I imagine many of you Reaper nerds have already figured this one out, (and this method may have been shared elsewhere - I don't know), but it was a revelation to me so I'm going to share it here for other Reaper newbies trying to maximize their Reaper experience.

I wanted to be able to see (and control) my Send Level knob from the Track Control Panel (TCP). There are already knobs or sliders to control Volume, Pan and Width, but to change the send level that I'm outputting to a buss I have to open that track's routing window and make the change there. Considering all these other controls are already available in the TCP, and I can add pretty much any control from any plugin effect on my track, I figured there must be a simple way to get that Send Level control there too . . . apparently not . . . much to my surprise.

However a helpful fellow that goes by Tomm on the Reaper forums suggested this awesome workaround:

1st: place a gain/volume plugin somewhere in your FX chain and change its routing options to input 1+2, and output to (only) 3+4. I used the JS: Volume Adjustment plug, but just about any volume/gain plug should work.
2nd: Add the gain/volume parameter of your plug to your other Track Controls with the plugin's Show in track controls action.
3rd: Open your track's routing window (click the Route button or right-click the volume knob/slider ), and create your send. In the image below I'm sending to track 5 (GTR FX Bus). At the bottom of the Send section of the routing window change the Audio routing to 3/4 > 1/2 as seen in the image. You should also see that the Parent channels and Track channels in the upper centre of the window have changed to 1-4 and 4 respectively because of the routing changes you've made using the 3/4 track channels.
4. If you want you can change the name of the new control in your track by right-clicking on it and choosing Alias . . . I changed mine to Send to 5.



I had trouble wrapping my head around this at first because in my mind the volume plugin being set to only output audio on track channels 3/4 meant that it wouldn't continue to pass any audio down the chain on track channels 1/2, and so there would be no further audio coming out of my track and eventually being passed along to the master send, but Tomm cleared that up with this handy graphic:


So you can see that when you route a plugin to only output on track channels 3/4 Reaper also automatically creates another routing on track channels 1/2 that bypasses the plugin altogether - the possibilities of which I'm just starting to wrap my head around . . . (two completely separate, parallel fx chains in one track? Ha! I haven't investigated this yet but it sure seems promising/exciting).

The upsides of this send method is that you get to have a control in your Track Control Panel that can boost or attenuate that send's level (without having to open the track's routing window), and you can place that send anywhere within the signal flow of your fx chain, so the audio can be affected by some plugs pre-send, and some other plugs post-send. The only downside I can see is that you now have two separate send level controls affecting your overall send level - the one in your Track Control Panel, and the one on your track in the Mixer. So if one is set to -3dB and the other to +3dB you're clearly chasing your tail.

 

mind=blown... I'm working in reaper and I know pretty much everything but hey... not everything enough! ...and yes this way you can arrange parallel FX chain on one channel... I just tried that

P.S.
thank you @returnal on such epiphany!

 

Last edited: Mar 2, 2017

I work a lot in Reaper and I found useful to switch as default the mixer layout into the FX Rack one, it gives you a visual green bar representation of your send levels that only Studio One, Pro Tools and Cubase had in the past.

This DAW it's getting day after day better and more complete, not user friendly for a newbie as some others but for the price it got it's definetely the best imo.

 

wow @returnal didn't you just start with Reaper ? you getting deep already man... nice!

 

It's a rabbit hole baby!!!

 

This would be sweet for that vocal trick where you could do your pre-compression eq'ing, route that to a reverb send, then apply compression to the main track. It would have the effect of more reverb sent during louder passages, and less during quieter passages which could effectively widen the sound during the eg. choruses without requiring automation.

 

this is sick man
what are u consuming that makes You come to such solutions ?

I`ll not use this one, `cause this is just too much for me, but I admire Your imagination

 

I can't take credit for it. All I did (as usual) was describe my issue/ideal workflow in great detail on the Reaper forum and it was one of the members there (Tomm this time) who translated my want into this sweet solution.

 

A well explained sweet solution (with graphics and signal flow too!) Gotta love the reaper user base.
The community and devs are one of the things that makes it such a great DAW too.

 

With Kawa's Mod on TrackFX Matrix this is easily achievable and understandable and it works for Item FX too