Hybrid mixing with Reaper, anyone?
Good evening, everyone!
I'm new to this forum despite the fact that I've been using Reaper for a few years, so please excuse my ignorance!
In my home studio setup I use Reaper mainly as my recording medium and to a much lesser degree as a mixing tool. I have an APB Spectra Ti40 (actually a live analog mixing console), a few outboard preamps and a number of hardware compressors, gates and such hooked up through an Antelope Orion 32 channel AD/DA converter to my PC running Reaper.
I have mostly used my home studio as a rehearsal space for my band, but a little while ago we decided that we would like to record some of our songs and perhaps release an album if the recordings turn out OK.
We have already done most of the recordings, and they do sound pretty good. However, after running the recorded raw tracks in Reaper through the converter out to the APB, through the outboard effects, summed on the APB, and back through the converter to Reaper, I'm puzzled by the result. While the resulting stereo track sounds surprisingly good, when I press the "mono" button on the Reaper master, the mix totally collapses. Some instruments stay just fine, like the stereo rhythm guitars and percussion, while the bass, vocals and drums almost disappear from the mix! I was thinking it might be a phasing issue appearing when Reapers tracks (which technically always are in stereo, I think) are bounced to mono tracks on the analog console and summed to one stereo track before being fed back to Reaper, but nothing I've tried to remedy this (split tracks, pan hard left or right, etc.) has helped. I've later mixed the same songs ITB, having no mono compatibility problems, so there seems to be something happening in the conversion phase or in the analog domain.
I've tried to search for others having similar problems, but to no avail. I suppose there aren't that many actually running Reaper in a hybrid digital/analog mixing setup, but I'm hoping perhaps someone on this forum may be able to help me out solving this problem.
Also, if anyone knows of any general online resources for running Reaper in a hybrid setup, I would very much appreciate a link.
Thanks!
Cheers,
Johannes
Last edited by joho; 04-18-2019 at 02:49 PM.
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