Old 04-20-2017, 07:48 AM   #1
bisclaveret
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Default Reaper for live-audio use?

Hi all. I am completely new to any of this sort of thing with an actual studio/workstation environment (used to using things like audacity or Creative Wave Studio in the old days to simply normalize/reduce/increase sound in recorded voice audio) and helping run a mixer console/soundboard for the local church during chorus performances/sermons, etc.

I've been trying to 'up my game' so to speak in computer audio with an actual microphone instead of the standard terrible headset mics, and to help improve the quality of a tiny livestream/twitch channel i've been playing with. To that end I got an assortment of cheap and not-extremely-bad equipment, but i've run into enemies RE some room and the ever-present computer noise, and the hiss from my cheap condenser mic (although i also have a Shure SM58, but without a shockmount.)

I've been having some success running VSTHost and the reaPlugs like reaFIR for removing the condenser his and fan noise and a small EQ and reaGate, but as it's a very old, unsupported program it's not the easiest to use, nor the best for CPU useage and other VST2 plugins don't often load or work correctly on it, and I was told to try Reaper instead.

Is it possible to use Reaper as a pass-through/channel-strip type situation where it's not recording audio but is a live rack? The way i was running VSTHost was input through the mic, through my soundcard (for the cheap condenser) or my interface (for the Shure) to the input of VSTHost, to the input of CABLE, and setting windows' mic endpoint to CABLE's output. This at least seems to work to my ear, but VSTHost is limited to MME and DirectSound for audio transport, and at worst with things like ReaFIR and/or with some other things like iZotope Vinyl, I end up with latencies in the 700ms at best, to 1.8s at worst, which destroys live video+audio and is tricky to get right with a video render pre-delay.

I appear to be unable to use Reaper with ASIO? as the ASIO drivers for the interface want to output all audio from Reaper to the rear RCA or 1/4" jacks, which to pump them back into my PC to be of any use would need to necessitate a stereo RCA to 3.5mm converter and input back into my soundcard's line-in and would result in double or triple conversion. What types of settings would I need to do the required and get as little latency as possible, or at least a predictable amount to be able to use a stream-buffer delay? An audio engineer friend I have tells me I seem to want the impossible and DAWs aren't really set up for this kind of thing and i'd be better spent spending extra cash and getting a DBX286, etc instead as an insert.

Edit: I should add that, as this is live-sound or live video+audio use, I'm not running anything like monitors, etc to the audio outputs of the interface, as i'd need to hear others speaking, game sound, etc which would necessitate hooking up to the PC-only, so I don't have any monitors, nor anything in the monitor port of the AI (i've been testing the configs by recording in audacity or using a capture program to see if the changes i was doing were acceptable system-wide.) I had originally been misguided and thought that the interfaces would be able to run these plugins by themselves as I had seen some that seemed to do that (Although radically out of my price range and Mac-only). So I had thought that the interfaces being USB would allow a transfer to/from the PC instead of it just being a one-way. Maybe I should have just picked up a USB mic instead like the Neat Bumblebee instead.

Last edited by bisclaveret; 04-20-2017 at 08:31 AM.
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Old 04-21-2017, 03:54 AM   #2
sonicowl
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Reaper can do pass-through/channel-strip processing. Latency depends on your hardware. Or if you need processing between programs, you can use ReaRoute Asio driver to internally send audio from any program to Reaper. http://wiki.cockos.com/wiki/index.php/ReaRoute
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Old 04-21-2017, 08:08 AM   #3
bisclaveret
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sonicowl View Post
Reaper can do pass-through/channel-strip processing. Latency depends on your hardware. Or if you need processing between programs, you can use ReaRoute Asio driver to internally send audio from any program to Reaper. http://wiki.cockos.com/wiki/index.php/ReaRoute
I would need to do processing from the mic to several other programs, but none of those programs use ASIO, hence my difficulty. Reaper would be sending the gated, EQ'd, noise-reductioned, etc mic audio to other programs, not the other way around, which has been my stumbling block RE latency. The other programs would only be able to interact with it in a waveout/WDM mode, hence my use of CABLE to tunnel everything from the one program i was using into a virtual 'microphone' input to select in the other programs.

I'm just confused as to how to get the audio out of Reaper, as, for example, when i'm in ASIO mode, the only output i get is from the headphone port on playback mix, or the playback RCA/1/4" jacks on the unit itself. Windows won't play sound through my headphones on my internal soundcard, Audacity doesn't pick it up, Skype doesn't, etc. The others will give me varying delays up to almost 2 seconds depending on if i have 2-3 VSTs loaded like reaFIR.
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Old 04-21-2017, 09:24 AM   #4
serr
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bisclaveret View Post
Hi all. I am completely new to any of this sort of thing with an actual studio/workstation environment (used to using things like audacity or Creative Wave Studio in the old days to simply normalize/reduce/increase sound in recorded voice audio) and helping run a mixer console/soundboard for the local church during chorus performances/sermons, etc.

I've been trying to 'up my game' so to speak in computer audio with an actual microphone instead of the standard terrible headset mics, and to help improve the quality of a tiny livestream/twitch channel i've been playing with. To that end I got an assortment of cheap and not-extremely-bad equipment, but i've run into enemies RE some room and the ever-present computer noise, and the hiss from my cheap condenser mic (although i also have a Shure SM58, but without a shockmount.)

I've been having some success running VSTHost and the reaPlugs like reaFIR for removing the condenser his and fan noise and a small EQ and reaGate, but as it's a very old, unsupported program it's not the easiest to use, nor the best for CPU useage and other VST2 plugins don't often load or work correctly on it, and I was told to try Reaper instead.

Is it possible to use Reaper as a pass-through/channel-strip type situation where it's not recording audio but is a live rack? The way i was running VSTHost was input through the mic, through my soundcard (for the cheap condenser) or my interface (for the Shure) to the input of VSTHost, to the input of CABLE, and setting windows' mic endpoint to CABLE's output. This at least seems to work to my ear, but VSTHost is limited to MME and DirectSound for audio transport, and at worst with things like ReaFIR and/or with some other things like iZotope Vinyl, I end up with latencies in the 700ms at best, to 1.8s at worst, which destroys live video+audio and is tricky to get right with a video render pre-delay.

I appear to be unable to use Reaper with ASIO? as the ASIO drivers for the interface want to output all audio from Reaper to the rear RCA or 1/4" jacks, which to pump them back into my PC to be of any use would need to necessitate a stereo RCA to 3.5mm converter and input back into my soundcard's line-in and would result in double or triple conversion. What types of settings would I need to do the required and get as little latency as possible, or at least a predictable amount to be able to use a stream-buffer delay? An audio engineer friend I have tells me I seem to want the impossible and DAWs aren't really set up for this kind of thing and i'd be better spent spending extra cash and getting a DBX286, etc instead as an insert.

Edit: I should add that, as this is live-sound or live video+audio use, I'm not running anything like monitors, etc to the audio outputs of the interface, as i'd need to hear others speaking, game sound, etc which would necessitate hooking up to the PC-only, so I don't have any monitors, nor anything in the monitor port of the AI (i've been testing the configs by recording in audacity or using a capture program to see if the changes i was doing were acceptable system-wide.) I had originally been misguided and thought that the interfaces would be able to run these plugins by themselves as I had seen some that seemed to do that (Although radically out of my price range and Mac-only). So I had thought that the interfaces being USB would allow a transfer to/from the PC instead of it just being a one-way. Maybe I should have just picked up a USB mic instead like the Neat Bumblebee instead.
I started using Reaper specifically for live sound production.
Then it turned out to be a significant upgrade over Protools HD and it turned into my studio DAW as well.

Reaper is the most full featured live sound board I've ever used and the most stable DAW I've ever used. A hardware digital or analog board would feel 2nd class at this point.

As long as you have a hardware audio interface with reasonable internal latency (avoid the cheaper USB-only boxes!) and a computer that is up to speed (anything pro from 2008 to present outfitted with a SSD) you should be good.
The needs there depend on how many channels you are running and/or if you need any heavyweight plugins for anything.
And now you get to bring full multitrack recordings home from every gig.
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