Glue the Giant's Modular Bus Mixers for VCV Rack

These mixers provide send effects, fade automation, solo, mixer groups, group auditions, effect auditions, pop filters, mixer preamps, two polyphonic stereo spread modes, and integrated latency compensation. To chain the mixers, simply connect the BUS OUT and BUS IN ports.

The audio between modules is routed along three stereo buses: red, orange, and blue. This bus design makes it easy to patch together a simple mixer or complex audio routing similar to what can be found in modern DAWs. Using modular mixers can make your mixing more intuitive.

User's Guide

A User's Guide, including a VCV Rack tutorial, is available in the Wiki.

Licenses, Copyrights, Etc.

"Glue the Giant" is the name of a band and a software developer. Do your best to not steal it (we know it's cool). The visual designs under the res/ and designs/ directories help to give these modules a unique look and are automatically copyrighted (c) 2019 in some jurisdictions. Try to not copy them too closely. All the code and artwork is released to use under the GPL 3 license and above.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Andrew Belt (Vortico) for the VCV Rack software and its community of developers, tweakers, and musicians.

Thanks to all the other Rack coders, especially those who share their code. You are too numerous to thank individually, but I tried to star all of your repos and have started to include acknowledgments in the code. Thanks for the early encouragement from users, like Aria_Salvatrice, dag2099, browneditor, and chaircrusher, who displayed the use of the Modular Bus Mixers in published songs and videos. That early encouragement made me want to make them more feature complete with better code under the hood. Thanks to rsmus7 for beta testing. Thanks to Omri Cohen for the videos that helped inspire these modules. Finally, thanks always to Rebecca.

Building from Source

To build these rack modules, see the official VCV Rack documentation.

Release Notes

v2.0.2 The Ever Compatible Release (Septeber 27, 2023)

• Contains updates for Cardinal
• Updated for Rack SDK 1.4.1 compatibility

v2.0.1 Ports Are Labeled (December 2, 2021)

• Added port labels throughout
• Fixed a v2 font issue with the sample delay on BusRoute

v2.0.0 The v2 (October 6, 2021)

• Color themes and text modified to work on VCV Rack 2

v1.1.3 The Forever Vu Release (January 25, 2021)

• Vu meters no longer get knocked out by rogue modules that throw infinities and NANs
• Added a new default panel theme setting (change the appearance of all modules at once)
• Simplified context menus

v1.1.2 Rock the Default Settings Release (July 14, 2020)

• Fixed bug with default settings when valid GlueTheGiant.json didn't already exist

v1.1.1 Gigging the Gig Bus Release (February 1, 2020)

• Added normal fader mode to orange and blue knobs on the Gig Bus Mixer (per Aria_Salvatrice request)
• Fixed the exponential curve on the fade automation of some mixer strip modules
• Preamp gain changes take effect immediately (even if fade automation is set)
• Minor code optimizations

v1.1.0 The Live Mix Release (December 5, 2019)

• Made knobs more responsive (for full fades when live mixing)
• Made long press for audition modes more responsive

v1.0.7 The Solo Release (November 30, 2019)

• Added audition mode (solo) to all mixers by long pressing the on buttons
• Added separate fade in and fade out automation speeds to all mixer modules (from the context menu)
• Added vu meters to the Gig Bus Mixer
• Added audition modes to Bus Depots (for group auditions) by long pressing the on buttons
• Added "Always audition" mode to Bus Depots for the ability to keep a master Bus Depot always on
• Updated on/audition buttons on Road and Bus Route to match new mixer audition functionality
• New 8x gain mode on all mixer preamps
• Improved vu meters on Bus Depot
• Updated context menus
• Small code optimizations

v1.0.6 A Chilly November Release (November 15, 2019)

• Fix issue with Bus Depot where the fade out time did not change until the fade in knob was moved or the patch was restarted.
• Added post fader send to orange and blue on Mini Bus Mixer (through context menu)
• Added ability to always default mixer strips to use post fader sends

v1.0.5 The Audition Release (November 11, 2019)

• Fade in automation and three fade modulation modes added to Bus Depot
• Bus Depot fade automation time increased to 34 seconds
• Bus Route includes on/audition buttons to easily audition or bypass send effects
• No need to connect cables for pass through on Bus Route (accomplished with the on/audition buttons)
• Bus Route now provides a stereo mix out (making it easier to add limiters or other mastering effects directly after Bus Route)
• Road now includes on/audition buttons to quickly work with mix groups and to audition (solo) groups and individual mixers (thanks to browneditor for the push to implement this feature)
• All on/audition buttons on Road and Bus Route are click free for live use
• Filters added to post send buttons on School Bus Mixer and Metro City Bus Mixer to remove clicks during live use
• Minor visual improvements to some panels

v1.0.4 The Halloween Release (October 31, 2019)

• Night Ride theme released on Halloween day (available in the context menu)
• Optionally default to the Night Ride theme
• CV input filters added where applicable per suggestion by Omri Cohen (toggle on or off in the context menu)
• Improved fade automation on Bus Depot (exponential)
• Improved responsiveness on Bus Depot vu meters

v1.0.3 The Mix Group Release (October 18, 2019)

• Mix groups can more easily use the faders and vu meters of Bus Depot modules while still routing buses to final send effects (e.g. when you have one reverb to rule them all)
• Added bus output to Bus Depot to facilitate mix groups
• Added the Road module to merge parallel mix groups
• Added three input level knobs to Enter Bus (allows, among other things, creative routing of a send effect return)
• Wrote an initial User's Guide, including a tutorial

v1.0.2 The Tick Release (October 12, 2019)

• Added 2x or 4x preamp-style gain on all four mixer strips (selected from the context menu)
• New sample delay lines provide latency compensation on Bus Route
• New fade automation with speed control on Bus Depot
• Improved performance on Metro City Bus Mixer's polyphonic pan follow
• Initialization of all parameters that are not attached to a knob
• Improved behavior when changing sample rates
• Other improvements in the code (e.g. a fader object allowed the addition of new features with no CPU increase)
• Small UI enhancements, including fleas ... I mean lice ... no, I mean ticks (tick marks, that is, our buses do not have lice)

v1.0.1 Metro City Bus Release (September 23, 2019)

• Added Metro City Bus Mixer with polyphonic stereo spread
• Added Gig Bus Mixer for easy, standard mixing
• Minor CPU optimizations
• Small UI enhancements, including a better 70's cream color

Note: Some VCV patches saved with version 1.0.0 of the modular bus mixers will need to have levels reset after loading the patches in later versions. The developer thought parameters were being saved by their names. He now knows parameters are saved by their order.

v1.0.0 Initial VCV Rack Library Release (September 6, 2019)

• Peak indicators on Bus Depot are now sample accurate
• Peak indicators stay on longer

v1.0.0 Initial Release (September 3, 2019)

• Mini Bus Mixer, School Bus Mixer, and Bus Depot modules released
• Bus Route, Enter Bus, and Exit Bus utility modules for bus mixers released