Explain why a track has no sound

[freixas]

Hi,

I know that when the VU meters display sound levels in red, it means that the associated tracks will not generate any sound. Sometimes the reason is crystal clear: I muted the track. Sometimes, I have no idea why—I haven't done anything to disable the track.

It would be lovely if I could right click on the VU meter levels and get an option that explains all the settings that prevent the track from being heard. It's clear that, at some level, REAPER knows why as some piece of code has to decide whether to produce sound (and a green bar) or no sound (and a red bar).

Sometimes, I think I've seen the VU meters display a yellow bar instead or red or green. I have no idea what that's supposed to indicate. And yes, I tried finding the answer in the ~500 page manual. I'm sure it's there somewhere.

[sisaso]

Are you talking about the different Automation modes? The colors you are mentioning let me think so.

[freixas]

Actually, I am refering to the VU levels:

Clipboard03.jpg

In this image, the VU meter marked "Flute" displays levels using green AND red bars—what the heck does that mean? Then the Oboe - redirected VU meter displays levels in red. I know why: because I redirected all the output to other tracks. What I want is to be able to click on the red levels and have it explain why this track has no sound.

The meters for the French Horn and the Redirected Oboe also display both green and red. The Oboe Ch Other displays levels in red only, and to be honest, I'm not sure why. I'd like the system to tell me why.

[cfillion]

These red lines means there are MIDI events going out of the track. It is not related to the audio signal (green).

[freixas]

Thanks for the explanation, cfillion!

I tend to work exclusively with MIDI (so far), no audio. All tracks are MIDI tracks, so now I wonder why the Bassoon and Oboe Ch 1 tracks show no red.

And I'd still like to click on a track and have the system tell me if audio will come be generated or list the various things that might block the audio.

I captured a MIDI performance and the VU meter displays yellow bars instead of green. Is that because the track is armed for recording?

[haervo]

Originally Posted by freixas

And I'd still like to click on a track and have the system tell me if audio will come be generated or list the various things that might block the audio.

These explanations you could get from a file called the "User Guide".

Sorry, but really??

You are the maestro in front of your Reaper/DAW. How should Reaper know why there is no sound? Maybe you didnt record any??

[freixas]

Really right back at you.

There are multiple ways in which REAPER will block sound production. You might have muted a track. You might have another instrument on Solo. You might have redirected the output. You might have MIDI data without a VST. You may have failed to enable some device in the preferences.

I remember one time my project was happily playing my MIDI and then something changed and I got a lot of red bars and no greens. The manual is 500 pages and there are multiple features that might block generated audio. I checked a bunch of them and was never able to figure out what was blocking the sound. So I had to revert to an earlier version of the project, where everything seemed set up exactly the same way, but I was getting sound.

The least interesting answer is there is no sound because the track has no music. In my case, MIDI events were firing, nothing was redirected, the VSTs were set up, the audio system was working, nothing was muted, no instruments were soloing, the right audio output device was selected, etc. Maybe it was a bug in REAPER; I haven't had a repeat of that in a while.

[slipstick]

Originally Posted by freixas

Maybe it was a bug in REAPER; I haven't had a repeat of that in a while.

Unfortunately if the missing audio is caused by a bug in Reaper your chances of getting Reaper to tell you what caused it are pretty low. Likewise if you've set your preferences up wrong it's not going to know that you intended to set something different.

Steve

[freixas]

I might agree if it's a bug, although if the system tells you you should be getting sound and you're not (and you can see that MIDI data is firing away), then at least you might know it's a bug and not some weird setting somewhere in some obscure dialog that got set by accidentally hitting Ctrl-Shift-J or something.

I disagree on the preference. I'm sure REAPER has some pipeline that leads from source data to sound. Various things need to be set up in various ways to get the data all the way to where audio leaves the system. The code could check to make sure there is a completely path and, if not, tell you at least the first thing blocking the pipeline.

We'll agree that it can't tell you that you turned your volume control on your speaker to 0. REAPER can only address the pipeline up to where it leaves the program.

[A Little Man and a House]

I think this might actually be not such a bad idea. I don't have a clear idea of how it would be implemented. But I admit I pretty often have the experience of an unexpectedly silent track, and have to rely on process of elimination, so having some kind of shorthand for why a track is silent might save me a LITTLE time. Usually it's just because I messed up the routing, though, so I guess it would just say 'no input'? Which wouldn't be that useful, although it would rule out some things...

[freixas]

Yeah, I've been thinking about this and I wonder if the incidence that triggered this idea (long ago) was just a bug in REAPER.

I'm not a REAPER expert (clearly), but let's see which things I can think that would generate no sound:

• You have to have an audio driver selected (I don't think you can avoid this unless your system has no audio drivers). It might be nice for any explanation to indicate which audio driver REAPER is sending audio to.
• If output is to a MIDI device, you need to have a MIDI device and it has to be enabled. Again, it might be nice for any explanation to list the MIDI output device in use.
• For audio and MIDI preferences, if you configure a project when audio or MIDI devices are present and later restart the project when the drivers or MIDI devices are no longer present, things may go into a black hole.
• The track has to have audio or MIDI data or the track has to receive audio or MIDI data from another track.
• The track has to be unmuted.
• No other track should be soloed unless the track in question is soloed.
• If recording, record monitoring needs to be ON.
• The track volume envelope should not be at 0. There may be other envelopes that should also be checked.
• For MIDI data, you need a VST or something that will generate audio.
• You need to be playing or recording (duh!).

Normally, if an explanation dialog were available, I would bring it up while playing, so there might be some additional items to report that might depending on where you are in the track:

• The volume CC (or maybe other CCs) is set to 0 on all channels with active notes playing.
• There is no data on any channel.
• The VST received data but did not produce audio. Since the VST is not part of REAPER, REAPER can only check inputs and outputs. You could somehow have disabled sound in the VST or might be trying to play notes outside the range of the VST instrument.
• Maybe the entire FX pipeline should be checked for input, but no audio output.

I picture these items in the explanation changing in real time. There may be more. These are the ones that occurred to me.

[karbomusic]

There may be more. These are the ones that occurred to me.

An therein lies the rub, there can and will be a myriad of unknown combinations, both expected and unexpected. It's going to be far better to get familiar with how audio travels and routes in the DAW and you can always figure this out within minutes if not seconds.

[johane]

In "read" mode make sure that the master send (under Routing) isn't set to zero. In "read" it acts like a trim. Useful but not obvious.

[juan_r]

Add this: Some track (including the Master Track) might have been automuted because of excessive levels. This is usually due to a feedback loop, either explicit (which must be done intentionally, because Reaper won't let you by default), or implicit in some plugin managing feedback on its own.

[ReinerZ]

If you import multi-part MIDI files the different parts of a piece (e.g. the two-part inventions by Bach) may be assigned to different MIDI channels. Then, plugins which only respond to one channel (most of the time channel 1) will not generate sound for the parts not issuing the MIDI on that channel. Nevertheless, the yellow lines in the VU meter will show events, because that responds to all MIDI channels. This problem can be resolved by opening the MIDI editor, selecting all notes (ctrl-A), right click, event properties, select channel 1 in the dropdown menu.

[freixas]

Originally Posted by ReinerZ

If you import multi-part MIDI files the different parts of a piece (e.g. the two-part inventions by Bach) may be assigned to different MIDI channels. Then, plugins which only respond to one channel (most of the time channel 1) will not generate sound for the parts not issuing the MIDI on that channel. Nevertheless, the yellow lines in the VU meter will show events, because that responds to all MIDI channels. This problem can be resolved by opening the MIDI editor, selecting all notes (ctrl-A), right click, event properties, select channel 1 in the dropdown menu.

Thanks for the tip.

It's always interesting to see a response to an old thread. I started this thread in 2016, 7 years ago! My response #11 still looks pretty good. However, it doesn't look like REAPER has much interest in my suggestion (unless I've missed some enhancement).

I've gotten better at using REAPER. I still battle with not getting sound, but the problem can often be external to REAPER. After REAPER has sent audio to the audio driver, I have a lot of cables and devices it has to travel through before it reaches the speakers. The other day I was getting no sound and discovered eventually that I had muted the PC. Oops!