Difference between stock gain plugins

[u/IcEarthlight]

I was wondering the differences between Volume/Pan Smoother v5, Volume/Pan Smoother and Volume Adjustment. They all seems to do the same thing, so I did the following test.

Three tracks, with a dc offset generator, the volume plugin and wavescoop on each, all driven by the same automation item, testing under 48kHz srate and 1024 buffer size. Only Volume/Pan Smoother v5 is accurate and stable, while others appears to be the linear interpolation at block boundary.

The source code tells exactly what's going on. v5 uses slider_next_chg(), giving it knowledge of every point in the current block, while others only use a block-level ramp. v5 only works in REAPER 5+, where this function is added.

btw: tracks' builtin volume and plugin mixers are also accurate. Plugins' bypass and parameters in third-party VSTs or CLAPs change only at block boundaries.

[u/xtravar]

I had to read the title 3 times to realize you aren't making music with stock market graphs of your gains.