Comparing before/after plugins signals ?

[Lipica]

Hi,
If you would want to graphically compare the signal before and after any plugin, how would you do it ?

 

[reginaldStjohn]

I would add an analyzer plugin or meter plugin before and after and then compare. Melda, Izotope, and other have plugins that would do this.

 

[Lipica]

Thanks for your answer. From what I understand, there would be then 2 instances of the meter plugin, so probably 2 windows. But what I would want is one signal above the other in the same window, so one could graphically compare.

 

[Trucky]

You can pin and position the windows how you want them.

 

[Lipica]

Thanks Trucky, but what i meant is something like this :

The guy did it in Reaper. I don’t know how he did it exactly, but 2 signals are entering the meter plugin, and the red areas show the difference between those 2 signals.

 

[Trucky]

Can you determine if he was using a Reaper native or 3rd party analyzer?

Do you have a video link for the screenshot you posted?

 

[SwitchBack]

Maybe something can be done with the stock Spectrum Meter, its sidechain option, and its L-R channel mode. Be creative, and report back

 

[Lipica]

Yep, here it is :

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explains in the comments how he did it :

I've used Pin Connections on the Track level to route the unprocessed signal to the left channel of the x42 Simple Scope Stereo, and then passed the processed one to the right channel (or reverse, it doesn't matter). In SiSco you can click Common Y offset button and that'll make the two waveforms overlap additively, so where they are on top of each other you see yellow, and either green or red where one is present but not the other.To route the dry signal I had to swithc pin connections fro Debess to manual, add an extra output, and route the input directyl to it, bypassing the plug-in. This way I had both dry and wet signals passing down the processing chain so I can connect them to the Simple Scope for visualisation.

So far I tried with native Scope, doing this :
- create a bus, call it the Raw bus
- create a Send from the track to this Raw bus
- have the plugin on the original track bus but not on the Raw bus
- set the plugin bus to pan Left
- set the raw bus to pan right
- have Scope on Main : set A to left, B to right
- set Time on max
And I get this :

But it's not a satisfying result, because :
- for a reason unknown to me, the audio from Raw bus is much less louder than the plugin one (it’s not because of the plugin), so comparison is not relevant
- the time window is very short
- it doesn’t make a substraction of the 2 signals, you just see one above the other.

So next step is to try the plugin « Simple Scope Stereo » used in the video. But the signal routing in Reaper seems to work differently (better ?).

 

[Lipica]

Maybe something can be done with the stock Spectrum Meter, its sidechain option, and its L-R channel mode. Be creative, and report back

Yeah I tried, but it gives something like this :

So not exactly what I’m looking for.

 

[SwitchBack]

Yep, here it is :

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explains in the comments how he did it :

So far I tried with native Scope, doing this :
- create a bus, call it the Raw bus
- create a Send from the track to this Raw bus
- have the plugin on the original track bus but not on the Raw bus
- set the plugin bus to pan Left
- set the raw bus to pan right
- have Scope on Main : set A to left, B to right
- set Time on max
And I get this :

View attachment 1675

But it's not a satisfying result, because :
- for a reason unknown to me, the audio from Raw bus is much less louder than the plugin one (it’s not because of the plugin), so comparison is not relevant
- the time window is very short
- it doesn’t make a substraction of the 2 signals, you just see one above the other.

So next step is to try the plugin « Simple Scope Stereo » used in the video. But the signal routing in Reaper seems to work differently (better ?).

You should at least set the vertical scale to dB rather than %. And yes, the time scale is limited.

 

[Robert P]

You can use a free TDR Prism, here is an example:

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