Strata Documentation: The Fader Problem

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The Fader Problem

Unfortunately, because of the architecture of current popular DAWs, Strata has to deal with a deployment problem, which I have named "The Fader Problem". This page describes this problem and offers three solutions to it.

DAW Audio Signal Flow Architecture

The diagram below shows how signals flow within a typical DAW project. For the purpose of simplicity, this diagram ignores return tracks and inter-track routing. As you can see, each track has a sound source consisting of either blocks of MIDI feeding a soft synthesizer (or a sampler), or a collection of audio clips. This sound source is then fed into a plugin chain. This goes to the track's fader and then gets summed with the other tracks into the Master track.

How Strata Communicates With Itself

As current DAW architectures provide no inbuilt way to enable plugins to talk to each other, instances of Strata Track and Strata Vision communicate via the TCP networking protocol (within your computer only).

Strata In Your DAW Project

Now let's look at how Strata is deployed in your DAW project. An instance of Strata Track is placed at the end of each track's plugin chain, and Strata Vision is placed on its own separate track. The instances of Strata Track send their data via TCP (not shown here) to Strata Vision which gathers up all the spectral information and displays a colourful graph.

You should now be able to see the problem. Because there is no way of locating Strata Track AFTER its track's fader, Strata Track can only see the signal BEFORE the fader reduces or increases the volume of the signal. This means that Strata Vision's graph will be inaccurate unless all your faders are set at 0dB.

How Strata Track Would Be Deployed If DAWs Had Monitoring Chains

Before I discuss solutions to this problem, take a look at the next diagram which shows how Strata would be deployed if DAWs had monitoring chains attached to each track. As you can see, this would completely solve the problem!

If you are a DAW developer, please add a monitoring chain feature to your DAW!

Solution 1: I Don't Care About Volumes

One way to address this problem is not to solve it at all! If all you want to do is use Strata to see which parts of the frequency spectrum each track is occupying, then the volumes of the tracks doesn't matter (unless a track is so quiet that it falls below Strata's MindB level). You can just look at the Strata graph to see where the tracks are and live happily ever after!

Solution 2: Zero Your Faders

The second way to address this problem is to set all all your faders to 0dB. Just never use them! If you do this, each instance of Strata Track will see exactly what is being fed into the master track, and Strata Vision will show a completely accurate graph with all the correct volume levels.

If you're used to using faders, this might seem like a completely unacceptable solution! And maybe, for you, it is. But you don't have to live without volume controls on your tracks! Just add a Utility/Tool plugin at the end of each track's plugin chain just before (to the left of) the Strata Track plugin. Then, when you want to adjust the volume of a track, just adjust the volume of that plugin.

In fact, you can go one step further and put TWO Utility/Tool plugins on each track just before Strata. Use the first one to set the track's maximum volume level, and use the other to do volume automation (from -infinity db to 0dB). This works really well once you get used to it.

Solution 3: Create Monitoring Tracks

If you can't live without your faders, a third way to address the fader problem is to create a monitoring track for each track in your project and route each track's output to the corresponding monitoring track (in addition to the Master track). How you do this will vary depending on which DAW you are using.

So, for example, if you had a track called "Snare" you would create a monitoring track called, perhaps "Snare Monitor" and route the Snare track to the Snare Monitor track. Then you would put an instance of Strata Track on the Snare Monitor track. The result is that each instance of Strata Track on its monitoring track will see the signal of its corresponding track AFTER the fader has done its work, and these signals will be sent (via TCP) to Strata Vision, so Strata Vision will display all the signals showing their correct volumes.

This is a messy solution because, if your project has 100 tracks, you will need to create 100 monitoring tracks, one for each track! That can quickly make your project much more complicated. The best way to deal with this mess is to create a new track group called "Strata Group" and put the 100 monitoring tracks in that group out of the way of the rest of your project. Once you've done this, and collapsed the group in your DAW's track browser, you'll soon forget that you have a monitoring group at all! This solution is quite clean to use, but it does mean that whenever you create a new track, you will have to remember to create a corresponding monitoring track with Strata Track on it and route the new track to the new monitoring track. This is a lot slower than just copying and pasting an instance of Strata Track onto the end of the new track's plugin chain. This solution also suffers from the risk that you will get the routing wrong. But if you're careful, it can work really well.

Solution 4: User The Strata Track Fader Feature

If you can’t live without your faders, and you don’t want to create monitoring tracks, you use Strata Track’s Fader parameter to inform Strata Track of the track’s fader setting. Strata Track will then apply this setting to the signal before it analyses it. You can set the Fader parameter using Strata Track's Fader control panel view. Important: The Fader parameter does NOT affect the audio output of Strata Track.

Which Is The Best Solution?

I have been using Strata in all of my DAW projects, and have found that the simplest solution is just to set all the faders to zero. This means I can just copy and paste Strata Track onto new tracks, which is very fast. I would recommend this method to all new Strata users. I have configured my DAW (Bitwig) so that the default track fader volume is 0dB, so I never even have to think about faders now. But if you miss your faders too much, switch to the monitoring tracks or Fader method.

For large complex projects where I have several monitoring plugins on each track (e.g. Stata Track + Oszillos Mega Scope + iZotope Insight 2 + MAAT DRMEter MkII), I will create a monitoring track for each track just to get all the monitoring plugins away from each track's plugin chain (DAW manufacturers: PLEASE add monitoring chains!). I will create a Monitoring Group to hold all the monitoring tracks. This works pretty well. It also means that, if I run out of CPU, I can (because I use Bitwig) simply deactivate the entire monitoring group with one click to save CPU! That's far faster than having to visit each track and turn off all its monitoring plugins!

If I have obtained someone else's project and want to apply Strata to the project without modifying the project much, and without having to create and route a monitoring track for each track, I will use the Fader method by putting Strata Track on on the end of each track's plugin chain and then setting its Fader parameter to match the track' fader.

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