My first attempt at using outbard gear

[bryan_kilco]

We've had a few rack units laying around the practice space so I brought them home and threw them in my recording rack. Just basic, cheap units (Behringer Multigate Pro and Behringer Tube Composer).

Trying to wrap my head around routing everything.

My chain is, in exact order:

Profire 2626
Multigate Pro
ART 31-band EQ
Tube Composer
BBE Sonic Maximizer

I've quickly learned that I probably need a patch bay for proper routing.

I have the signal coming back into the Profire and into Reaper, but I'm seeming to have weird phase problems and am still trying to wrap my brain around the Profires routing and mixer options.

What ends up happening is all audio going through my interface is being sent through all the rack gear. So when I listen back to, say, a track I just ran through all the gear, it's being processed twice....if this makes sense. 2 of the units simply don't have a Bypass button on them. I'm pretty sure I have the routing set up properly but I'm just getting confused.

Profire Output 1 sent to rack gear, and returning to Profire Input 8.

Profire routing from Output 1 set to "Mixer Out".

In Reaper, I have a track set to record Profire Input 8.

I checked through the manual and really didn't catch any help. This routing has always been a weak point for me, and I still don't get what "Software Return" is used for.

Sorry if this is uber n00b shit, I figured maybe someone could shed some light on this and maybe I'm just missing something really dumb.

 

[mickrich]

Sounds like you are going through twice.
Does reaper have an insert or "I/O" plugin?
What you need to do is use the insert plugin on your master bus.
Patch your rack gear to output 7/8 returning on 7/8.
Now when you use the insert plugin the signal is going in and out of your rack gear before hitting the master outs.
Hope this makes sense.

When using outboard gear you really need to make sure your gain staging is right.
Analog zero (0dBU) is equal to (depending on your converters) -18dBFS.
This means if your level to the outboard gear is zero dBFS your analog gear is getting driven +18db :-o
Make sure your output level is about -16 to -12 dBFS (analog gear likes being driven at about +4dBu which is zero VU)
What's even more confusing is that there are 2 analog scales and 0VU is equal to +4dBu.

I always have great fun trying to explain this to my students.
Short version is keep levels at -12 through your whole mix and you will be ok (treat yellow as red in PT)
Chart below is for converters calibrated at -20dBFS as 0dBU

 

[bryan_kilco]

Yeah, I actually just discovered that there is ReaInsert which is an I/O plug. I did what you said and when the plug is active on the Master bus, I get no audio whatsoever.

Edit: I had to de-couple the master volume knob from attenuating inputs 7/8. I seem to have gotten at least somewhere with this, but when I record and play back the processed track along with the raw track, there's some pretty bad latency still.

 

[mickrich]

There will, of course, be latency because the signal is going through your soundcard and converters and back in.
This is not suitable for tracking but should be fine when mixing.
You need to put this on the master and route all tracks through it or you will get latency on the tracks with the insert but not the others.
There should be an option to calculate and compensate for the latency induced.
In logic you can "ping" the chain to get latency.
I don't use reaper so don't know if it has this option but it should.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Yep, auto-delay compensation was tried a bunch of times. I understand there would be a bit of latency but this is fairly bad. If I were processing a snare and wanted to blend it with the original raw snare, I'd have to manually align the track which I absolutely HATE doing because I can never get it to sound right.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Ok, so this is pretty weird. Apparently Reaper is OVER compensating the latency.

Top track is raw, bottom is through the hardware. The processed track is actually wayyyyy early. *scratches head*

Apparently this ReaInsert plug is giving a lot of people fits and it looks like I may have to just nudge tracks around manually if I want to use hardware processing.

 

[mickrich]

Shit. Thats a really bad bug.
Your only option for now is to just use your outboard on the master bus where latency won't matter.

 

[Awating Evil]

No bug at all. RTM. turn off anticipative fx processing in the options dialog. Make sure when your using dynamics processors, the you bypass the compressor when pinging for rt latency.

I use 9 ch of outboard compressors and 6 ch of analog eq while mixing. Took me a year of banging my head on the console before I read about how the anticipative fx processing effects PDC and monitoring latency. I keep it on for better low latency performance when tracking but turn it off for mixing...

Hope this helps.

Dave

 

[bryan_kilco]

No bug at all. RTM. turn off anticipative fx processing in the options dialog. Make sure when your using dynamics processors, the you bypass the compressor when pinging for rt latency.

I use 9 ch of outboard compressors and 6 ch of analog eq while mixing. Took me a year of banging my head on the console before I read about how the anticipative fx processing effects PDC and monitoring latency. I keep it on for better low latency performance when tracking but turn it off for mixing...

Hope this helps.

Dave

Just tried this, didn't work. Then I tried letting the Delay Compensation at 0 instead of pinging, and it seems to be working correctly. Thank you for letting me know about the anticipative fx processing.

 

[Awating Evil]

Something else is off then. I just tested it on my two systems, laptop with steinberg ur824 usb interface and on my main rig with dual pci layla 3gs, I get 7.1ms of seperation with antipative turned on and perfectly in phase when off.

Have you run a loopback test going from the output of ur da then to the input? Just to determine if the program and the interface are synced up... that could be the culprit. You can set reaper to adjust for the incorrect reporting of latency from the drivers of the audio interface. Just take a 1khz test tone for the loopback and see where the audio is sitting. I bet that interface is not reporting latency correctly And as a result is fucking with reainsert. Make sure that when u were turning off anticipative fx processing that you restart reaper too...

Hope it helps.

 

[Sloan]

you can actually set the delay compensation manually. i did this so guitar vst tracks are delayed to me and they line up with the audio hitting my ears at mix/riffing position.