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How to get a Vst to work with Reaper


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Hi, I am new here and I am a beginner at recording. I am having trouble getting the studiodevil to work in reaper. I am not sure it works right out of reaper. I can not find the option to fix latency. I use a lexicon alpha. I mainly use Reaper for recording ideas and sending it to my band mates. I had some free Guitar Rig once but it crapped out me.

So I am searching for a good guitar Vst with a good over driven tube sound and or fuzz.

To summarize my short term goal is just to be able to send some song ideas to my bandmates and long term one is to get some drum program like E-Z drummer and make my own recordings playing all instruments(home studio). I'm not rich so I don't want to spend much money.

Any help will be much appreciated, as I have already spent weeks researching and combing the internet for answers.

Thanks,

Rob

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You have to remember you're not dealing with analog effects. The signal takes time being sampled and converted to digital, processed by the software/CPU, then sent back to the interface where its converted back to analog so it can be heard.

 

Latency is a normally a hardware issue. Its caused by a slow processing speed of the digital data stream. When you route your signal through an interface you have two choices. Passing it straight through and listen to the unprocessed signal gives you a Zero latency signal.

 

The signal can also be converted to digital, routed through the computer, through a plugin where resampling and number crunching occurs, and back to the interface where its converted back to analog so you can hear it. This is called the processed signal.

 

Normally you don't listen to the processed signal when tracking. You set the interface mix knob for zero latency and play along to a previously recorded track. If you pan the knob to processed, you hear the time lag it takes for the signal to be processed and converted back to analog.

 

 

The speed of the processing will vary depending on the computers CPU/Memory/Buss speed etc of the computer you're using. Some of this may also be the plugin itself. It may be a bloated heavy CPU consumption plugin which requires allot of temp memory to complete its number conversion before its sent back to the interface/monitors to be heard.

 

It can also be your communication port. Not all USB ports are the same. A USB port is a Master/Slave communication port and the CPU can throttle the data anytime it runs low on resources. It may run lightening fast one second and crawl like a turtle the next. The best you can do to optimize latency speed is to optimize your computer for recording and free up the maximum resources available for audio. Even this may not be enough if you have a slower processor but you can at least try and see if the results improve.

 

First run this little program and find out what your processor is capable of. http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml If the average reading is around 20ms then you should be able to get fairly low latencies if the rest of the computer is optimized. If the reading average is above 100 or you have red spikes, you can probably forget trying to run software effects as substitutes for hardware in real time.

 

There are Buffer and latency settings in the DAW and or the Interface Driver settings. They normally set themselves up when you install the drivers so you can run the maximum number of plugins and tracks without crashing. You can sometimes tweak those settings to reduce latency on a trial and error basis. Keep in mind you may get the latency lower for a single track and have it crashing all over the place or creating digital pops, clicks and crashes trying to play back more then one track.

 

If you want to try messing with it, be sure you write down your original settings so you can set them back. In my experience the daw program sets up the best settings and trying to set it lower doesn't work very well, but my experience is limited to the interfaces I've owned. Going higher on latency and buffers to handle large plugins usually works out but not the other way around. You may also find some interfaces and drives for those interfaces are better then others. Your interface is a budget model and its possible a better interface may also be faster or more stable.

 

My best suggestion around the problem is record the guitar with zero latency set and use the plugin when mixing only. If playing with a dry signal is too difficult, get a hardware pedal for tracking. You can pick up many used multi effect pedals/pod type units very cheap which will do the job nicely. I picked one up a few days ago for around $25 and its got all kinds of amp modeling and effects for tracking. Computer latency doesn't matter at all if you track with hardware effects. You can always add more effects later when mixing.

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