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Reaper: multitimbral - why my track is not monitoring the audio send from Kontakt´s track?

vicontrolu

Senior Member
Cant get my head around this. Take a look please:



Kontakt is sending out on 1/2 and the track is setup to receive there, monitoring is ON but audio doesnt seem to come in thru de track.

Pretty sure the routing is correct. I read somewhere you needed to activate "Allow feedback in routing" on the Project settings but then i get feedback everywhere.

Thoughts?
 
The problem is that you can't receive audio on the same track you're sending midi from without enabling feedback.
But if you want that (as opposed to the messy Cubase-like way where you have separate tracks for sending midi and receiving audio), it can be done with a few tweaks to your routing:

For the "Send to Track 1 (Plugin)", set Audio to "None"
For the "Recieve from Track 1", set the send mode to Pre-fader, Midi to "None" and turn down the volume completely on Track 1.
This should give you what I think you want. (Allow feedback in routing needs to be turned on, so be careful with routing other places)
 
Thx Rasmus! Yeah audio was causeing feedback issues, got it working now.

Note that if you allow feedback routing, you will lose PDC across the project. It's a tradeoff.

This is a bummer. One of the things that made me think of switching to Reaper was that everybody was talking very nice about the routing options but..does it really matter if you can do flexible routing but your tracks then get out of sync? Its like having a huge cock but at the same time being impotent. Well..i could have use cars analogy here..

Damn, i feel a mix of disappointment and grieving..
 
Think about this. If you have feedback in your routing, then there is no clear starting point to even begin to be able to calculate the plugin delay offset necessary. It's a causality thing, that is, it involves physics. You cannot compensate for something that is in an endless loop, it throws everying off. This is why you cannot have PDC when feedback routing is allowed. Pure and simple.

Even without allowing feedback routing, Reaper has the most flexible routing of all DAWs, so you shouldn't feel disappointed or grieving.
 
Sigh..allright.

So, for working with multitimbral isntruments, would there be a way to have the return audio track from the VSTi being displayed there at the left? So i could be working with midi on the horizontal track (tcp area) but seeing the mixer track on the left, in case i need to adjust volumes, add insert, etc. I guess what i am asking is linking mixer tracks to arrange tracks?
 
Sure, you can hide audio tracks in TCP and hide MIDI tracks in MCP, that's how I do it. Embrace the Track Manager window.
 
Its a bit more complicated than that. I want to display certain MCP tracks automatically there on the left (like on the video) when selecting TCP ones. I´ll give this window a look.
 
It'd be nice if audio and MIDI were treated independently in terms of loop detection. It would at least solve this particular problem.

Part of the reason I moved away from the multi approach is how much it simplified routing. (This then opened the door to disabling unused tracks, which resulted in a net memory reduction as well.)
 
I get that, but it also forces you to work with a lot more kontakt instances (more cpu and ram footprint), the sessions get bigger and bigger, etc. Alos my old template is based on the multitimbral thing so i dont wanna waste all the effort i´ve put over the years there.

I was trying to combine both strategies in the template, really.
 
I was just musing that if MIDI and audio were able to be processed independently (with separate PDC for each path) the problem could be avoided. Justin's horse and carriage analogy describes the current design, but it's not the only possible design. I think the argument is really whether the added complexity (both in software and for the user to be able to configure such a signal chain) is worth the effort.
 
Sure it's not the only possible design but it looks like it simplifies a lot of things as it is now (and most definitely is adding to CPU efficiency of Reaper), and adding separate paths seems to indeed overly complicate things internally, for questionable benefit of a single certain workflow...
 
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Don't you get worried about humongous session sizes and long annoying autosave times? Also, loading kontakt every time you want to add one single sound.. Isn't that overkill?

I understand the benefit of working with a kontakt instance on each track, but you can't deny there are benefits working the other way too.

Just wish one DAW could do both. Is there nothing working like this currently on the market?
 
Yeah, I've found that there isn't enough of a benefit (if any) to go multi-timbral. In any DAW I've used. It creates more headache than it's worth.
 
Also, loading kontakt every time you want to add one single sound.. Isn't that overkill?
I put all my articulations in a single instance of Kontakt. Sixteen instruments (sometimes more, if I decide to layer) for violins, for example, all on separate channels in one instance of Kontakt. Then I switch between them using Reaticulate. Works like a charm.

Screen Shot 2018-06-12 at 9.29.19 PM.png
 
I'm like ED, all my midi tracks go in the TCP and all my Kontakt VSTi tracks along with the outputs go in my MCP. For the most part, only editable tracks like the midi and recorded audio tracks go in the TCP.

I'm not a heavy user of "folder tracks", although I do use them when there is a clear advantage to do so.

I see so many folks getting hung up because they either want, or even insist that they be able to combine the midi and audio tracks. Being from the old school, I've never had a reason or desire to do that.

I agree with robgb, I utilize each instance of Kontakt, although I don't necessarily fill them up. I may end up with 3, 4, even 6 instances, but thy will have at least a half dozen or more instruments in them.

I have to admit, I don't make mockups and really never have, I simply load the instruments I need for any given project.
 
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