A BIG 'WTF?' with Reaper

mjbphotos

Moderator
Friday I pulled out a project I hadn't touched for a couple of months, lots of acoustic tracks and a few vocal tracks. Played with the mix a little, saved it under a new name.
Saturday, opened up the project again to do some new vocal tracks and there was a crackling going on in the playback that had NOT been there the day before. Nothing I tried got rid of it (including rebooting Reaper), so I closed the project out and re-opened the old file, everything was fine. I tracked a few new vocal tracks after muting the old ones, then saved the project under a new name again.

Then yesterday I opened up the project and its crackling again! I finally pinpointed the noise to group I had set up with two guitar mic tracks on it - when I muted that group, the crackling disappeared. When I muted the two guitar tracks and not the group, the crackling also disappeared, so I set up the mics and re-recorded the guitar part (2 mics) and I set them up in the same group folder so I wouldn't have to re-do the volume automation.
On playback the new tracks were crackling! So I figured something was corrupt in the folder itself, so I tried moving/copying the new tracks - only to get a message that it couldn't be done because the 'peak files were missing' - now I could see the waveforms, and heard them (with the crackling), but after this message, when I played the project these new tracks were silent!

I saved and re-loaded the project, but the 'no peaks' message came up with the same playback behaviors.
So I deleted the new tracks, muted the group folder track again, and re-tracked with new tracks not in the folder and everything worked fine. Before deleting that crap folder I looked at the volume envelopes and it looks like (somehow) a second track got inserted on top of one of the existing tracks, but that still shouldn't have caused the things that were happening.
 
Do you think the Peak file were corrupted? Did you try reimporting the wave files? I think Reaper uses the peak files as a way to do "non-destructive" editing. If you still have the folder, try removing the original tracks that are causing the issues, then import the waves again.
 
Those peak files accompany every .wav file that is recorded in a Reaper session. So if you copy audio to a new folder, you'll have to copy the corresponding peak files as well. Its usually easier just to "Save As..." and check the box to copy media into the new folder.

What was your CPU load while the crackling was going on? Was there maybe a CPU-intensive insert VST on that group track that was causing the crackling? My old computer was really finicky with reverbs when I had tracks armed for recording.

That multiple tracks in a lane thing is just Reaper's "take" system. The default behavior when you record over existing audio in a track is for it to add the newly recorded item as a new take in the same track lane. This allows you to select which take should be active, so you can comp multiple takes together. It's pretty nifty.
 
Nope, didn't move stuff from any folders. One folder where everything was from the get-go. Was trying to copy the tracks that would not play to another (new) track. Only VST on those tracks was EQ, and I had already disabled it.
It wasn't a 'take combination' (I have takes set to show on separate lines) - it was one file imposed on top of the other, combined together (you could hear 2 guitars, not doing the same thing, either!)
 
Definitely weird. I'd drop a line to the fellas at the Cockos forums and see if they have any ideas. If you still have the project file, they'll take a look at it and see if it's any help in debugging the issue.
 
I've got crackling from time to time if I attempt to record an additional section on a track with a recording from a previous session on it... say I'd done the verse vocals but left the chorus out and tried to "punch" it in, for instance.

I get around it by recording on a new track and then just moving the clip over... it's weird. Sounds similar.
 
Are you on Reaper 4.76?

I can't say I've experienced that problem.

I know that I've had weird behaviour on a track when trying to record, which was, for a while, a mystery.

Then I discovered I had reatune as an FX on that track. As soon as I turned it off, recording came good.
 
Are you on Reaper 4.76?

I can't say I've experienced that problem.

I know that I've had weird behaviour on a track when trying to record, which was, for a while, a mystery.

Then I discovered I had reatune as an FX on that track. As soon as I turned it off, recording came good.

I haven't d/l-ed the last few updates, not sure what verison I have now (I'm at work right now). Strange behavior for sure, but at least I was able to work past it.
 
Are you on Reaper 4.76?

I can't say I've experienced that problem.

I know that I've had weird behaviour on a track when trying to record, which was, for a while, a mystery.

Then I discovered I had reatune as an FX on that track. As soon as I turned it off, recording came good.

That's a good point... I routinely have it on a lot of tracks to check tuning etc...
 
Have you tried disabling all effects across all the tracks and playing it back? Does the crackling go away?

I had a similar thing a long time ago with only one project and it turned out to be an effect on one of the tracks that just didn't like being there, remove and replace, fixed.

Worth a try :thumbs up:
 
I fixed it by deleting that offending group folder and its two tracks - muting the group got rid of the crackling. The crackling was one thing, but the fact it was recording tracks and not finding the peak files was the really odd behavior.
 
sounds allot like the problem could be a sampling or quantize thing..like right click on the record button on each track to make sure its what you want set up inside the "track record settings" , per track..are you like using it through wine like if your using a linux OS , I know i had issues with crackling tryen to get Reaper to play nice inside of Linux through wine and stuff.

heres a video i found a while back that helped me organize things with Reaper filewise

From this place here File Structure ? Organize Audio | Setup Back-up Folders | Session Directory | Reaper-blog.com | Tutorials For Reaper
maybe that can give you ideas to help nail the bugger
 
sounds allot like the problem could be a sampling or quantize thing..like right click on the record button on each track to make sure its what you want set up inside the "track record settings" , per track..are you like using it through wine like if your using a linux OS , I know i had issues with crackling tryen to get Reaper to play nice inside of Linux through wine and stuff.

heres a video i found a while back that helped me organize things with Reaper filewise

From this place here File Structure ? Organize Audio | Setup Back-up Folders | Session Directory | Reaper-blog.com | Tutorials For Reaper
maybe that can give you ideas to help nail the bugger


3 month-old problem that has never come up again. Win7. Settings are fine, I don't mess with them so the defaults are always correct.
 
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