Which DAWs have dual buffers?

I haven't landed on it yet, but I'm definitely leaning that way towards Cubase. I'm evaluating it right now, to see how it goes. Cubase has a LOT of midi functionality, which I really like, such as being able to set up a generic midi remote. In an hour, I was able to set Cubase up to individually open and close plugins in each insert on my Stream Deck at the push of a button, and it looks like I'll be able to harness the MCU Sysex feedback for realtime updates of plugin name/status on those aforementioned SD buttons. It took me months to get this same sort of plugin control implemented on Luna, because Luna has no midi controller implementation, and I had to resort to crazy difficult work arounds.

Cubase just seems incredibly capable of doing so many different things, but it seems to be done in a way that is a little more understandable and less daunting than Reaper. Reaper just left me with option overload, and I struggled with it. Granted, there will for sure be a learning curve with Cubase, but I'm not put off by it. It'll probably ultimately be what I go with, based on what I've learned about Cubase, S1, and Logic.

Yes this feature is amazing - and a bit over looked.

I'm working on this as we speak. Once I get it all sorted, I'll share it with you.

Can you describe a little more what Sideshow does or doesn't do with opening and closing plugins?

In any case, what I did with Luna, and what I think will be able to be done with Cubase, is to do the following things:

1. Open and close any individual plugin GUI in any individual insert with one push of a button on the Stream Deck.

2. That same SD button push will also automatically cause your hardware controller to display the MCU parameters for the plugin GUI you've just opened.

3. The insert buttons on the SD will update realtime to display the name and image of the plugins loaded in those inserts, as you change channels in Cubase.

4. Plugins that are open will be shown as such on the SD with an orange ring around the button image.

5. Similarly, the selected channel name will update on a different button on the SD as well.

6. You'll be able to turn on/off plugins from the SD.

7. You'll be able to load plugins into Cubase, using only buttons on the SD. Plugin options will be displayed as sort of a "rack" of favorites, if you will.

This is how I have it set up for Luna, and I haven't seen anything thus far that I think would prevent me from setting it up this same way for Cubase. If anything, Cubase should be easier to do it for, because it actually communicates with the world outside of itself, thru midi, where as Luna is pretty closed off. I had to do a bunch of image recognition stuff in Keyboard Maestro to get it to work in Luna. Total pain in the ass, but it worked.

It just occured to me. Are you on Mac? I use Keyboard Maestro to do some of this stuff. It's really powerful. That said, Keyboard Maestro is Mac only, and you would need to buy KM, but it's not expensive.

Ok. Good to know. That makes a little more sense to me, as the previous description seemed to me like a huge oversight on the part of Steinberg. That said, it would still be better if it just always started at unity gain, or something like that.

In my case, I think this will end up being moot for me. My intention is just to set all of my HW inserts at unity within Cubase. That way, I don't ever have to worry about the gain setting that the HW inserts plugin was set at the last time I used it.

My intention is to leave the HW insert plugin on Cubase always set to unity, and then use trim plugins that I am able to actually create presets for, and then exclusively gain stage into and out of the HW inserts plugins using standalone trim plugins.

Trim In > Dither> HW Insert > Trim Out

On that note, I'm wondering if there is a trim plugin out there that can be used as a pair, where they communicate with one another. In other words, if I increased the gain on the Trim In instance of said trim plugin, the gain on the Trim Out instance of said trim plugin would auto adjust to accordingly decrease the gain.

Maybe Cubase's trim plugins can do this? I haven't tried it yet.

Edit:

Bluecat might have just the thing I need, but the link feature on this plugin might not offer enough individual links, so I might still be looking.

www.bluecataudio.com/Products/Product_GainSuite/

It's just one more indication that UA has started slow walking away from DSP...

Interestingly enough, I think they already sort of had a dual buffer in place, but only for instrument VI tracks that were armed for record. Any track which was recording audio still was subject to the overall global buffer. Looks like they've basically just opened the instrument buffer up to be used by ANY track now. But, yeah, it looks like Luna has dual buffers now. So I'm sure non-Apollo users will be pleased by this.

What was the latency before and what is it now?

Whatever it is now, the fact that they were able to reduce it at all is, I think, an indicator that they always could have released those plugins at a lower latency, but intentionally chose not to.