One of the advanced features that I had always planned to implement in WeTracker that isn’t typically found in older tracker software, is the ability to apply effects to tracks, and ultimately instruments and the master output as well.

Some modern trackers such as Renoise, and OpenMPT do support this sort of effect capability, and it is very common in non-tracker style DAWs. Webaudio makes this entirely possible thanks to the node-based nature of the API. It is possible to chain together various node types, including filters and even Javascript processing nodes.

Thanks to an open source library, TunaJS, that provides a set of ready made Webaudio effects nodes that can easily be slotted into an existing node tree, the audio part was fairly straightforward. Creating an effective interface took a little longer, but it’s basically there. Currently it’s only possible to apply effects chains to individual tracks, there is no limit on the number of effects in the chain, and it’s possible to reorder and delete the effects through the interface.

Currently the majority of the TunaJS effects are available to try out, just double click on the effect name in the list to add it to the end of the chain for the currently selected track. Work is underway to introduce the concept of a master track that can have effects applied to it.

See the following video for a quick intro to the functionality.

Onwards and upwards…