Peak to reference

[Xplorer]

Hello everybody!

I'm new here so let's quickly introduce myself first! =) (but you can skip this and go to the next section if you don't care )
I'm a french musician and I've been thinking of making little audio plugins to speed up my production and mix workflow since a long time, but I'm really (really... ) bad at programming (and maths ) so I never get into making one because I don't really have the time to spend months learning a whole programming language just to make few little utils and then probably never use what I learned again.
After looking at some Juce and Synthedit tutorials I quickly felt discouraged and unable to do anything if I didn't spend a lot of time learning how it really works.
THEN I've discovered flowstone about a 2 weeks ago and everything seemed sooo much clear and easier to me!
So I've decided to give it a try! I've been playing with it since then and really have fun experimenting with the modules, it gave me a lot of ideas.
But I quickly felt limited by my programming knowledge and knew I've to learn a bit to make the things I really want. And even if it will take a bit of time, I feel that it'll be less than if I had to learn C++ for Juce or Synthedit and really worth it.
So I've spent nights not sleeping to read the manual, exploring this forum and looking for video tutorial on youtube (but couldn't find a lot..) but still feel really limited when I see the amazing stuff some of you can make with FS! If you have some tutorials links I'd love to know about it since I couldn't find a lot of them compare to Syntedit e.g.
So here I am! Trying to be part of this great community, looking for some help and trying to contribute as much as my little knowledge allows me but hoping to get better in making vst

Let's get to the subject of this post now! ^^
It's my very first attempt to make a usable vst, everything before was just experimenting to discover FS but without any real purpose. So I started with what I thought is gonna be simple: Playing with the gain of a source.
As I saw some compares it to a "hello world".
And I thought it was perfect to begin with as I need something that allows me to make the peak of any source in a 300ms RMS window match a reference level set manually (like in the free dpmeter vst) and also include an AGC mode (like Hornet Normalizer or the AGC by MyCo I've found in this forum) as I believe it uses the same mechanics but do it automatically instead of manually.

So in sum: detect peak max in dBfs and if it's different from the reference level set by the user, click on a button that will apply a fix calculated gain to make peak max match with the reference level (then stop calculate the gain to save CPU) and in AGC mode just let the gain constantly adjust the source level.

It looks pretty simple on paper and easy to make without vst (outside AGC), but time and CPU consuming when you have to do it manually on a lot of track and I finally found that it was not that easy to make this vst for me.
I thought it would be really useful for fast gain staging (especially when summing change the peak of a bus) and for EQ/Dynamic processing in AGC mode to really listen to the process and not be influenced by the gain. It would be a benefit for a lot of sound engineers imo. I don't even understand why any DAWs haven't implemented those features natively, it' would be so simple for DAWs devs.

So you'll find the schematic of what I came up with attached to this post.
(I've left my notes to let you understand what I've planned to do when I'll have the knowledge to make all the features)
I did something that does something """close""" to an AGC BUT I'm stuck in the first step: Detecting peak max in a 300ms RMS window..
I detect all the fluctuation of the source and that makes the gain always changing so it's not really what i'm looking for.
Worst, I did make what I expect with float numbers (supposed to be the dB) but don't know how to make it affect the output signal so the theory kind of work but in practice, it's doing nothing
I'm pretty sure I'm thinking the wrong way to reach the results I expect because to be honest, I didn't really know where to start.

It's so simple on paper that I feel kind of dumb being unable to make that, and sometimes I just think I'm just not made to do audio plugins BUT I really want to learn and be able to have the freedom to build tools I've in mind.
So if anyone could help me, giving some tricks and tips, useful documentation or be kind enough to take the time to explain me a few basics or any clue that will help me understand and get the knowledge I need to do this little vst I'll be more than grateful because I'm a bit tired and sad struggling doing this simple thing and being stuck on this first step since one week.
By the way how long do you think it will take me to get enough knowledge for doing this, understanding all the mechanics used?

Well, that's it! I'm sorry for this huge message but because it's my first post I thought it would be helpful and respectful to let you know where I come from and not just pop of nowhere before asking for your help =)

I hope someone will help me achieve this project! =) Feel free to ask me for something, I would be delighted if I can help back! Also, don't hesitate if you have any questions. And if you'd like to be part of this project you're welcome too

Peace!

[Spogg]

Hi Xplorer and welcome to the forum!

I would say you’ve started off with quite a challenging first project, but hey, why not?
I see from the schematic that you’ve made very good progress with learning FS so far.

One thing you’ll need is an envelope follower, so I’ve included my collection (from others like Martin Vicanek) and a simple stereo gain control module.

So that’s something to go on with…

Cheers

Spogg

[pshannon]

Welcome Xplorer to the forum as well. FYI - Since you are new here, make sure you do not install any beta versions and many of the people in the forum use 3.0.6 as shown by Spog's example. I have used 3.0.8 for years, but some people convinced me to downgrade.

Good luck.

[wlangfor@uoguelph.ca]

Hello and welcome