Waves soundgrid in Reaper

pepe44 · 09-26-2018, 04:18 AM

Anyone using the waves soundgrid server and Reaper? Any thoughts and comments you want to make ?

bobobo · 09-27-2018, 08:45 AM

[sarc]what's soundgrid? REAMote for the poor i guess.
at least it needs an I-Lok as it's a waves-product [/sarc]

davewah · 11-26-2018, 05:43 AM

I know this is an old post but I thought I'd reply as I've eventually found an answer, which took a while to find....26/11/18.... Soundgrid is not supported by Reaper. Soundgrid I/O will show up and work in Reaper but Studio Rack and Low Latency Monitoring as provided by the addition of a Waves Server to the Soundgrid Network is not supported by Reaper at present.

pepe44 · 11-26-2018, 02:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davewah

I know this is an old post but I thought I'd reply as I've eventually found an answer, which took a while to find....26/11/18.... Soundgrid is not supported by Reaper. Soundgrid I/O will show up and work in Reaper but Studio Rack and Low Latency Monitoring as provided by the addition of a Waves Server to the Soundgrid Network is not supported by Reaper at present.

Hi, thanks for the info.
That is something that Cockos needs to check i think. Its becaming a industry standard this days, for live and studio.

ivansc · 11-27-2018, 09:08 AM

It IS??? I have it hanging around on my waves cloud account, where it is likely to stay until someone explains in simple terms WHY I need it.

pepe44 · 11-27-2018, 11:35 AM

Like UAD has its own DSP dedicated hardware , Waves built a computer that is locked on hardware ID and runs waves plugins outside of the box. You can use it live on digital mixers with proper waves hardware.

Simple enough?

ivansc · 11-28-2018, 04:35 AM

Perfectly, Pepe - thanks.

Guess Sound grid will be staying in that corner gathering dust then, although I can see where it could be useful, assuming it actually works reliably.

Jack Winter · 11-28-2018, 10:51 AM

Interestingly enough it's a linux computer running the DSP too, probably Waves likes the cheap cost of the OS

davewah · 11-28-2018, 12:38 PM

I use Networked audio a lot in the Live world, it's become the norm whether it's Dante or AES50 or something more proprietary. It's makes life easy and I'd like it in my studio. Why choose Soundgrid or Dante over REAmote? SG has lots of useful I/O boxes (as well as processing) so it's easy for any computer in any room to pick up lines from any other room in the building. There's no need for huge amounts of copper multicores and patchbays which are expensive. Same with Dante although I'm not sure there are Dante boxes with extra processing. A lot of the digital mixers from Yamaha, Allen and Heath, DigiCo, Avid etc have cards available that will let them patch into the network. AOIP is here and it works and it's great, if you've still got ASIO it can run in Tandem. Thing is I'm really enjoying using Reaper, I like it a lot, I like Pro Tools too, Logic I find illogical and Cubase I haven't used for 10 years. I think eventually the enjoyment of using Reaper is going to get outweighed by the benefits of Networked audio.

pepe44 · 11-29-2018, 02:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davewah

I use Networked audio a lot in the Live world, it's become the norm whether it's Dante or AES50 or something more proprietary. It's makes life easy and I'd like it in my studio. Why choose Soundgrid or Dante over REAmote? SG has lots of useful I/O boxes (as well as processing) so it's easy for any computer in any room to pick up lines from any other room in the building. There's no need for huge amounts of copper multicores and patchbays which are expensive. Same with Dante although I'm not sure there are Dante boxes with extra processing. A lot of the digital mixers from Yamaha, Allen and Heath, DigiCo, Avid etc have cards available that will let them patch into the network. AOIP is here and it works and it's great, if you've still got ASIO it can run in Tandem. Thing is I'm really enjoying using Reaper, I like it a lot, I like Pro Tools too, Logic I find illogical and Cubase I haven't used for 10 years. I think eventually the enjoyment of using Reaper is going to get outweighed by the benefits of Networked audio.

Finally someone that comes to talk and not fight

pepe44 · 08-29-2019, 01:47 PM

Refreshing this post.
I have a couple fellow friends from the live sound business changing to Presonus Studio one due to this lack of compatibility of Waves soundgrid in Reaper. They say its buggy and slow running the soundgrid server with waves plugins.
Can please someone more related to this gives us a clean explanation ?

pepe44 · 09-03-2019, 01:53 PM

Nice, no answer.
This is a problem from cockos and Waves, customers need answers! i believe
neither parts get a solution..

Jorgen · 09-04-2019, 10:23 AM

Well, not to answer your question, but in my experience Soundgrid somehow messed with Windows built-in sound functions. iirc I lost the sound in the earphones plug. It bugged me for weeks until I uninstalled Soundbridge and everything went back to normal.

Again, iirc, SB needs to be set up with Asio drivers -- that might have something to do with it. Like they take some kind of priority over Windows own drivers.

I installed SB because it showed up in Waves plug-in installer, figured I would find out what it did eventually. I don't network so it's not for me.

pepe44 · 09-04-2019, 12:11 PM

Thanks for your input Jorsen but, not a solution to the BIG problem this is!

davewah · 05-19-2020, 01:23 PM

Hey Pepe,

So I bought an Allen & Heath SQ5 mixer and a Waves card for it. The card basically turns the mixer into a giant soundcard. But to do real time headphone mixes or use plug ins in real time you need a SG server, unless your only dealing with live sources straight into the SQ5 mixer. I bought a server. Everything works well. It was a little bit tricky to get setup. Everything is running through a Gbit switch so I can easily add laptops or other computers to the network and pull any I/O from either software or hardware inside those computers. All the I/O and busses in the SQ5 can be patched anywhere. Pretty much anything can go to anything and it works in real time. I've been running this for about 6 months now.

I don't seem to be getting much punch when it comes to plugin count for Realtime from the server. Not sure why. It's not something that I've needed very much so far. There was a keyboard player turned up with a Rhodes piano once who wanted a tremolo effect and he didn't have a pedal. So I ran him through the Waves mixer with a stomp box plugin and sent that back through his headphones. And that worked fine.

The system doesn't seem to like it if I try and use Studio Rack inside the DAW.

For mixing my i7 seems to have plenty punch for plugins. It's quite an old i7, like 10 years old so maybe that's why I don't get a lot of real time punch from the server. I don't know.

One thing I can't suss out yet is MTC over SG to Reaper. I can get Reaper to spit it out over the network and I can get Reaper on the slave computer to record it. I can see the WAV and I can route the SMPTE through the SQ5 and hear it but I can't get Reaper to follow Transport commands. If I run up 2 copies of NI's Maschine I can get MTC to work.

Waves have been coy about support for Reaper so far but I understand they are endorsing it now in place of Tracks for recording Live gigs. Maybe that will change.

All in all I think it's a good system for the money. If I was to go down the ProTools route with Hardware I think it would be more money. I've used Pro Tools with full HD hardware. It's great. But with the SQ5 I have a 48 channel Digital mixer with 16 stereo buses that sounds pretty good. There is a lot of utility stuff can be done on the input channels before audio hits the DAW; High passing , phase flip, or EQ if you want. I can get to mixes and adjust them quickly. There are 6 layers of 16 faders, easy to call up inputs, outputs and busses from the DAW. I can buss sub mixes from Reaper to the SQ5. The master fader can work in the classic Cue Monitor mode like you'd expect in a studio. I've done quite a lot of gigs on it. The summing in the SQ5 sounds better than it does in Reaper so I've started doing that and then bussing it back into Reaper to print.

It's not a perfect system but there's plenty scope to make good recordings with any band that I'm likely to record. The next thing I'm going to try is a Live Video broadcast from the studio. So I'm gonna try the real time side of the Waves plugin thing a bit more in terms of Broadcast processing. And then the SQ5 will spit it out over AES straight into the video switcher for embedding into the video stream. Tech run in a couple of weeks. I'll let you know how that goes.

The Waves hardware cost me about 2100.00gbp for the Server and the Card. THe SQ5 was 2000.00gbp and I bought a stage box with 50m CAT5 multi for 1000gbp.

That's a good price for a hardware system of 32 inputs and 20 outputs that will do 64 x 64 channels. I can expand the I/O if I want. I could reinstate my Hammerfall DSP and run that in tandem if I wanted.

ivansc · 05-19-2020, 11:26 PM

Excellent posts in this thread, finally giving hands-on experience explanations. Thanks, guys. Back in the day when I did live sound I remember the sea change that came with desk automation - this looks like being on a par with that in terms of the possibilities.

Mind you, I still wish digital multicores (ouch my back!) and the ability to mix via a tablet whilst wandering round the gig had been available when I was doing it. What a simple thing, but SO useful.

pepe44 · 05-20-2020, 07:04 PM

Thanks for the feedback dave.
Yes AH SQ5 is a nice digital mixer. Your setup looks awesome.