In working with MG3 plugin in AUM Mixer (host) on iOS, I’ve learned that if I want to “switch instruments”, simply muting channel A and unmuting channel B isn’t the best option, as it cuts any instrument decay or reverb tails immediately.
What I’ve arrived on is either to bypass the input signal for the MG3 plugin, or to bypass the MG3 plugin itself, which stops the input to the instrument, but lets any decay/reverb on the instrument itself go to completion. This absolutely works, and I’m happy for it!
But it got me to thinking, “why choose one of these options over the other?” and I thought I’d see if anyone here knows:
- When you bypass the MG3 plugin in the middle of a note, does it simply cease sending its stream of MIDI data back to the host, or does it actually do any housekeeping like stopping notes?
- When in bypass, would you expect MG3 plugin to continue to do any processing, or to be listening for incoming control from the host? Theoretically if everything truly does shut down during bypass, it would be more efficient for the host in terms of resources.
I’m trying to arrive at a “best practice” for myself here, and I can see value in the bypass approach, if there isn’t a big risk of a bunch of stuff being left wide open and getting stuck on the instrument side. On one hand, if MG3 is left enabled but its input audio is silenced, then theoretically everything that started, can complete normally: that seems elegant. But, if I start down the road of using a number of MG3 plugin instances (instead of trying to use a single instance with frequent patch loads), I might want to consider the resource load, especially since only one or two instances would be active at any time.
Aside from the specific questions about the truly nerdy bits, do others have a general opinion on whether it’s better to cut the input audio or to bypass the MG3 plugin, as a means of “muting” an instrument while preserving tails internal to the instrument?