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Old 12-10-2017, 05:49 PM   #1
evosilica
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Default External Synths and Sequencers - Still Not Working?

Rant alert: If you're disgusted by people ranting on the internet, please move on.

Ok, here we go. Reaper is by far my favorite DAW. I'm using it for what it feels like forever. It does everything I need. I can set up everything the way I want to. It's perfect, as long as I stay ITB.
As soon as I want to incorporate external synths and sequencers, it starts to get ... sloppy.

I'm still a 4.78 user (no need to change a running system, i thought, being the cheapskate that I am), but I've tried a portable 5.62 install yesterday to check if there are any improvements. I'd happily pay for a new license but unfortunately I still can't get it to work properly.

I've read through a lot of threads, tried the MIDI clock JS thing ... no success. "Offset output for this device by" in the MIDI settings doesn't do anything at negative values. I can only delay the external instruments further, which I can't think of any situation where this would be useful. Same with ReaInsert. I type in positive numbers, timing gets worse, I type in negative numbers, nothing changes.

I mean I can sequence external synths just fine. All I have to do is manually delay all ITB tracks to get them lined up correctly. As soon as I add plugins on the master track that introduce latency, I have to re-adjust the delay for the ITB tracks, because the ITB parts get the correct latency compensation, but the live inputs don't. When I finally record the external synths, I have to remove the delay again, because the recording somehow does have the latency compensated.

Then there's MIDI clock. I make loop based music, so in order to build up those loops I very often want to loop parts.
MIDI clock somehow starts to drift away the longer the loop is running.
And unfortunately MIDI Sync only restarts properly at bar 1.1.00, for whatever reason. In summary it can be said, I cannot get it to work.

I've tried Ableton Live and these things just worked out of the box. No need for typing in anything. But I don't want to use Live.

Is this ever going to work? Is the cockos team working on it right now?
Or am I just doing it wrong? Please tell me I'm doing it wrong. I'd be so happy if this just worked ...
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Old 12-10-2017, 06:07 PM   #2
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https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=200340

You might want to check out this thread and the vst that's linked there. I downloaded it but haven't had a chance to try it yet. It's worth looking into for hardware synths. I'm curious where Reaper goes with fixing this longstanding issue.
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Old 12-10-2017, 07:48 PM   #3
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I don't pipe midi through Reaper into hardware synths when recording; like you, I ran into intractable latency problems.

My solution is to use virtual MidiOx hubs to allowing feeding midi to Reaper to record, while bypassing Reaper for monitoring by using an extra hub as a Thru that drives the external synth.

The path is:
Keyboard->hardware midi port->MidiOx hub1, split into two, one to Reaper to get recorded, one to MidiOx hub2, which forwards it to hub3. Hub3->midi output port->external Synth
Hub3 is also used as the Reaper playback port.

I went into this in detail recently on another thread. I'll dig up the link when I have a bit more time.
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Old 12-10-2017, 07:56 PM   #4
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Here you go. See post #6.

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=200139
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Old 12-11-2017, 09:28 AM   #5
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@Doc Brown: I've already stumbled across this thread and wanted to try out antto's midi clock but forgot about it. Thanks for the reminder.

@Philbo King: Have to check this out, seems complicated at the first glance and doesn't look like a solution for my workflow, but I have to dig more into this. Thanks.


I remember these issues have already been discussed years ago.
I don't understand why the devs don't seem to care.
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Old 12-11-2017, 10:29 AM   #6
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I'm guessing it's definitely on their radar but from what I've observed on the net it's not an easy nut to crack. I'm not sure as to why as I'm not a coder or dev but I'm hoping it gets solved for the Reaper community.
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Old 12-12-2017, 05:12 AM   #7
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If I can fix the problem by manually adding some small amounts of delay at the right spots, I don't buy it that it's hard to fix.

I think it's more a matter of priorities.
Only a tiny minority of reaper users seems to complain about it, so it stays at the bottom of the list of things to improve.
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Old 12-12-2017, 05:21 AM   #8
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From what I can tell, external synths are becoming a relic of the past. Most seem to use VSTi synths now.
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Old 12-12-2017, 07:51 AM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Philbo King View Post
From what I can tell, external synths are becoming a relic of the past. Most seem to use VSTi synths now.
Ah no. Hardware synths are making a huge resurgence especially with more affordable choices than ever before. It's probably the probably the golden era of hardware synths and sequencers and it's only getting better.
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Old 12-12-2017, 08:09 AM   #10
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Ah no. Hardware synths are making a huge resurgence especially with more affordable choices than ever before. It's probably the probably the golden era of hardware synths and sequencers and it's only getting better.
I do like the sound of that. I have 2 Roland guitar synths, a Roland drum kit, an Alesis QSR (rackmount quadrasynth), and a Korg DW8000, that I'd like to keep using...

My comment was directed toward the DAW world in general... Hardware synths are ideal for performance work; you never have to reboot them during the show.

But it seems like DAWs are increasingly oriented towards virtual synths. I seem to have to jump through a lot of hoops, like a circus poodle, to get my hardware synths working with Reaper.

Latency while monitoring during recording is my major problem. It would be great if there was an input plugin that would split incoming midi, sending it directly a hardware midi output while also recording it.

But that might have to wait till I have time to learn Lua acripting I guess.
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Old 12-12-2017, 09:14 AM   #11
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Originally Posted by Philbo King View Post
I do like the sound of that. I have 2 Roland guitar synths, a Roland drum kit, an Alesis QSR (rackmount quadrasynth), and a Korg DW8000, that I'd like to keep using...

My comment was directed toward the DAW world in general... Hardware synths are ideal for performance work; you never have to reboot them during the show.

But it seems like DAWs are increasingly oriented towards virtual synths. I seem to have to jump through a lot of hoops, like a circus poodle, to get my hardware synths working with Reaper.

Latency while monitoring during recording is my major problem. It would be great if there was an input plugin that would split incoming midi, sending it directly a hardware midi output while also recording it.

But that might have to wait till I have time to learn Lua acripting I guess.
I never remember having any issues playing through Reaper with my hardware synths, but I am using twin PCI audio hardware cards in my computer, and the two midi interfaces I use from them are fast enough to play a tight snare drum buzz roll and never feel laggy or anything.

I used to have in the racks of my mix desk a Roland SC880 dual Sound Canvas, a Roland M-VS1 Vintage Synths, and a Sequential Circuits Prophet 2002 rack mount sampler. I also have a set of V-Drums. I retired all the rack mount midi hardware for softsynths because the virtual instruments like Kontakt, Arturia MiniMoog V, FM7, B4 organ Etc., can render straight from midi tracks to stereo wave audio without ever having them as audio in the DAW.

I do still have the V-Drums, but they haven't had an audio cable plugged into them for more than 15 years. I use them strictly as a midi controller.
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Old 12-12-2017, 10:39 AM   #12
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I thought for a while it might be my interfaces or their drivers. I have a Presonus 1818 Audiobox and a Terretec EWS with 5 pin DIN jacks, and a Radium controller keyboard with USB.

But once I ran a MidiOx Thru inside the PC (bypassing Reaper), all the latency went away, or at least got low enough to be undetectable by ear.

So I'm very confident it is a Reaper issue, not a hardware or driver issue.
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Old 12-13-2017, 04:35 AM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Glennbo View Post
I never remember having any issues playing through Reaper with my hardware synths,
Just to clarify: I don't have issues playing my hardware synths through reaper either.

It's just when I sequence them via MIDI and feed the audio back into reaper to incorporate them into my mix as you would use a VSTi, then there's delay, that will not get compensated, unless you do it manually by delaying all other tracks, which sucks big time.

I have a RME AIO PCIe card, so it's definitely not a case of cheap, sloppy hardware.
And as I've said, in Ableton Live it works perfectly fine straight out of the box. No delay issues whatsoever, be it sequencing or syncing to external sequencers, everything's tight.

Last edited by evosilica; 12-13-2017 at 04:40 AM.
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Old 12-13-2017, 05:14 AM   #14
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Originally Posted by evosilica View Post
Just to clarify: I don't have issues playing my hardware synths through reaper either.

It's just when I sequence them via MIDI and feed the audio back into reaper to incorporate them into my mix as you would use a VSTi, then there's delay, that will not get compensated, unless you do it manually by delaying all other tracks, which sucks big time.

I have a RME AIO PCIe card, so it's definitely not a case of cheap, sloppy hardware.
And as I've said, in Ableton Live it works perfectly fine straight out of the box. No delay issues whatsoever, be it sequencing or syncing to external sequencers, everything's tight.
Sorry. I've been fighting with this so long I'm starting to project my problem onto other peoples issues....
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Old 12-13-2017, 06:52 AM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by evosilica View Post
Just to clarify: I don't have issues playing my hardware synths through reaper either.

It's just when I sequence them via MIDI and feed the audio back into reaper to incorporate them into my mix as you would use a VSTi, then there's delay, that will not get compensated, unless you do it manually by delaying all other tracks, which sucks big time.

I have a RME AIO PCIe card, so it's definitely not a case of cheap, sloppy hardware.
And as I've said, in Ableton Live it works perfectly fine straight out of the box. No delay issues whatsoever, be it sequencing or syncing to external sequencers, everything's tight.

So.... In Ableton if you had quarter notes sequenced on the grid and you sent them out to say a drum machine, the audio would be perfectly quantized in quarter note audio?
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Old 12-13-2017, 07:57 AM   #16
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So.... In Ableton if you had quarter notes sequenced on the grid and you sent them out to say a drum machine, the audio would be perfectly quantized in quarter note audio?
Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying then yes.

Example:
Track1: VSTi playing a quarter note kickdrum
Track2: External drummachine 1 sequenced by DAW playing a quarter note kickdrum
Track3: External drummachine 2 with internal sequencer synced via MIDI clock playing a quarter note kickdrum

Audio of external drummachines fed back into DAW.

In Live all 3 kickdrums can be heard at the same time, layered on top of each other (not down to the nanosecond of course, but within imo acceptable timing)

In Reaper Track 2 will be heard about 20ms later than Track 1 and Track 3 will be all over the place, depending on where you press play on the timeline.

I'm not talking about recording btw, just live playback.

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Old 12-13-2017, 08:51 AM   #17
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Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying then yes.

Example:
Track1: VSTi playing a quarter note kickdrum
Track2: External drummachine 1 sequenced by DAW playing a quarter note kickdrum
Track3: External drummachine 2 with internal sequencer synced via MIDI clock playing a quarter note kickdrum

Audio of external drummachines fed back into DAW.

In Live all 3 kickdrums can be heard at the same time, layered on top of each other (not down to the nanosecond of course, but within imo acceptable timing)

In Reaper Track 2 will be heard about 20ms later than Track 1 and Track 3 will be all over the place, depending on where you press play on the timeline.

I'm not talking about recording btw, just live playback.

Wow. Nice

I may have to learn another DAW just for sequencing my hardware synths. Hopefully Reaper v6 is the ticket. If the devs at Ableton can figure it out I'm sure Justin and company should be able to do it better.
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Old 12-13-2017, 08:54 AM   #18
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Justin just needs to integrate some hardware synths in his workflow and this would all be fixed.
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Old 12-13-2017, 09:16 AM   #19
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To try and understand the issue being discussed here I decided to do a test of my own.

For this test I used three items for comparison.

1. Direct audio from my V-Drums using no MIDI at all.
2. Direct audio from my V-Drums while being triggered via MIDI as an external MIDI hardware device.
3. Stem track audio from Superior Drummer that was triggered by the same MIDI track.

All three were from the same performance, but only 2 and 3 are playing back from MIDI, 2 being played as an external MIDI hardware device, and 3 being played as an internal VSTi instrument.

Here are the results I got from this test.

Test one is V-Drums recorded direct from their audio out, into Reaper for the left channel, and V-Drums being played back as an outboard MIDI device, and then recorded as audio into Reaper on the right channel.

The left side was recorded first. The right channel was recorded by playing back the MIDI which got recorded in the first pass, when the direct audio was also captured.

https://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=13667323

Test two is the same MIDI file playing back only this time comparing Superior Drummer VSTi rendered to a stem on the left channel, and V-Drums being played back as an outboard MIDI device, while recording it's audio back into Reaper on the right channel.

https://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=13667324

Lastly, I grabbed a couple of screen shots. You can see that there is delay in the external MIDI wave track, but I did have to zoom in quite a lot before it became obvious.


The tracks in this images are as follows.

1. MIDI
2. Superior Drummer VSTi stem
3. Direct audio from V-Drums (no MIDI used)
4. V-Drums played as external MIDI hardware and recorded as audio



Here are the same tracks when zoomed way in.

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Old 12-13-2017, 01:40 PM   #20
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I will have a deeper look into this later but right now I can tell you: Ableton Live has the same problem for me and also other people. Workflow and timing of recordings with external sequenced synths is so bad it was a relief to switch to Reaper for music production. Will investigate further.
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Old 12-13-2017, 01:58 PM   #21
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Did anyone try that vst I linked to in a previous post? I'm curious as to whether it works as described or not. I've been super busy with my work and I've had no time for fun.

EDIT

Here's the link to it directly.

http://antonsavov.net/cms/projects/as_xc3.html
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Old 12-13-2017, 02:07 PM   #22
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Doc Brown View Post
Did anyone try that vst I linked to in a previous post? I'm curious as to whether it works as described or not. I've been super busy with my work and I've had no time for fun.

EDIT

Here's the link to it directly.

http://antonsavov.net/cms/projects/as_xc3.html
If you are trying to sync Reaper and other outboard sequencers using MIDI clock, I did see a post from a while back that suggested un-ticking the items "All Notes Off" and "Reset on Play" from the midi options panel in Reaper. Also using SPP or MTC vs. simple MIDI clock has supposedly worked for some.
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Old 12-13-2017, 03:23 PM   #23
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nevermind

Last edited by vassaux; 12-13-2017 at 03:37 PM. Reason: Misunderstood issue
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Old 12-14-2017, 02:36 AM   #24
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Quote:
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Ableton Live ... is so bad it was a relief to switch to Reaper
So you don't have any timing issues with external MIDI gear in reaper at all? Everythings perfectly on beat? How did you do this? Teach me, master

Reagarding workflow - yes, I prefer reaper by a mile. That's why I'm here ranting and not silently switching to Live
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Old 12-14-2017, 06:30 AM   #25
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Wow, Glennbo, that looks pretty good. I was getting something like 20 mS latency from running my Roland drum kit midi in, and monitoring by feeding Reaper midi out into an external synth. Enough so it was essentially impossible to play drums properly (it was like talking while you hear only a 1 sec delayed version of what you say).

I might try this test without my latency fix in place, just to get a more exact number...
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Old 12-14-2017, 08:26 AM   #26
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Wow, Glennbo, that looks pretty good. I was getting something like 20 mS latency from running my Roland drum kit midi in, and monitoring by feeding Reaper midi out into an external synth. Enough so it was essentially impossible to play drums properly (it was like talking while you hear only a 1 sec delayed version of what you say).

I might try this test without my latency fix in place, just to get a more exact number...
Just to be clear, each of the three tracks in my test were generated at different times, but back to back from each other.

IOW, the first track which captured both MIDI and the live audio of my V-Drums was done in one take, recording on two tracks. One for the MIDI, and the other for the audio.

After that recording was done, I then sent the MIDI track back out to my V-Drums and recorded on another audio track, them being played back by MIDI coming from REAPER.

The last track, I sent the MIDI to Superior Drummer 2 in REAPER, and rendered the result to a stem.


When I first got REAPER, I was still using a rack full of outboard MIDI hardware, and would play stuff like horn parts, pianos, strings, Etc. using it. The way I used it was similar to the way I did this test, in that I would record MIDI, which gave me the luxury of trying different sounds until I zeroed in on one I liked. Then I would solo that part, sending the MIDI out from REAPER to the external hardware, and record the audio for that one isolated track. Lastly I would then mute the MIDI track and use the audio version of it from then on, but if I needed to, I could always un-mute the MIDI track and pick a different sound on the outboard MIDI gear.

One by one I found virtual replacements for each of my MIDI hardware units, not because I was having any problems with them working with REAPER, but because using a VSTi was so much easier and the sounds of VSTi instruments were beginning to eclipse the sounds in my hardware units. In addition, I could forever keep my MIDI tracks as MIDI tracks, and when I would do a final stereo mix, I didn't have to first get my MIDI parts converted to audio tracks, so it both sounded better and was more time efficient.
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Old 12-14-2017, 08:52 AM   #27
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@Glennbo: I really appreciate your input, but as far as I understand your test, you are comparing actual recordings here, right? That's not what I'm talking about, I have no issues recording external hardware. I'm talking about live sequencing during the "composition" phase...

Quote:
Originally Posted by evosilica View Post
... When I finally record the external synths, I have to remove the delay again, because the recording somehow does have the latency compensated...
Quote:
Originally Posted by evosilica View Post
...
I'm not talking about recording btw, just live playback.
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Old 12-14-2017, 09:38 AM   #28
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Originally Posted by evosilica View Post
@Glennbo: I really appreciate your input, but as far as I understand your test, you are comparing actual recordings here, right? That's not what I'm talking about, I have no issues recording external hardware. I'm talking about live sequencing during the "composition" phase...
While they all ended up being audio, simply for the sake of being able to see how the resulting waves line up with each other, only the first wave was recorded live as I played the V-Drums, and I did that strictly to provide a baseline recording for bench marking all the others.

What was played and recorded live at the same time,
--------------------------------------------------------
Track 1 - The MIDI track recorded into REAPER from V-Drums.
Track 3 - The Baseline V-Drums audio track used as a control for the test.
--------------------------------------------------------

What was direct rendered to wave from the MIDI data on track 1,
--------------------------------------------------------
Track 2 - Superior Drummer 2 rendered to a stem, it's audio to compare with
--------------------------------------------------------

What was played from MIDI transmitted from REAPER and recorded as audio,
--------------------------------------------------------
Track 4 - Plays MIDI data being transmitted by REAPER and gets recorded as audio at the same time.
--------------------------------------------------------


So, I believe that track 4 is the track that is most like what you are doing. It is playing back MIDI from REAPER, and at the same time being recorded in REAPER as audio. When I used outboard MIDI hardware, this would be the last thing I would do while working with a project. IOW, I would keep my MIDI tracks as MIDI, all the way up to when I wanted to create a final stereo mix, and then I would record as audio each of the parts that had been playing to outboard MIDI hardware. Then I could render the project to a stereo wave for mastering.

My first audio clip compares that track with the track that was recorded at the very start, so the left side is the NO MIDI side and the right side is the MIDI played back side.

The next audio clip still has the MIDI playback on the right side, but compares on the left using the VSTi Superior Drummer 2.

So in both the audio clips, the right channel is audio coming from an outboard hardware MIDI device that is being played by MIDI that REAPER is transmitting to it.
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Old 12-14-2017, 10:08 AM   #29
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So, I believe that track 4 is the track that is most like what you are doing. It is playing back MIDI from REAPER, and at the same time being recorded in REAPER
Again, I am not talking about recordings. As I've said (see me quoting myself in my last post) the latency of a recording gets somehow compensated.
I'm talking about live playback. LIVE input.

To reproduce what I mean, you would have to play your recording along to the LIVE input of your drumset being sequenced by MIDI and see if those 2 drumtracks are perfectly in time or slightly delayed producing a somehow "flamed" sound, if that makes sense.

Your workflow is probably different but imagine this workflow:
You have a bunch of recorded tracks (bass, guitar, whatever) and a MIDI drum track.
Now you want to create the best fitting drumset you possibly can. You want to finetune everything to perfection, bassdrum pitch, snare drum decay, whatever, and you want to do it in context of the rest of the song.
So you'd like to play back the entire song while you're tweaking your MIDI sequenced external drum synthesizer.
And you maybe even want to prelisten, what it sounds like with some masterbus compression, before you actually record it.

Sadly it doesn't work because your drums are going to be audibly delayed.
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Old 12-14-2017, 10:54 AM   #30
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Quote:
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Again, I am not talking about recordings. As I've said (see me quoting myself in my last post) the latency of a recording gets somehow compensated.
I'm talking about live playback. LIVE input.

To reproduce what I mean, you would have to play your recording along to the LIVE input of your drumset being sequenced by MIDI and see if those 2 drumtracks are perfectly in time or slightly delayed producing a somehow "flamed" sound, if that makes sense.

Your workflow is probably different but imagine this workflow:
You have a bunch of recorded tracks (bass, guitar, whatever) and a MIDI drum track.
Now you want to create the best fitting drumset you possibly can. You want to finetune everything to perfection, bassdrum pitch, snare drum decay, whatever, and you want to do it in context of the rest of the song.
So you'd like to play back the entire song while you're tweaking your MIDI sequenced external drum synthesizer.
And you maybe even want to prelisten, what it sounds like with some masterbus compression, before you actually record it.

Sadly it doesn't work because your drums are going to be audibly delayed.
OK, I just took a song that has MIDI drums in it, and routed via a MIDI cable over to my V-Drums. Then I took the audio out of my V-Drums into my mixer and played it all back, while switching patches on the V-Drums to hear it play using different drum kits as the song rolled.

To keep it totally honest, I used my cell phone to record what I was hearing. The audio quality is total crap, but it is what I heard with no gimmicks or alteration. And while it's not as tight as it is using a VSTi, I could certainly work with it until I printed it as an audio track.

So, this is audio tracks playing all the bass, guitars, and keyboards from REAPER,

BUT

the drums are being played LIVE by MIDI coming out of REAPER.

I like the TR303 patch at the end the best! <g>

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page...ongID=13667685
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Old 12-14-2017, 11:28 AM   #31
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One by one I found virtual replacements for each of my MIDI hardware units, not because I was having any problems with them working with REAPER, but because using a VSTi was so much easier and the sounds of VSTi instruments were beginning to eclipse the sounds in my hardware units. In addition, I could forever keep my MIDI tracks as MIDI tracks, and when I would do a final stereo mix, I didn't have to first get my MIDI parts converted to audio tracks, so it both sounded better and was more time efficient.
Yeah, I'm probably headed that way myself, eventually...
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Old 12-14-2017, 11:31 AM   #32
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OK, so here's another variation of testing. This time I have,


V-Drums externally playing LIVE from MIDI that is being transmitted from REAPER over a MIDI cable.

and at equal volume

Superior Drummer internally playing as a VSTi from the same MIDI file.

I again used my cell phone to record how the two sound and keep it totally honest.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page...ongID=13667695
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Old 12-14-2017, 11:38 AM   #33
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Yeah, I'm probably headed that way myself, eventually...
My Roland SC880 Sound Canvas was the one I hated the most to see go, because it had some really good sounding horns in it. I used some EMU/Creative SF3 files in place of it, but recently bought the full version of Kontakt when they had their 50% off Black Friday sale. The horns in it are pretty good, and I've setup a whole template in Reaper where I can now simply insert a horn section with baritone sax, trombone, tenor sax, and trumpet, all pre-mixed and ready to write some punches and stabs to accent a song.
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Old 12-14-2017, 12:28 PM   #34
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... Then I took the audio out of my V-Drums into my mixer
Into your mixer? So you're mixing the output of reaper and your V-Drums using an external mixer?
If so, this would of course lead to much reduced latency.

I however want to use reaper as my mixer to benefit from using all my VST effects on the external source. And this - the live audio input into reaper - is imo the main culprit of the problem.

But as far as I can hear there's already some delay in your configuration as well, although not as pronounced.

In any case, thanks for contributing *thumbsup*
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Old 12-14-2017, 12:44 PM   #35
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Into your mixer? So you're mixing the output of reaper and your V-Drums using an external mixer?
If so, this would of course lead to much reduced latency.
No. REAPER does not send any audio to my mixer. My mixer sends audio TO REAPER only.

Quote:
I however want to use reaper as my mixer to benefit from using all my VST effects on the external source. And this - the live audio input into reaper - is imo the main culprit of the problem.

But as far as I can hear there's already some delay in your configuration as well, although not as pronounced.
Yep. It's a quick slap, and exactly as I remember it being when I used my V-Drums as a sound source.

Quote:
In any case, thanks for contributing *thumbsup*


Here's the exact signal chain for how the V-Drums were patched up.

MIDI out from REAPER to MIDI in on V-Drums

Audio out from V-Drums to mixer input

Mixer audio output into M-Audio 2496 line input

M-Audio line input selected on track of REAPER with record ready enabled

REAPER playing audio from both V-Drums coming in from mixer and audio tracks and VSTi tracks.

All audio mixed in REAPER to audio output on M-Audio 2496 card.

Audio output from M-Audio 2496 card to Yamaha near field monitors.
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Old 12-14-2017, 01:00 PM   #36
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Ah, gotcha.

What buffersize are you running?
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Old 12-14-2017, 01:14 PM   #37
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Ah, gotcha.

What buffersize are you running?
I use 64 samples in the M-Audio mixer applet. That's as low as I can set it, and in the top right screen, REAPER reports 2.4/2.0ms, so I guess I'm getting 4.4ms round trip latency, which I always attributed to most of the slap you can hear between the VSTi drums and external live MIDI drums being monitored through REAPER.

I figger that there is some delay introduced through the MIDI by itself, that when combined with the round trip latency of the sound card for live monitoring starts becoming detectable by the human ear. I can hear it, but I could work with it too if I hadn't already gone to all VSTi plugins for my MIDI needs.

I still have my Prophet 2002 rack mount sampler, and have toyed with the idea of replacing it's floppy drive with a virtual floppy drive that could hold the equivalent of 100 floppies and no moving parts to fail. I just don't have the rack space for it any more, and in reality Kontakt has far better sounding samples than any of the ones I had with the P2002.
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Old 12-14-2017, 01:28 PM   #38
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I use 64 samples-
Ok, it all makes sense now. Looks like your system behaves exactly like mine, only I'm running 256 samples buffersize right now, because with less I sometimes run out of juice with some of my more VST intensive projects.
But no matter how high the round trip latency, REAPER should definitely be able to compensate for it.

Prophet 2002 - nice piece of kit. I'd love to have one of those
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Old 12-14-2017, 01:46 PM   #39
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Ok, it all makes sense now. Looks like your system behaves exactly like mine, only I'm running 256 samples buffersize right now, because with less I sometimes run out of juice with some of my more VST intensive projects.
But no matter how high the round trip latency, REAPER should definitely be able to compensate for it.

Prophet 2002 - nice piece of kit. I'd love to have one of those
The P2002 was a great 12-bit sampler, and I used the heck out of it. If you power it up with no disk, it's a digital wave synth and you can create and save patches made that way too.



I just posted this over on the Sonar forum in a discussion about how many VSTs I can run on my 7 year old Asus P7P55D / 2.66 Ghz Intel i5 / 6 GB DDR3 machine with two ancient M-Audio cards that I bought when I was running Sonar and GigaStudio on a pair of Windows 98SE machines.


=====================================>8=========== =========================
Every project I've recorded in the last ten years with REAPER have been done with 64 samples latency, and not once have I increased buffers or messed with any other audio engine settings to make a project play.

Just for example, here's a list of the stuff in one of my songs which I never froze any tracks, or bounced anything to audio, and never changed the latency, or increased any buffers, or changed anything in any way shape or form from the way all my projects are recorded in REAPER. I had the following list of FX and softsynth instruments, all playing with no pops, no clicks, or any other artifacts in the audio.

FX used
------------------------------
19 EQs
16 W1 limiters
11 Compressors
8 Klanghelm MJUCjr compressors
5 Lexicon MPX reverbs
4 PSP Vintage Warmers
4 Waves DBX160 compressors
3 Multi Band Compressors
1 Delay
1 Convolution Verb
1 Arturia Mini Filter V
1 Voxengo Stereo Touch

Virtual instruments used
------------------------------
1 Superior Drummer 2 with 1.4 GB of sample data
1 Native Instruments Kontakt with trumpets, trombones, and brass ensemble
3 Native Instruments Guitar Rigs
2 Native Instruments Reaktors
1 Sforzando SF3 sample player with alto sax
1 Sforzando SF3 sample player with tenor sax
1 Sforzando SF3 sample player with baritone sax
1 Arturia Minimoog V
1 Grace sampler with percussion samples
=====================================>8=========== =========================
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Old 12-14-2017, 02:11 PM   #40
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The P2002 was a great 12-bit sampler, and I used the heck out of it. If you power it up with no disk, it's a digital wave synth and you can create and save patches made that way too.



I just posted this over on the Sonar forum in a discussion about how many VSTs I can run on my 7 year old Asus P7P55D / 2.66 Ghz Intel i5 / 6 GB DDR3 machine with two ancient M-Audio cards that I bought when I was running Sonar and GigaStudio on a pair of Windows 98SE machines.


=====================================>8=========== =========================
Every project I've recorded in the last ten years with REAPER have been done with 64 samples latency, and not once have I increased buffers or messed with any other audio engine settings to make a project play.

Just for example, here's a list of the stuff in one of my songs which I never froze any tracks, or bounced anything to audio, and never changed the latency, or increased any buffers, or changed anything in any way shape or form from the way all my projects are recorded in REAPER. I had the following list of FX and softsynth instruments, all playing with no pops, no clicks, or any other artifacts in the audio.

FX used
------------------------------
19 EQs
16 W1 limiters
11 Compressors
8 Klanghelm MJUCjr compressors
5 Lexicon MPX reverbs
4 PSP Vintage Warmers
4 Waves DBX160 compressors
3 Multi Band Compressors
1 Delay
1 Convolution Verb
1 Arturia Mini Filter V
1 Voxengo Stereo Touch

Virtual instruments used
------------------------------
1 Superior Drummer 2 with 1.4 GB of sample data
1 Native Instruments Kontakt with trumpets, trombones, and brass ensemble
3 Native Instruments Guitar Rigs
2 Native Instruments Reaktors
1 Sforzando SF3 sample player with alto sax
1 Sforzando SF3 sample player with tenor sax
1 Sforzando SF3 sample player with baritone sax
1 Arturia Minimoog V
1 Grace sampler with percussion samples
=====================================>8=========== =========================
-

Your little experiment is irrelevant as you have zero instances of Diva in "devine mode".
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