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Old 02-21-2018, 02:07 PM   #1
Omni
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Default Using RDP to listen to audio in control room, from laptop in tracking room

I've been trying to find a good way to use my office as a control room while recording in my band room. The office is upstairs, and the band room is directly below.

I've looked into using networked audio devices but this requires running a cat5/6 cable as well as upgrading my audio devices. I'm interested in a 32 channel interface from Presonus for the band room, but they don't make a simple 2 in/out interface to use in the control room, so I'd have to buy their 16 channel interface to simply for the playback. That's pretty overkill.

I've also looked into extending the USB from the band room to my office so the main interface is in the band room, and I'd use ASIO4All to run a separate local interface (or I suppose I could run balanced cables upstairs instead). However, it's difficult to reach far enough due to the orientation of the house. USB has cable maximums that aren't ideal. The USB over ethernet is a possibility, but I'd still be running a long cable and would prefer to drop a line through the floor someday.

So as a work around I thought I'd see if I could simply use RDP (Remote Desktop) to remote into the laptop from the control room and hear the audio locally. There are RDP options to pass back the audio from the remote device to the local machine. There is also a lesser known option to enable high audio quality, since the quality is usually meant for simple voice or similar, and not for recording.

Unfortunately, I can't get the ASIO audio from the laptop/audio interface (Presonus Audiobox 1818 VSL) to feed back into my local computer. It seems that the ASIO isn't working through Windows enough for it to transfer the audio to the other machine. I can hear playback through things like Windows Media Player. The audio quality setting appears to be working great. I just can't hear the audio from the Audiobox or through Reaper's real time audio option. Using WDM or similar limits the inputs available in Reaper, so I can't use that.

Does anyone have any workarounds to record the tracks in the band space computer, while listening to it via RDP?

I'm not concerned about latency with the monitoring in this way, because the artists will be listening to the audio interfaces direct monitoring software and only I would be hearing the audio through Reaper.
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Old 02-21-2018, 05:46 PM   #2
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I doubt RDP would be performant enough. Traditionally most of the recording world would use a snake for this FWIW since all the audio gear needs to be where the engineer sits.
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Old 02-21-2018, 05:57 PM   #3
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i'm assuming you have wifi - if you just need to hear the audio and you don't mind a fair bit of latency you could set up a shoutcast account and use ReaCast perhaps. (maybe ReaStream is even more suited to your needs, but i haven't tried it - Reacast works well for me if i want to hear my mix in a different room)

EDIT - just re-read the op and maybe ReaCast is not suitable as all it will do is provide a monitoring option upstairs - obviously it won't enable you to control the machine downstairs, but maybe could be used concurrently with RDP

Last edited by domzy; 02-21-2018 at 06:24 PM.
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Old 02-22-2018, 11:48 AM   #4
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Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
I doubt RDP would be performant enough. Traditionally most of the recording world would use a snake for this FWIW since all the audio gear needs to be where the engineer sits.
I get what you're saying, but I think RDP is performant enough for what I'm requesting. My internal network is nearly gigabit even in wireless. It's faster than the USB connection to my audio interface.

The default audio settings of RDP are not sufficient, but you can override that. I verified the playback quality of the stream via windows media player is good enough to use as a monitor during the recording. It sounded pretty much identical to what it sounds like when listening to it on the local machine.

In this case, I'm not trying to record into the computer in the control room. I don't need all 18 inputs to transfer to the other computer. I really just need a stereo stream. So a snake is overkill, and doesn't resolve the fact that I would have to mount it across several walls and up stairs, some 75' away.. If I was, then I would move the interface upstairs and use a snake. Which I've considered.
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Old 02-22-2018, 11:48 AM   #5
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Originally Posted by Omni View Post
I get what you're saying, but I think RDP is performant enough for what I'm requesting. My internal network is nearly gigabit even in wireless. It's faster than the USB connection to my audio interface.

The default audio settings of RDP are not sufficient, but you can override that. I verified the playback quality of the stream via windows media player is good enough to use as a monitor during the recording. It sounded pretty much identical to what it sounds like when listening to it on the local machine.

In this case, I'm not trying to record into the computer in the control room. I don't need all 18 inputs to transfer to the other computer. I really just need a stereo stream. So a snake is overkill, and doesn't resolve the fact that I would have to mount it across several walls and up stairs, some 75' away.. If I was, then I would move the interface upstairs and use a snake. Which I've considered.
If it works use it.
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Old 02-22-2018, 11:53 AM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by domzy View Post
i'm assuming you have wifi - if you just need to hear the audio and you don't mind a fair bit of latency you could set up a shoutcast account and use ReaCast perhaps. (maybe ReaStream is even more suited to your needs, but i haven't tried it - Reacast works well for me if i want to hear my mix in a different room)

EDIT - just re-read the op and maybe ReaCast is not suitable as all it will do is provide a monitoring option upstairs - obviously it won't enable you to control the machine downstairs, but maybe could be used concurrently with RDP
That could still work potentially. If ReaStream is synced to the computer downstairs, I could just run a local Reaper instance that doesn't do anything else, and then use RDP to see and control the screen downstairs. I'd just disable the audio transfer from RDP (except maybe I can set up a talkback mic).

I just saw some tutorials about the web remote control of Reaper that's recently come out. So even if RDP isn't an option to see/control Reaper for some reason, I could control it that way.

Thanks for the tip!
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Old 02-25-2018, 02:25 PM   #7
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Well, I've tested ReaStream out and have it sending a stereo output from the laptop's master channel to my desktop's Reaper instance.

Unfortunately, it seems you have to have Reaper selected as the active window for the Reaper to stay active. That means that anytime I switch to the RDP session (or say, a browser) then the audio stops streaming.

Ugh.

Anyone know if there's a way to have Reaper stay active all the time? I tried a tone/sine wave generator and the same thing happens. When Reaper loses focus it stops making sound.

Last edited by Omni; 02-25-2018 at 02:33 PM.
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Old 02-25-2018, 02:40 PM   #8
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Default Nevermind!

Disabled: Preferences > Audio > Close audio device when stopped and application is inactive. I can now hear all the time.

Problem solved!

1) Enable Reaper on laptop
2) Add ReaStream to master track
3) Set Identifier to something
4) Choose Send audio/MIDI; IP: to the IP of the desktop computer (*broadcast is stutters)
5) Set audio channels to 2
6) Open Reaper on desktop
7) Add ReaStream to a track
8) Set Identifier to the SAME value as the laptop
9) Ensure audio settings allow Reaper to play audio when not in focus
10) Open Remote Desktop and remote into the laptop, ignoring audio settings.

I can now use my desktop/office as a control room, but record to the laptop directly. I could theoretically record each track on the desktop directly by setting up ReaStream on each channel, but that might be a little intense on my network.
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Old 02-25-2018, 02:57 PM   #9
Omni
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I tried setting up the ReaStream to a couple individual channels and it works, but they seemed to get out of sync at some point. So I'd probably just rely on using this as a monitor mix rather than streaming all 18 channels to the desktop directly.

The Presonus AudioBox VSL1818 allows me to send the monitor mix to the S/PDIF inputs internally. If I do that, I can place ReaStream on those inputs in Reaper and hear the monitor mix in my office, which is pretty cool. I was concerned I wouldn't be able to do that.

Now to figure out how to set up a mix on my desktop and be able to talk back to the band downstairs.
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