I'm using the Reaper software to record some guitar tracks, trying to make some quick 5 to 10 second riffs that I'll be able to copy and paste together. Anyways, the problem I'm having is I can't listen to what I'm doing as I record. I mean, obviously I can hear the 'acoustic' noise of my guitar, but I'm needing to hear it live with the amp and pedals effects fired up over it. The track that I'm doing requires me to toggle certain pedals and I have to make sure they're clicking on and off when they're supposed to and that my foot is rocking it to the desired rate, but its tough to tell when all I can hear is the acoustic.

Obviously, after the track is recorded I'm able to hear the results, but I need to be able to hear the playback as I'm recording it.

This is how I have it set up right now.

You need to hit "input monitor".
You will have a lot of latency so you need to go into the Audio Options > Devices
Set the buffer pretty low (so the ms "latency" decreases to less than 50ms)

Composer, Rocker, World Ambassador for Foxes.

If its too high, the sound is very delayed, if its too low (below the 50) the monitoring crackles badly but every note plays back in real time, so I'm trying to find a happy medium. What do you set the buffer to?

At the very least I at least have an idea if everything sound correct or not now, thanks mate! :D

This is a very WIP track I'm working on right now, I'm going to re-record these parts later, just figuring out which direction I'm going to go with this.

There's a chance you could fix that crackling issue by changing driver settings in the "Device" section. If you have it, try "WASAPI" (Windows 7 only). It's pretty damn fast, and as long as you're not using a complex input chain that your computer has to work through before rendering the sound, then you should be able to reduce latency dramatically. Maybe to as little as 30ms.

If that doesn't work, then you need to get an ASIO (which is the type of connection, not a brand) external sound card. They have very low latency and would instantly solve your problem.

Did you play that track along to some drums? If not make sure it's all in time with a metronome or you'll kick yourself later. :)

Composer, Rocker, World Ambassador for Foxes.

(I'm changing the topic title to "Reaper - General Help", as I'll probably be asking further questions when the need arises.)

Alright, the input monitoring is probably as good as I'm going to get, I suppose I can work with it from here. There is still a bit of delay, but the tone it outputs is relatively clear, so as long as I play it as low background noise while I'm recording, I have an idea if I'm in the 'sweet spot' or not.

I do have another question though! :D

I've made a couple backing tracks in another software, some drum and bass and such, which I would like to record over, how do I do that? I'm aware that you can make your own 'beats' in Reaper somehow (I haven't gotten around to that), but for now I'm making them in FL Studio since I'm efficient with that program lol. Anyways, I want to take my FL tracks, render them to mp3 or wav or whatever, and jam over them.

(04-19-2012 01:51 PM)Kain Nobel Wrote:  I'm aware that you can make your own 'beats' in Reaper somehow (I haven't gotten around to that)

Midi editing ftw. Watch my video tutorial - this section is about drums specifically, but the same technique applies to all other midi instrument you use.
EDIT: Fucking Media embedding software, I can't post a timed link to a youtube video without it showing the actual video and not the link.
Jump to exactly 8:30 into the video for the bit about drums and midi editing.
Sorry about the bad audio quality, it was my first tutorial and I was still working out the software.

(04-19-2012 01:51 PM)Kain Nobel Wrote:  I've made a couple backing tracks in another software, some drum and bass and such, which I would like to record over, how do I do that? I want to take my FL tracks, render them to mp3 or wav or whatever, and jam over them.

You just gave your own solution to your question buddy. :)
Export as a .wav file then drag and drop onto reaper.

Composer, Rocker, World Ambassador for Foxes.

*Headdesks* Ah, drag and drop! And to think, I was trying to do it the hard way (create empty track, search for file name, etc...)
Cool, thank you for clarifying that, I couldn't even find it in the 'help' site lol.

You're a godsend, I'm going to hit the tutorials as soon as I get into the composing side of things! Oh, that's so awesome, thanks for the free instruments links btw :D

*Watching tutorials* :D