Plugin usage efficiency

Another DAW has a feature where it only processes audio when it has activity on the timeline, I was wondering if ardour in the near future to utilize plugins this way, I notice in most daws when a track is just sitting there it issues the same Cpu usage even if a track is busy with tracks or not, it would be very useful especially for laptops etc. The Daw was pro tools, and the feature was dynamic plugin processing. I’m not sure if pro tools feature was proprietary or patent or something. But ya just wanted to chat lol

Oh ok I understand.

Ardour specifically and intentionally avoids this design.

We want you to see constant DSP load at all times, so you do not suddenly get xruns/clicks/dropouts because a bunch of processing kicks in that wasn’t there before.

The DSP load will vary a little, but we want you to see a reliable, actionable number rather than having to continually asses whether or not that part of your session will cause problems.

I don’t think the idea is proprietary though there are different (proprietary) names for it in various DAWs. VST3 also better supports this option on the plug-in side (compatibility is important, as there can be issues around arbitrarily starting / stopping processing for some plug-ins - so at the very least it needs to be optional). Designing plug-ins to be as efficient as possible anyway also helps.