KnobConnector: Control any plugin with your E1 in REAPER 7

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Suggestions for Improving Knob Connector Workflow with Electra One in REAPER

Hi there,

First of all, thank you so much for creating Knob Connector — it’s a brilliant concept! I use the Electra One controller to control VST plugins in REAPER, and it genuinely helps me mix by ear rather than by eye. This has taken my sound quality to a new level.

The E1 has so much power under the hood — and I’d love to unlock more of it in my current workflow with Knob Connector. I’ve gathered some thoughts and ideas that I believe could further improve the experience and workflow inside REAPER:

1. Reloading Plugin Maps Without Restarting REAPER
When I edit a custom Plugin Map, I currently need to restart REAPER for the changes to take effect. Maybe I’m missing something — but with my FaderPort, I could use a “Refresh all surfaces” script to reload control surfaces without restarting the DAW.

2. Screen Layout Optimization
I really like the module/submodule concept. However, in most cases, a third of the screen remains unused, while I run out of encoder space when customizing Plugin Maps. It would be ideal to make use of the middle section for additional controls. The module and submodule display could be moved to the top section, which already supports color coding — so everything would stay organized and intuitive.

3. Pad toggle support in Plugin Maps
It would be great to use the touchscreen to control two-state plugin functions, such as bypassing FX or linking stereo channels in compressors. These actions are ideal for toggle-style pads, and using them on the touchscreen would make plugin control more direct and intuitive.

4. Run REAPER actions from Electra One
When mixing, I often use track templates and common FX chains.
It would be great if Electra could display folders like DYN, EQ, TEMPL, etc. — and tapping on an item inside would trigger REAPER scripts or actions, even if no FX window is open.

5. Custom Channel Strip Mode
A mode designed for controlling multiple FX across a single track, using all three screen zones of the E1.
This could include a helper script to auto-generate a Plugin Map for all FX on the track, allowing for quick layout and mapping inside the web editor.

Thanks again for your incredible work — and for being so open to feedback. I’d be more than happy to test or help develop any of these features further.

Best regards,
Sergey Elt

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Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback, much appreciated.

I’m planning to either expose an action that reloads the maps or reinitializes the plugin.

In the meantime, you can open KnobConnectors config dialog (via Preferences->Plug-Ins->Control/OSC/web->KnobConnector (double click or press Edit) ) and then click on “OK”. The moment you do that in any of Reaper’s Control Surface configuration dialogs, Reaper should reinitialize all (or just that specific) plugin. This is how I edit maps at the moment myself: I just keep the preferences window open and whenever I want to reload a map, I hit “Edit” in the Preferences window and then “OK” in the configuration dialog.

The module/submodule concept came up because I wanted something that works with very complex synth plugins like VCV Rack or Reason Rack Plugin. Those can have 1000 to 3500 parameters and making those explorable and navigable for the E1 for my sound design work was my initial goal since most control surfaces I know are optimized for plugins with mabye 30 parameters (great for mixing or performances) but struggle considerably to handle more complex plugins.

That being said, I think it would be awesome if users could make their own layouts and it’s something I’ve been thinking about lately. Depending on how I want this to happen (for instance, Reaper telling the E1 how to arrange the layout/controls, which would be the most flexible approach), there’s some functionality missing for that in the E1 OS.

I agree, but it’s due to a current limitation in the E1 OS (the same limitation I mentioned in the paragraph above).

Triggering arbitrary Reaper actions from the E1 is also something that crossed my mind when I thought about the custom layout feature. Good to know you’d find it useful! I’ve added it to my notes for future features.

This is also something that I thought about, partly because of similar feedback from other users, partly because I wanted to start considering other workflows like mixing. One idea was a mode where you could say that the first compressor’s ratio parameter should always be on knob 1 and that would then work with any compressor plugin that has a map available (via tags added to specific parameters in the map). Together with the custom layout feature, users could create their own pages like a dynamics page or an EQ page and the controls would behave the same across all tracks. Let me know if that would already fit your workflow or if you have different use cases in mind!

Not sure if extending the E1 web editor is feasible ATM without a ton of web/JS hacks that might break with the next version of Chrome.
What I could try though is integrating a sentence transformer (quite the pain, most will require python and stuff) that could try to automatically categorize the plugin’s parameters by their names. But that’s kind of a wild idea I had two weeks ago, not sure if it’ll turn out to be a great experience.

Thanks for all your suggestions, which I think are great for venturing into mixing workflows.

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Thank you so much for your reply!

Your advice was really helpful—now I also keep the settings window active to update Knob Connector more easily.

I managed to “teach” ChatGPT to make Plugin Maps for me in just a few seconds. The idea with the tags you suggested really helped, and the language model handles it perfectly, following the same rules for processing Plugin Maps every time.

Over the last few nights, I’ve customized around 50 plugins. For some plugins I had to look for compromises, since not all parameters fit logically on a single page. There are some plugins that are nearly impossible to map—like the fantastic Michelangelo (Tone Projects), which has two frequency sections, dynamic compression, and a ton of parameters.

I think the most important feature would be the ability to create fully custom layouts. That’s what I’m really hoping for! If it becomes possible to import presets created in the Web Editor, that would be amazing. I really hope future E1 updates will add all these necessary features.

I tried making custom presets for SSL Channel Strip (UAD) in the Web Editor, but was shocked to find that every parameter has its own unique response curve. I managed to get it working with the E1 fader, but it’s nowhere near as precise as what I can do in Knob Connector. I also tried to tackle CSI, and did manage to control track volume using CC Relative, but I couldn’t get any feedback messages sent to the E1. Do you know if anyone has managed to integrate E1 with CSI successfully?

As you can see, I’ve experimented with a ton of things, but I always come back to Knob Connector—it’s simply the best solution out there right now. Thank you so much for your work! I’m really looking forward to future updates. By the way, have you thought about opening up donations? I think it would speed up development—a lot of people bought the E1 specifically for Knob Connector, and I’m sure we’d all be happy to support your work!