Go Back   Cockos Incorporated Forums > REAPER Forums > REAPER for Live Use

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 12-24-2018, 03:27 AM   #1
Strom
Human being with feelings
 
Strom's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Hameln, Germany
Posts: 13
Default Audio stop/reset at playback start

** I used the search function but didn't find any solutions **

I hope there is a quick solution to this :-)

I want to use Reaper for live performance - playback of backing tracks and some VSTi and vocals with FX for live play.
So far so good - everything works fine. No dropouts, no problems...

The only tiny problem - of which I just can't get rid off:
Every time I press PLAY - there is a tiny interrupt, a dropout, a click whatever you would call it - of the 'passed through' signal - the microphone input and the played VSTi.
So - for example - I press a chord, start singing over it - and after a while I want to start the playback... *click* the audio (vocals and synth) is interrupted when the playback starts...
That ruins every possibility of a live performance for me...
Does that mean - that I only can 'perform' when Reaper is 'playing' - without the problem of an audio interruption?!

The problem occurs on MacOSX and Win.
I'm pretty sure there is a setting for this - so far I must have tried everything - on and off @ audio/playback etc settings - to no avail.
But there must be a solution for this, right?!?

How do you solve this problem?

Thanks - and Merry Xmas
Strom is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-25-2018, 02:29 PM   #2
Tonegrown
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Jun 2015
Posts: 24
Default playback without gap

Hi,
I feel like i have tried every setting over the years to make the gap go away.

I settled on running 2 instances of reaper on the same laptop very successfully. I play guitar and my wife sings and plays piano (virtual instruments). All of that gets handled by the main instance of reaper. I then use a portable instance of reaper with audio coming into the main reaper via rearoute for all the backing tracks.

To give you an idea how it all fits together (hopefully not too far off topic):

The main reaper transport is always stopped but as I jump around the markers, the tempo changes from song to song for tempo based fx. I also do all mixing, headphone mixes and virtual instrument patch changes in the main reaper.

The portable reaper instance plays all the tracks and runs a visual metronome on the laptop screen.

I have each song located at a specific spot on the time line which is the same in both reaper sessions.

For Control (because I'm using multiple instances of reaper)
We use 3 tablets, a laptop, and midi guitar pedal board (wireless with raspberry pi and battery pack) to all send and recieve OSC over our own Wifi in the rack to PureData located on our reaper laptop. Puredata acts as our command central that then send OSC out to the 2 instances of Reaper. It also recieves OSC and sends to our control devices. I have one tablet dedicated to live mixing and 2 sit on the keyboard for setlist control and piano performance controls and feedback.

We have 10+ GBs of samples loaded in the session and each song gets its own set of piano/strings and backing tracks to facilitate the levels and headphone mixes. We have about 50-70 songs in our setup and have had nearly a perfect track record of reliability (Reaper has been perfect) over the 4 years we have been doing this. We use the setup at least twice a week live and much more rehearsing! we can be playing guitar talking and playing piano when we cue up, start, or stop a song with no glitches.

Last edited by Tonegrown; 12-25-2018 at 02:45 PM.
Tonegrown is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-26-2018, 01:29 AM   #3
mschnell
Human being with feelings
 
mschnell's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Krefeld, Germany
Posts: 14,634
Default

That's a nice setup you have ! And great it does work as desired !

I suppose, the technical reason for the "gap" with a single instance of Reaper is, that in Stop mode, the latency compensation is done by Reaper delaying certain audio streams appropriately, while in Play mode, this is done by placing the read pointer in the audio media at the appropriate positions. I suppose these modes can't be switched seamlessly.

That is why I suggest to use a sampler for "simply" playing back backing files in stop mode, but of course this does introduce drawbacks regarding features that are only available in play mode.

If such features are requested, running two instances of Reaper on the same box seems like the only reasonable solution. Happily, the License of Reaper does cover this.

-Michael
mschnell is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-26-2018, 02:40 AM   #4
Strom
Human being with feelings
 
Strom's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Hameln, Germany
Posts: 13
Default

Thanks Tonegrown for your detailed explanation.
I have to try to run two instances of Reaper - haven't thought of that.

And thanks mschnell for elaborating about the reason for the 'gap' :-)

I thinks that's what bothers me most - Reaper is such an awesome, stable and highly customizable program - yet there is this one tiny thing that makes things suddenly a little bit complicated and you rack your brain to find a 'work around' solution - just to get rid of a tiny little 'gap' ;-)

Everything else works fine, my audio buffers, the latency, no playback dropouts - system hardly busy...

I already prepared all my backing tracks, FX automation, vocal FX and so on... early on noticed the interruption when pressing play - but I thought 'you get rid of this later' - can only be an option setting... but, well...

I also gonna try out 'Gig Performer' - also very flexible for 'live' performances...

Any ways - thanks a lot for your help - and still a merry xmas

Last edited by Strom; 12-26-2018 at 02:51 AM.
Strom is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-26-2018, 03:24 AM   #5
mschnell
Human being with feelings
 
mschnell's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Krefeld, Germany
Posts: 14,634
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Strom View Post
I also gonna try out 'Gig Performer' - also very flexible for 'live' performances...
Let us know what you find (I once did try Forte but found it was by far not flexible enough for my needs).

-Michael
mschnell is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-03-2019, 07:24 PM   #6
Dave 2099
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: Maryland, USA
Posts: 185
Default

Hi Strom,

The only way I have found to avoid the cut-off is to have my project playing already, and jump around between regions and tracks. So you could have an empty region looping and this would be the silent portion of your song, and then go to a pre-recorded region as soon as you're ready using the Go to next marker/region actions.

I believe the default is to wait until the end of a measure before going to the new marker/region, but you can disable smooth seek under Options and this will let you go to your next marker/region as soon as you trigger it, as opposed to waiting until the next measure.

cheers,
Dave

Last edited by Dave 2099; 01-04-2019 at 06:21 AM.
Dave 2099 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-14-2019, 08:44 AM   #7
Regisfofo
Human being with feelings
 
Regisfofo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: France
Posts: 627
Default

@ tonegrown

Thanks a lot for your answer, I might go for something alike your setup.
Do you think it could work with only one midi controler to control both reaper instances ?
Regisfofo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-14-2019, 11:20 AM   #8
mschnell
Human being with feelings
 
mschnell's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Krefeld, Germany
Posts: 14,634
Default

If it's not possible to let both Reaper instances attach to the same Midi interface, you can use a Midi Router software such as MidiOX, or LoopMidi.

-Michael
mschnell is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-16-2019, 05:13 AM   #9
Regisfofo
Human being with feelings
 
Regisfofo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: France
Posts: 627
Default

ok thank you for the information, I'll try different ways and will report here how it goes.
Regisfofo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-16-2019, 06:20 AM   #10
cfillion
Human being with feelings
 
cfillion's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2015
Location: Québec, Canada
Posts: 4,909
Default

That limitation only applies to Windows (and I believe some MIDI interface drivers can be multi-client).

Last edited by cfillion; 01-16-2019 at 06:26 AM.
cfillion is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-17-2019, 03:32 PM   #11
Regisfofo
Human being with feelings
 
Regisfofo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: France
Posts: 627
Default

Well, I'm glad my foot controler has a classical din midi out in addition to the usb one. Using a different in each reaper section seems to be working nicely.
So no need for midi yoke etc...
Regisfofo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-20-2019, 07:49 PM   #12
Tonegrown
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Jun 2015
Posts: 24
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Regisfofo View Post
@ tonegrown

Thanks a lot for your answer, I might go for something alike your setup.
Do you think it could work with only one midi controler to control both reaper instances ?
Before I used pure data and osc, I used Loop MIDI to create extra midi ports. My midi came into the main instance of Reaper and got processed on a channel using midi plugins and then sent/split to that Reaper control buss and a loop midi output that went to the next instance of Reaper. This way I could filter and route however I wanted. It also allowed me to separate the piano keys on the controller and send them to a virtual instrument and use the CC knobs and faders for controlling Reaper. There is a midi plugin out there for Reaper that allows routing a channels MIDI to the reaper control path. By processing the midi before I send it to the reaper control path, I could filter out commands I didn't want going to the control path.
Tonegrown is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-22-2019, 04:09 PM   #13
Regisfofo
Human being with feelings
 
Regisfofo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: France
Posts: 627
Default

Thank you for the hints!
The plugin you're talking about is MidiToReaControlPath I think (I already use it)
Regisfofo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-29-2019, 05:38 AM   #14
klausbert
Human being with feelings
 
klausbert's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2014
Location: Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina
Posts: 94
Default

I remember posting this issue 4 years ago when I switched completely to Reaper after using NUENDO as my main DAW.

I remember using NUENDO live and that start/stop issue didn't occur...

I don't know why developers didn't fix this or at least give us the option to set that...
klausbert is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-04-2019, 02:43 PM   #15
Gass n Klang
Human being with feelings
 
Gass n Klang's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2015
Location: Cologne
Posts: 1,634
Default

This made me switching to ableton for live performances...
Gass n Klang is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-04-2019, 03:51 PM   #16
ashcat_lt
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Posts: 7,264
Default

If it's actually PDC, then can you just turn that off? It doesn't work on live tracks anyway, and anything that's just playing shouldn't need it or could be compensated manually.
ashcat_lt is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-08-2019, 01:34 PM   #17
bleo
Human being with feelings
 
bleo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Geneva, NY
Posts: 5
Default

I ran into the exact same issue. My workaround was to start playback and then when I needed the backing track to begin, launch clips using Playtime!

https://www.helgoboss.org/projects/playtime/
bleo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-24-2019, 02:15 AM   #18
Tombol
Human being with feelings
 
Tombol's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2019
Location: Zaragoza (Spain)
Posts: 2
Default The best solution

I think it's easy to solve it by creating a loop before the song starts and releasing it when we want it to start.

Last edited by Tombol; 12-27-2019 at 04:20 AM. Reason: Add relevant information
Tombol is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-02-2020, 08:45 AM   #19
-nicolas-
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: May 2014
Location: Toulouse, France
Posts: 111
Default Media buffer size

Quote:
Originally Posted by Strom View Post

Every time I press PLAY - there is a tiny interrupt, a dropout, a click whatever you would call it - of the 'passed through' signal - the microphone input and the played VSTi.
So - for example - I press a chord, start singing over it - and after a while I want to start the playback... *click* the audio (vocals and synth) is interrupted when the playback starts...
In Preferences, you can set Media buffer size to 0ms and/or prebuffer to 0%

You might still get a short clic, but not silence when you hit play or when you skip to next marker.
-nicolas- is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-18-2020, 01:38 AM   #20
Artsite
Human being with feelings
 
Artsite's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Grasse France
Posts: 118
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Strom View Post
** I used the search function but didn't find any solutions **

I hope there is a quick solution to this :-)

I want to use Reaper for live performance - playback of backing tracks and some VSTi and vocals with FX for live play.
So far so good - everything works fine. No dropouts, no problems...

The only tiny problem - of which I just can't get rid off:
Every time I press PLAY - there is a tiny interrupt, a dropout, a click whatever you would call it - of the 'passed through' signal - the microphone input and the played VSTi.
So - for example - I press a chord, start singing over it - and after a while I want to start the playback... *click* the audio (vocals and synth) is interrupted when the playback starts...
That ruins every possibility of a live performance for me...
Does that mean - that I only can 'perform' when Reaper is 'playing' - without the problem of an audio interruption?!

The problem occurs on MacOSX and Win.
I'm pretty sure there is a setting for this - so far I must have tried everything - on and off @ audio/playback etc settings - to no avail.
But there must be a solution for this, right?!?

How do you solve this problem?

Thanks - and Merry Xmas
Hi Folk's
A solution has been found on a French thread by PHPRemix. Try by checking [Don't flush synthesizer plug-ins on stop / reset] then restarting Reaper. It worked for me. Yours truly

__________________
Jean-Philippe
Artsite is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-03-2020, 01:47 AM   #21
-nicolas-
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: May 2014
Location: Toulouse, France
Posts: 111
Default

Storm describes 2 problems:
- audio interruption of the VSTi
- audio interruption of the pass-thru microphone.

The VSTi will continue playing with no interruption with option "Don't flush synthetiser plug-ins on stop/reset" enabled.

Though, the pass-thru microphone will still slightly interrupt.
In Preferences, you can set Media buffer size to 0ms and/or prebuffer to 0%.
This will reduce the audio interruption to a minimal click, but not solve the problem.
-nicolas- is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-11-2020, 04:09 AM   #22
Sherazad
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Jun 2020
Posts: 68
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by -nicolas- View Post
In Preferences, you can set Media buffer size to 0ms and/or prebuffer to 0%

You might still get a short clic, but not silence when you hit play or when you skip to next marker.
This helped me, thanks
Sherazad is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-21-2021, 04:23 PM   #23
-nicolas-
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: May 2014
Location: Toulouse, France
Posts: 111
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by -nicolas- View Post
Storm describes 2 problems:
- audio interruption of the VSTi
- audio interruption of the pass-thru microphone.

The VSTi will continue playing with no interruption with option "Don't flush synthetiser plug-ins on stop/reset" enabled.

Though, the pass-thru microphone will still slightly interrupt.
In Preferences, you can set Media buffer size to 0ms and/or prebuffer to 0%.
This will reduce the audio interruption to a minimal click, but not solve the problem.
I discovered one thing to remove "audio interruption of the pass-thru microphone.". Use Smooth seek.

In Preferences > Seeking,
- check the option "Do not change playback position immediately when seeking (smooth seek)
- set "Play to end of 0 more measures before seeking"

In this configuration, Reaper will make no audio interruption.
There will be a latency of about 500 ms before playback position changes.

I have been trying to find out what determines the duration of this latency:
- Media buffer size / prebuffer settings I mentionned earlier have no effet on this, and can be set default.
- Block size has no effect neither.

Last edited by -nicolas-; 01-21-2021 at 11:18 PM.
-nicolas- is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-21-2021, 04:49 PM   #24
Dstruct
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 12,480
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by -nicolas- View Post
- audio interruption of the pass-thru microphone.
This is a known issue. I think it's related to this https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=175458 issue.
Dstruct is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-21-2021, 11:33 PM   #25
-nicolas-
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: May 2014
Location: Toulouse, France
Posts: 111
Default

It is related indeed. I had been seeking for a thread like this ! Thank you !

Maybe some optimization on "smooth seek" would reduce the duration of the audio gap.
-nicolas- is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-05-2022, 09:48 AM   #26
dri_ft
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Aug 2019
Posts: 22
Default

Forgive me for bumping, but for the small remaining click on playback mentioned by several in this thread, I found something of a solution which no-one seems to have mentioned: Turning off 'tiny fade out on playback stop' and 'tiny fade in on playback start' (under the audio section of preferences) seems to help a lot - in fact I think it might even have solved it completely, for me. (Surprisingly, it seems that you need to turn both options off for it to make the difference.)

Hope that helps anyone struggling with this.
dri_ft is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 10:16 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.