bouncing down?

D

deejuks2

New member
I'm having troubles recording more that 10 tracks on a song, ESPECIALLY when that 11th track is a guitar track recorded with my Ln.6 pod (I dont know if that makes a difference or not). The whole file starts stuttering and freezing up. Is my computer just too junky to handle all these tracks? Is there something I'm doing wrong?

Im assuming i will be told that there is a way to bounce my 10 tracks down to 1; and go from there - right?


right?


*edit oh and also

when i try to render a song as a WAV; there is an error that says "file not saved!".
 
Last edited:
Sounds like you're using up too much CPU power. Do you have a bunch of plug-ins running on each track? Go to your menu bar and click View > Performance Meter. This shows you what kind of load each track is putting on your computer and how much the entire mix is pulling on the CPU. Some plug-ins eat up power - especially amp sims.
 
Same as above, plug-ins/too "crap" CPU. Depending on what you should use the project for. But if youre gonna use it for personal use, you could compress some tracks, or raise the buffer size :) It's many ways to get done the same thing. Maybe you are having several background apps as well?
 
This is a hard one to pin point. It can be a multitude of many things.

having been thru similar things like this i would check to see if your utilizing your asio drivers. If not and you are using your WDM drivers go and get ASIO or all. It's free.

ASIO4ALL - Universal ASIO Driver

Then secondly before tweaking too much of your settings try turning of your non-essential plug-ins and muting tracks you don't really need for monitoring while your tracking.

That's where i'd start.


And i have a shite computer. :confused:
 
Take all the tracks that are mixed and go to item>render take/item with FX. this will save a copy of each track with all the FX. then just click on the FX button to disable them. You'll save a ton of CPU power. And if you wanna mess with the plugs again later just re-enable them.
 
thanks everyone!

I can't seem to find the "item>render take/item with FX" option anywhere...

I only have 10 tracks, 8 of which have 1 FX plugin and 2 tracks with 2 plug ins. That doesnt seem like very much to me.



and you'll have to forgive me, but i have no idea what an asio driver is or how i would use it.
 
deejuks2 said:
thanks everyone!

I can't seem to find the "item>render take/item with FX" option anywhere...

I only have 10 tracks, 8 of which have 1 FX plugin and 2 tracks with 2 plug ins. That doesnt seem like very much to me.



and you'll have to forgive me, but i have no idea what an asio driver is or how i would use it.
Click to expand...

i am putting my money on the asio driver then.

I don't have my reaper with me at work but if you go into your audio preferences you can see what audio card/sound device you are using and what drivers are being used to run it. There will be drop down options for each. If you see no reference to ASIO in the drivers pull down menu you need to go get ASIO4ALL if you only have you onboard sound card.

If you have a sound card outside of your factory installed card like a Fast Track or a Line 6 thingy, you should have ASIO Capability.

Check it out.
 
deejuks2 said:
thanks everyone!

I can't seem to find the "item>render take/item with FX" option anywhere...

I only have 10 tracks, 8 of which have 1 FX plugin and 2 tracks with 2 plug ins. That doesnt seem like very much to me.



and you'll have to forgive me, but i have no idea what an asio driver is or how i would use it.
Click to expand...

Look at the top and find "Item" then it's actually called "Apply track/take FX to items as new take".

The number of FX doesn't matter so much as which ones. I have a pretty good computer and I can't run 6 instances of an amp sim, but I can run 20+EQs or simple compressors. The number isn't important it's how much CPU each is taking.

I'd try this, it'll save you a ton of power.

But, I don't know anything about ASIO drivers either.
 
aaronmcoleman said:
But, I don't know anything about ASIO drivers either.
Click to expand...

I would make myself familiar with them lol.

Chances are if your using any piece of external hardware from the last few years your already using your ASIO drivers but if you look at my previous post that's kinda your map to see if in fact you are utilizing them within Reaper.


ASIO vs. WDM as i understand it, and i stand to be corrected, can be described sort of like this.

WDM is like a Chinese whisper from your sound card to your daw. It goes through different layers of translation, various windows process and or services, thusly slowing your system down, giving you unneeded latency issues etc pops clicks dropouts, freeze ing and crashes all kinds of shit. . . .

ASIO however bypasses all that schnozz and just sends your signal from your soundcard directly to where your daw needs it.... your daw...

Cut out the middle man and Chinese whisper effect entirely.

Like i said, i COMPLETELY overlooked this issue as i am sure alot of newbies do when starting and some seasoned vet's do too when doling out advice and tips.

I am sure if you dig deep enough you will find my thread that about similar issues years ago and you will see the same thing; everyone telling me this, that and everything else from changing operating systems to getting a mac lol. Then someone simply told me to use asio drivers.

Couldn't have been more easy.

I am no way suggesting this is this situations answer indefinitely, but if they haven't looked and confirmed you don't know?
 
To find out if its a CPU problem, go to the 'view' menu drop down and select 'performance meter' while you are playing back the track.
I'm running a shit 2G RAM system and have mixed down 25+ tracks with multiple reverbs (reverb uses a lot of CPU) without problems.
 
I too, have a pretty crappy computer and as I'm mixing (once I get a track sounding the way I'd like it to), I right click on the track itself and go to "item processing" > render track (mute original).

This creates a stem track with the effects saved. You can choose mono, stereo or multichannel. I then remove all the effects on the original track, or delete it altogether. This saves me a TON of resources and allows me to work much more smoothly and I have less issues when I'm using resource-expensive reverbs or compressors on the busses.
 
I am publicly showing my ignorance. Piggy-backing on what bandito said: Rather than trying to bounce all eleven tracks at one time, rendering the finished track to Stems and then bouncing stems; does this greatly reduce CPU usage? and- What are the difficulties of processing this way, instead of having a computer that can handle the CPU load?

In my VO editing, I never have a need to bounce more that three or four tracks., and most of mine are dry mono. Like I said: I am showing my ignorance of what you are doing. However, my curiosity has me asking those who know.

Inquiring minds want to know.
D
 
Last edited:
If i understand you, you're asking how rendering each track as you go instead of doing thw whole mix at once saves resources? If so, its because once you render the track, the effects are already applied and you can turn the active ones off, thus freeing your CPU to do things other than applying effects to the audio.

Make sense?
 
Makes perfect sense. I have made a few Stems before, yet never looked to check the CPU usage. That is how I assumed it worked, and makes sense to render it to a stem as "done", with effects applied. Then, I would only be working with the "done" waveforms. However, I can see that this may not be the preferred route, if one needs to tweak something in the pre-rendered stem. In my case: A poor man has poor ways. My mantra: Save, save, save.... and when in doubt- hit the save button again.

Thanks for the explanation Bandito.
D
 
Bit of a Reaper newbie here too and with a not-so-good pc
but ...
Bouncing down seems just 'wrong' to me but I can understand the problem - used to use it a lot in cool edit :)

ASIO is very, very important and would be my first port of call.

If it turns out to be CPU I would definately use the freeze option.

My solution in the past before freeze:
If CPU is taxed by heavy VSTi 's - record as midi, then 'send' to a new track (record 'output') as audio then delete the midi track, instrument and the 'send' - crude but effective. Need to make sure other things like pan, volume etc are ok in the new track too.
Save the 'take' before you do any of this.
 
Last edited:
Hey, RHP, welcome to the HR forums.
You don't need to 'send' the VSTi track at all - just render it to a stem, then go back to the original track, mute it, and deactivate the instrument and any FX. If you find you need to change anything on it, mute the stem, unmute and reactivate the orginal, adjust, and repeat.

This whole thread is kind of mis-named - you don't 'bounce down' anything with Reaper unless you hit the 64 track limit and need to free up tracks!
 
mjbphotos said:
Hey, RHP, welcome to the HR forums.
You don't need to 'send' the VSTi track at all - just render it to a stem, then go back to the original track, mute it, and deactivate the instrument and any FX. If you find you need to change anything on it, mute the stem, unmute and reactivate the orginal, adjust, and repeat.

This whole thread is kind of mis-named - you don't 'bounce down' anything with Reaper unless you hit the 64 track limit and need to free up tracks!
Click to expand...

thanks mjb,
as I said ... newbie
the method I described (innadequately and probably innacurately) was something I picked up on the Reaper forum a while back when I was experiencing CPU difficulties, and it works for me. I am not aiming to be a pro engineer or anything like, I just enjoy what I do. I am a pensioner, money is tight, and so a new motherboard/pc/upgrade just is not going to happen.

I tend to increase my knowledge of Reaper slowly as I find I need to something and don't know how, and if anything I know will help others, so well and good.

But thanks for what you said about the stem method. I will give it a go
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top