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I have a guitar fx vst that works fine in Reaper if I'm playing back the track. It adds the effects correctly and I can hear it. But how do I get it to do it in real time as I'm playing?

Here is my ideal scenario: Have it record clean on one track, with fx on another, and only hear the fx version as I'm playing.

I'm using Windows XP, Reaper 3.74, and asio4all.

Please let me know if I should provide additional info.

Thanks in advance!

EES

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When you record-enable your track you want to click on the Monitor button on the channel to enable software monitoring. Then you'll be able to hear the track, with any realtime plugins, while playing. This introduces some latency though and you may find it's unacceptably high to play well using this approach.

Here's a great YouTube video that talks about how you do this for a vocal track and a reverb plugin -- same situation you're in, just substitute a guitar FX VST instead of a reverb VST. It has a nice solution for a high latency setup that's pretty reasonable for a reverb, but may not work for a guitar FX VST.

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  • Thanks, I've tried this but it just buzzes very loudly. Any ideas?
    – ees
    Commented Jan 3, 2011 at 19:56
  • If you remove the plugin can you do software monitoring of the stream when it's armed?
    – Ian C.
    Commented Jan 3, 2011 at 20:02
  • Yes, but it's ambiguous. If I don't even have Reaper running I can hear the guitar through the computer speakers. So when Reaper is running I don't know what sound is coming through Reaper and what sound is automatic outside of Reaper.
    – ees
    Commented Jan 4, 2011 at 0:44
  • You need to access your mixer for your hardware interface. There should be an option to mute the hardware monitoring of your guitar so that what you're hearing is the software output from Reaper. Presumably the mixer would be part of asio4all -- I'm not sure. It's not driver software I'm familiar with.
    – Ian C.
    Commented Jan 4, 2011 at 1:22
  • I've found that I'm able to get the settings I want using Audacity. That is, I set things up in Audacity, then close it and use Reaper. Works like a charm. A couple weeks ago I was able to get Reaper working exactly how I wanted it. Not sure what I was doing wrong last year. Thanks for the help everyone.
    – ees
    Commented Jun 27, 2012 at 0:40

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