Render in REAP including Input Tracks

[ahed4]

Hi there,

i was playing around with REAPER and FL Studio connected through ReaRoute.
Thanks to some great tutorials here i was able to send MIDI Synch. to FL Stuio so it plays along with REAPER and generates all my Synth.-stuff while REAPER handles recorded audio. So far, so good.

What I would like to do now, is render my track from REAPER, >including< the data that comes over from FL-Studio. A normal render doesn't do the job, since FL-Studio-Audio coms into REAPER only over Input-Monitoring, and, clearly, this is disabled during render.

My question: is there a way?

I could let the song play and record the stuff being generated, but that is way toooo risky if my soundcard gets a buffer underrund ...

[Leitmotif]

Before you try this, make sure you have the "do not process muted tracks" option enabled in Reaper.

If you mute everything in Reaper except the tracks with the output from FL (don't solo the FL tracks, mute the others so they don't use CPU) and hit play, do the FL tracks playback fine realtime?

If yes, simply record the FL output to its tracks.

Now you have your FL output "rendered" to disk and right there in reaper. Now reaper's normal track rendering will work.


Of course, if your machine won't reliably play just the FL output into Reaper realtime, I can only suggest narrowing things down to process one of the outputs from FL at a time -- obviously mute anything that's not being recorded in FL itself or otherwise reduce the CPU load in FL.


Wait... doesn't FL have a render-to-disk function? Render whatever FL is doing and import the rendered WAV into the appropriate tracks in reaper.


Just a few ideas. I don't think there's a way to do what you describe directly, but I'm probably wrong. If I'm not wrong, any of these methods will be cool. This depends on your own specifics, of course. I've never tried running another sequencer/whatever into Reaper, so.... but if I did, these are some of my approaches.


Good luck.


PS. The reason what you are trying to do wont work is that Reaper doesn't "know" the input is coming from FL. As far as reaper is concerned, anything not currently recorded in reaper is not available for offline processing. Essentially, Reaper can not distinguish between input from FL and input from a guitarist stood right there. A guitarist can't play along with the offline render, you've got to record it into reaper first. And FL is no different as far as Reaper is concerned. ReaRoute is just an ASIO input like any analogue input on your soundcard.

[ahed4]

Thanks for your answers,

well REAPER plays back without hangs. That would be no problem. But I don't only use FL for generating sounds, I'd also like to route audio from REAPER to FL-Studio for processing and then back again.

Yes, FL does have a render to disk. But that doesn't solve my problems since i need both apps to run at the same time to let them hear from each other what they are doing.

Since FL is also available as VST-Plugin, I could fire it up inside REAPER, but
1. it has a latenvy of about 0,5sec
2. I can only work inside FL, if REAPER is playing

But well ... thats more part of FL now so forget it =)

I'll keep trying. There are several ways of linking those apps ... ReWire, ReaRoute, VST ... so maybe i'll find a way ...

[Leitmotif]

Originally Posted by ahed4

I'd also like to route audio from REAPER to FL-Studio for processing and then back again.

Consider doing each thing one at a time. So, get your stuff from FL into Reaper first. It'll eat some disk space, but that's about it. Then run the stuff from Reaper through FL. Not sure how you would fessibly do both. Also consider which one will be your "main" app for mixing etc.

Originally Posted by ahed

Yes, FL does have a render to disk. But that doesn't solve my problems since i need both apps to run at the same time to let them hear from each other what they are doing.

So, your MIDI sequences are in Reaper and FL needs them to do what it is doing. Well, just record the output, then move on to whatever you want to do next. Think of it as freezing each thing, I suppose.

Originally Posted by ahed

Since FL is also available as VST-Plugin

I haven't used FL in a few years (and didn't like it before), but I believe the VST is a VSTi and will allow you to use FL as a synth (I may be wrong on this). But, as you said, you need to work both ways and have FL as more than a synth.

Originally Posted by ahed

1. it has a latenvy of about 0,5sec

Won't Reaper's latency-compensation fix that?

Originally Posted by ahed

2. I can only work inside FL, if REAPER is playing

Enable the option "run FX when stopped". VSTi's run when stopped that way.

Originally Posted by ahed

I'll keep trying. There are several ways of linking those apps ... ReWire,

Reaper has good ReWire support, so that would be a good option. It also escapes the fact that ReaRoute to Reaper is just like any other analogue input and needs recording its sound before you can use it. FL as a ReWire device slaving to Reaper probably won't let you run audio from Reaper to FL. But, like I said, think about doing things one-at-a-time. You can later run Reaper as a ReWire device slaving to FL (Does FL support ReWire slaves? I can't remember...) and run audio from Reaper to FL.

I'm stumped as to any approach to doing both ways simultaneously, though. A full duplex synch between FL and Reaper doesn't seem possible.

Maybe somebody else will have an idea