Serious reaper playback issues

[chamelious]

When playing back a song i've been recording with my band reaper seems to struggle and stutter quite a lot, its becoming a major issue.

Also when we were recording vocals, when recording onto some tracks they would play back stuttery and onto other tracks they were fine. If you recorded on a *bad* track then moved it onto a good one, it was fine.

Its not a performance issue as my pc is beefy and CPU util never goes above 20% ish in reaper. Rams never half filled.

 

[AndrewClaycomb]

Are you trying to record on a track that is sent to a bus with plugins? Or are you trying to record directly to a track with plugins? What is your latency set to? How fast is/are your hard drive(s)?

 

[chamelious]

No bussing, there were plug ins on both good and bad tracks though. Latency ~6.7/6.4ms. System drive with reaper on is a 3 disc RAID 0 array the the disc with audio on is a newish 7200rpm drive.

 

[AndrewClaycomb]

If you raise the latency, do the issues lessen/go away? Which version of Reaper are you on?

 

[VomitHatSteve]

Yeah, try raising the latency.

Make sure you aren't using plugins while tracking; and when you add plugins later during mix time, periodically bounce tracks that are done or almost done to a new track so that you can turn those plugins off.

In my experience, plugins have been the biggest performance hit in Reaper. I've got a pretty good system, but it really starts to chug if I get much more than 5 or 6 tracks with plugins simultaneously.

 

[bassmanb]

Not sure of your system configuration but I have noticed 2 things that might relate to this.

1. I run a Dell Latitude 110L (Old laptop with built in wireless.) I run only 2 gigs of Ram and the internal hard drive is a 40 gig. Also, I run an external 40 gig USB (on 1.1 not usb 2.0) everything runs fine with upwards of 9-10 effects plugins. (Heavy ones, a little less.)

If I turn on the Wireless I get clicks and sputters and sometimes (most times) the Firewire drops completely.

2. If I am recording with a lower latency or a higher sample rate and for any reason change the sample rate, I get tons of stuttering / slow audio. (Unusable)

Not sure if any of that helps but just some suggestions. It might be hardware interactions causing it.

Chris B.

 

[jarrydee]

Why record with plugins?

I don't know about reaper but with PT the plugin effect does not record..you have to set up another track and bus the other track with the plugs to the new track and record that!

But I still see no reason to record with plugins..If it's for a picky vocalist that needs reverb and crap to sing right, just send an output to a mixer and add the effects there and hook the phones to that!!