I’ve been seeing a lot of questions recently about basic audio routing and terminology. In this video I explain how it works in general, and specifically in REAPER.
It’s a long video, but essential information. Understanding signalflow is a foundation of audio engineering.
Well explained? Still confused? MORE confused? Let me know how I did in the comments!
Good to have a concise “replay” on track routing. You covered it all very well.
Great video but I’m still confused what’s the exact diffrence beetwen the VCA groups and the bussess (folders), what’s their purposes ? Maybe I did not get everything correctly, English isn’t my native language. Still, great job doing this vlog !
VCA is actually not routing audio at all. It’s more for automation but I included it here because it alters the volume of tracks and it often comes up in the discussions.
You could use a VCA group instead of a folder, but the vca can’t collapse/hide your tracks, and you can process the audio in any way.
An example where you might use a VCA when a folder wouldn’t be as easy…
Let’s say you have a folder for guitar tracks, including both electric and acoustic, and another folder for synths. You would normally move the fader or pan on a folder track so it will change the volume of all tracks within that folder at the same time. For this example, let’s say you want to fade out only the acoustic guitars and synths but leave the electric guitars alone. You would have to draw automation across several individual tracks within the guitar folder (i.e. just the acoustic guitars) and synth folder to get this done. If you were also to create a VCA Master track (e.g. Group 1) and then assign each acoustic guitar track and synth track as VCA Slave tracks in Group 1, you could then apply a single automation envelope to the VCA track without touching the individual tracks or changing the folder structure.
VCAs are also great when you already have automation on those individual tracks. The VCA can augment what’s there, and also be applied to the track automation directly with an action.
Nice job! Thanks for thinking of us that are new to this stuff!
John, ok on your mixer track i see 2 knobs one is for pan the other says 100w? which is this function and how do you enable it in the preferences. and how do you put the collapse function on the mixer panel so all you see is the bus faders?
the project pan mode is Stereo Pan. The second knob is for width. 100% is normal, 0 is mono, and -100 is reversed left & Right.
In the mixer click the gear icon, and check ‘clickable icon for folder tracks to show/hide children’.
ok go the mixer part, as for the width knob i figured it out by right clicking the pan knob and selecting stereo pan now just to set this up as a default ty for your help.
Project settings>Advanced
Thanks for what may be the clearest explanation of routing that I have run into, yet! I echo the comment above: thanks for thinking of us noobs!
Finally, you made it!
Thanks, Jon. It’s much appreciated!
Nice video,
but question is: how to easy route DI guitar to multi-AMP or multi-CAB (2 or 3 individual) ?
Busses ?
sure. In that case I’d probably uncheck the master send for the DI track, and send to two new tracks pre or post fader. OR make one prefx send to a new track so the DI has one amp and second track has second amp.
Make sense?
ty for reply) I`ll try
Excellent, consolidated a few things really well especially the routing matrix. Thankyou.
Though well explained it does not address one misconception about folders. It’s all well and good when you’re adjusting the volume of the folder, but mind you that if you use he folder for some form of volume automation, the sends from the tracks inside the folder will not be affected at all. For example That reverb that was perfect in the snare. when you automate the volume of the drums folder to put the drums louder in a section of the song will automatically make the sound of the snare to lose that reverb balance you thought perfect, because when the volume of the folder goes up, the send of the snare to the reverb will be unaffected, thus, becoming lower in comparison. And there goes the hard work you had trying to find these equilibriums. and that will mess up your workflow during the automation part of the tracks you so neatly worked before. It’s the nature of the beast (reaper, in this case) and most people have no idea of this until too late. Or when suddenly they feel something is off in a certain part of the mix and perfect on another. So I do think it’s something to address whenever speaking of folder. Kudos for the tutorial though. Good work. Cheers
Just put reverb track under the same folder of the snare track.
True, but still you would have to have an instance of reverb dedicated only to the drums. You won’t be able to use that reverb for anything else. And given that the latest reverbs seem to eat away most of the CPU usage that’s really a halfway trick. The best would be for reaper to implement the nested track feature as it has been suggested and voted in the reaper forum.
Use VCA instead Folder with “Snare Rev Track” out of VCA.
Hi Federico. Can you elaborate on that routing technique?
VCA’s comes with Reaper 5.+.
Suppose you have 8 tracks of drum, 1 of reverb, 1 for percussion. Suppose you want to use reverb for snare that is inside drum and for percussion that is outside. Make another track, call it VCA. rightclick it and choose: track grouping parameter.
Select “VCA master”. Then, select all drum tracks. Rightclick, track grouping parameter, select VCA slave.
Now if you send “snare track” inside VCA to reverb track it follows volume of track even if you rise general volume by VCA track.
You can find further details un manual however.
But won’t that change of volume of all those inside folder tracks also change the way they are hitting, say for example, the drum bus comp?
Vca changes volume of any track not of the group. Let’s try.
Yes I know how vca works. And by changing the volume of each track (even if as a group) you’re in fact changing the way they hit the group bus compressor. Mind you that what I wanted was to raise or lower the volume of the entire group via automation while maintaining the relationship of the reverbs. What you are suggesting would keep that relationship with the reverbs but not how hard the subtracks would hit the compressor.
Use two istance of reverb, in 2016 any decent pc can.
easier said than done. You’re still sticking to the scenario of just drums. How about the group of guitars? And the group of pianos? And mind you that you’re saying 2 instances of reverb but that would be the case of you just use a single type of reverb to the group. And that’s hardly ever the case. If you use 3kinds of reverb then you would have 3 instances of reverb inside each group. 5 groups, 15 instances of reverb. Try to use just half those instances of h-reverb on a session plus all the other vsts for every track and you’ll realise it’s not an easy feat. Specially when h-reverb or any other good one, for that matter, takes such a toll on the CPU. Remember the post is about what bothers you the most on reaper 😉 . And so far, folders with nested tracks is the most approximate solution for this problem. But that is yet to be implemented
The compressor example is something I didn’t think of, yet. Every plugin that acts in relation to the input signal level, will sound differently when using VCAs. So, is there a solution for this problem, when using a reverb send?
Hmm. I could understand the send and FX-return, so then what is AUX???
What the heck is that other term??
Aux is a generic type of track that’s not used by reaper, used for summing (like a folder) or fx tracks. On a hardware mixer it’s “Auxilliary input” and usually for your FX returns.
In a daw like Pro Tools you’d make a stereo AUX track to submix your drum mics, with the (output of the aux going to main out). Main difference between audio track and aux track is that the aux tracks can’t be recorded on, or audio items on the track. Those limitations are not in reaper.
Hi John, great job!
My Problem:
My rendered .wav files of my mixes are different (regarding track balances, et al) from what I heard when I was mixing. I have to listen to the rendered file, take note of what’s too loud or soft, then go back into the mix and guesstimate track level changes until I get back into the ballpark, which can take a long time.
Thank you for your very well-presented tutorial – it helped me so much and I hope that you (and/or others) can help me solve my rendering problem.
Thanks in advance,
Pete
Hi Pete
It’s hard to tell without seeing the session but there are two possible things that come to mind.
1 – duplicate hardware sends. If individual tracks are going to output 1-2 + Master, then you’d hear them louder in the mix than in the export
2 – effects in Monitoring FX Chain. A limiter here could push everything down but won’t be applied to the exported file.
I recognize that voice! Jon Tidey, I’ve been listening through all the Home Recording Show podcast episodes and I can’t say enough about how helpful it’s been. Your endorsement of Reaper led me to switch DAWs. Quite a surprise to pull up a video and hear your voice. Thanks for all you do!
Dear Sir. Reaper Kontakt multi routing. 13 ch midi files need to become audio files through Kontakt. Please explain how this can be done. I’m willing to pay
I’m balancing 16 voices which each have their own microphone. As well as sending them all to the master, I would like to send them via an aux to a reverb. Is there a way of being able to see all the aux sends – one for each track – as a bank of faders above the direct faders?
Hi Y’all. This is my first time on this blog so I might be on the wrong page…but here goes anyway.
I’m trying to find a routing solution that will allow me to put my own filter in the feedback path of reacomp. I know about the Hi and Lowpass filters which I have used before but this time I need a custom filter.
Hi Howard
You would need to have the filter plugin ahead of the compressor with its output set to out 3-4, which is the sidechain input of reacomp.
If it was ReaEQ, you press the 2 in/ 2 out button at top right, set pins to 1/2 in and disable 1/2 out, 3/4 for output. ReaComp needs to be set to Aux input for detector.
Here’s an image https://imgur.com/TQh5ipq
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