Can't hear click track in reaper w/o the guitar sounding like crap.

  • Thread starter Thread starter MG Eddie
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MG Eddie

MG Eddie

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Ok so I'm using reaper through a m-audio fast track pro. I figured out how to create a click track; insert to click source then right click to source properties to customize. The thing is that during normal tracking w/o the click track everything sounds fine and goes smoothly.
When I try to record with the click track(monitoring on) I can't hear the click track while the guitar is being played unless I push the A/B button(main/cue mix). The issue is how do I tell what "A" is and what "B" is.
When I'm able to hear the click track while recording the guitar sounds like the mic is cutting out. When the click track can't be heard then it all sounds fine again.
BOTTOM LINE: I want to be able to record to a click track w/o the guitar sounding like crap.
 
I never use the metronome function. Build your own click track.

Build yourself a midi track of quarter notes. Use a low-cpu vsti like the free SFZ and a drumset soundfont.

If you dont want to deal with midi, take a hit-hat sample and copy it out to quarter notes over several bars, then export it as an audio file for that bpm and re-import it as a click track and loop it out the length of the song.
Once you do this a couple of times and build a small library of Metronome_XXbpm.wav files, you'll see how easy it is.

Rendering out an audio click track will only take a few minutes and is MUCH more flexible.
AND HAS A ZERO% CPU HIT, unlike using a vsti or the metronome function.
(and will never give you sync problems with your other audio tracks....)
 
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I use the free demo of addictive drummer and pick a simple beat that sorta fits the song. You can tell it to match the tempo of the host and tap the temp in reaper. It's super easy and a lot better sounding than playing along to an ear piercing click.

No tempo matching problems because it's all to reaper's tempo anyway. All samples should fit in well, and any other tempo matching stuff will just sync with reaper as well. It takes 20 seconds to get the beat set up and I don't have to import anything or create anything, or worry about finding something with 117 bpm or some oddball tempo.

This is also useful for creating a more realistic sound...sometimes I'll spend some time changing the tempo from measure to measure (from 118 to 115 to 119.5 etc) to make it sound more like a real drummer...vary it by 2.5 bpm or so and addictive drummer just follows along with what's already been set in reaper.
 
What I was doing was creating a click track in another daw and exporting it to the desktop, so that it can be imported to reaper. The thing is that I just really wanna know if this is even possible, because i've been trying to figure it out for a while now.
 
Let me see if I have this straight:

You have two channels in your reaper project: one of which is a click track; one of which is your guitar track, right?
Your guitar track is armed for recording. Your click track is not. Correct?
You have record monitoring turned on, you said. Did you do that in Reaper (by right-clicking the record arm button and clicking "Monitor Input), or is that a setting on the FastTrack?

Sometimes you're not able to hear the click track. Is that because it's not loud enough, or is it not coming through at all?
If it's just that it's not loud enough most of the time, the cutting out you hear is probably something getting overloaded by the combined volume of the guitar and click. Figure out where in your chain the signal is too loud and turn things down.

Is the cutting out just in the monitoring while you track, or is it present in the actual recording? (to test this, record the track with the click turned up and ignore the fact that it sounds bad. Then turn off the click track and listen back to the guitar. If it sounds OK, then it's just a problem in your monitoring chain.)
 
Everything is set up correctly. When I do as others on this thread have recommended and use an external source click track everything sounds fine. When I use the click track function within reaper this happening.
imgres

I don't know which is the house and which is monitoring because I don't have any external speakers hooked up. But when I press the "A/B" button is when this happens. When I can hear the click its too quiet and the guitar sounds like garbage. When I press the A/B button again I don't hear anything. I'm only asking because I want to be able to save myself the extra step of importing a click track that I've created in a separate DAW and use the one that reaper comes with.
fasttrackpro_front-rear.jpg
 
m.g. eddie;3696066 said:
Everything is set up correctly.
Click to expand...

Yeah but I remember you saying the same thing when you couldn't get a compressor to work. Turned out that you didn't know you had to lower the threshold. So, point being....Make sure that you really do have everything set up correctly, rather than claiming you do just to be defensive....again.
 
RAMI said:
Yeah but I remember you saying the same thing when you couldn't get a compressor to work. Turned out that you didn't know you had to lower the threshold. So, point being....Make sure that you really do have everything set up correctly, rather than claiming you do just to be defensive....again.
Click to expand...

Lol. Pwnd.
 
RAMI said:
Yeah but I remember you saying the same thing when you couldn't get a compressor to work. Turned out that you didn't know you had to lower the threshold. So, point being....Make sure that you really do have everything set up correctly, rather than claiming you do just to be defensive....again.
Click to expand...

Ok I'll double check just to be safe. In the mean time do you have any suggestions?
 
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