on plugin i/o meters, where available. How would you tell if that was a genuine overload? Mute all subsequent elements? All the plugins I use are Cubase’s.
I don’t think I explained properly. Referring to the mixer diagrams on p.169, you’re recommending [Post 1] but that isn’t going to address the issue, which is occurring in [Inserts 1-6]. The signal is going in okay but at some point within it is (apparently) getting too hot. But you don’t notice because by the time it comes out the other end a subsequent plug has ‘cooled’ it down so it looks fine on the meter.
I suppose what I’m asking is for each plugin to signal when it overloads but I don’t know if VST is set up to do this.