New to Reaper

Steven Fowler

New member
Hey guy's, I've just installed Reaper and I have a couple of questions.
Question 1. How do I add an effect to my guitar and be able to hear that effect while I'm recording? Right now I can only hear it during playback.
Question 2. How do I solve the issue with the recording click track not matching the playback click? In other words, I am recording to a click track, but when I play it back it seems to be out of sync and it sounds like it's dragging.
Question 3. If monitor is selected on the track, there is a delay through the monitors when I play my guitar. It sounds like I have a delay effect on it even when I don't.

The interface I'm using is the Focusrite Scarlet 2i2 with the direct monitoring feature.

Thanks.
 
Hey guys. Steve is a close friend of mine and a awesome player. I have tried to figure out these issues but failed. I have also been singing the praises of all you experts on here! Thanks for helping him out.
 
Question 1. How do I add an effect to my guitar and be able to hear that effect while I'm recording? Right now I can only hear it during playback.

To be able to hear an effect you have on the track while you are recording you need to have monitor selected on the track (as you have in Q3 below)

Question 2. How do I solve the issue with the recording click track not matching the playback click? In other words, I am recording to a click track, but when I play it back it seems to be out of sync and it sounds like it's dragging.
Question 3. If monitor is selected on the track, there is a delay through the monitors when I play my guitar. It sounds like I have a delay effect on it even when I don't..

I think these are related and both are a function of latency, i.e. the time it takes for the system to process the audio to play it back.

So my question back at you is: what are you playing back the sound through? Are you playing back through computer speakers? Or have you got speakers connected to the Scarlett? If you are going through your computer rather than the Scarlett, that may well be the problem.
 
Thanks Gecko, he is monitoring through the interface. Using the monitor output. If we enable the monitor on the track we get a delay. The only way to get rid of the delay is to turn off the monitor on the track. We have tried the direct monitor feature on the interface and it makes no difference.
 
Thanks Gecko, he is monitoring through the interface. Using the monitor output. If we enable the monitor on the track we get a delay. The only way to get rid of the delay is to turn off the monitor on the track. We have tried the direct monitor feature on the interface and it makes no difference.

Woah, that's weird. Maybe when direct monitoring was on, software monitoring was on as well? There really shouldn't be any noticeable latency with direct monitoring.

I think, from what you've described, that you'll need to bring up the ASIO control panel for the Focusrite and lower the buffer size. I think Focusrite defaults it to something obnoxious like 512 samples, which yields something like 40ms of latency round-trip. Try something like 64 or 128 samples and see if the old i5 can keep up without pops or clicks or dropouts.

The quickest way to get to the ASIO control panel in Reaper is to click in the extreme upper right hand corner where it shows the sample rate, format, channel count, buffer size, and latency. (something like "48 kHz 24bit WAV: 2/2ch 512spls blah blah". Click on that and it'll bring up the audio device settings. On that panel, click on "ASIO Configuration..." and it should bring up the ASIO control panel for whichever interface you're using. Fish through there and find the ASIO buffer setting and try some lower settings to bring that latency down to a reasonable level.

Since the OP is wanting to hear FX on the track while monitoring, turn off direct monitoring on the interface and enable monitoring on the track in Reaper, as Zed described above.

Good luck!
 
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