Direct Monitoring like Cubase

Hi folks. I just downloaded the Reaper demo as I'm getting frustrated with Cubase 4 and a certain stuttering issue that I have with MIDI inputting and VSTis. Anyways, I'm trying to work my way through Reaper's functions and I'm wondering about Direct Monitoring in Reaper like in Cubase. Please forgive me if this has been discussed before. I've searched but haven't seen if this feature has been added recently. In Cubase, I select 'Direct Monitoring' and all inputs get sent out into my digital mixer (without getting sent through Cubase) where I set up headphone mixes and use hardware reverbs so there is no latency involved in tracking unless I'm using VST instruments. When tracking VSTis I set to the lowest buffer and track away. But for audio, I love the Direct Monitoring feature. Is this feature on the list to be added or am I the only one that would find this feature useful? Thanks for your time.

REAPER does have direct monitoring, but it's not on by default, and even if you turn it on by default your track needs to be armed to hear the track input. You can however right click on the arm button (labeled AR) and choose Record Disabled: Input monitoring only, which will do the obvious. Still, you'll still need to arm the track, but if you do hit Record on the transport that track will be bypassed. (BTW- that can be set to default to in the Preferences menu) This is a debatable subject on REAPER's functionality on how this is only when armed...personally I only use it on MIDI tracks, but others use it for audio too.

I'm coming from nuendo and in the last update they released the ability for certain soundcards to not only use the standard direct monitoring but to also allow you to use nuendos studio send and the control room features to control more complex latency free mix outs pre nuendo. I would love to see this in reaper but for now I am going to try routing all the channels I want to send to the headphone mix to another track routed to the headphones pre fader and hopefully use this as a decent foldback system at low latency especially when we get midi control for sends implemented as the track receiving the sends can then be used to control (via a midi controller) the headphone mix in the studio and this can be done for multiple headphone mixes leaving you free to concentrate on recording and not getting headphone mixes right.

I haven't had time to push the system yet but from what I have read in the manual and in the options it seems that you can have reaper set to something like 64 buffer size for low latency monitoring of live inputs or when editing parts (thanks to media buffering and anticipative processing) but when you do not have a track selected, armed for record or the editor open then they behave as if they had a much higher buffer rate freeing up the processor. (if set up correctly) Am I reading that right? because if I am then Justin and all his staff are geniuses! That's a very clever way of doing it! :)

i'm currently looking for an DAW alternative to cubase for my studio. for all that are not sure about it, this is what 'dirct monitoring' in cubase does: 'direct monitoring' gives the DAW *control* above your hardware's dsp-mixer (if supported by hardware, i.e. MOTU). it doesn't matter which monitoring-mode you use (manual, tape, on record, on armed).. atm i really rely on this option, my latency never gets down to an acceptable value, there are always musicians ho seem to hear the latency, no matter how i tweak.. direct monitoring solves this for me.. would be great if reaper would have this functionality too, after reading the manual i think it is a great DAW and worth trying out, but worthless to me if i cannot have latency-free recording without using the external MOTU-mixer software.. thx edit/PS: i browsed the forum a bit more and found that ADM is quite a hot topic here, unfortunately much of the discussion is ruined by some personal attacking of some users.. i don't care.. but i do care that the discussion about ADM is closed for that reason, so i add here: i am using a quite old PC for my tracking, but it works good enough, because i really use my DAW only as a substitute for a tape-machine and some rough editing. i have a 28 I/O MOTU system that serves well, and i do all the mixing and processing on my desk and outboard gear.. so, in my special case i need ADM because latency on my old system is audible.. i don't want to change my PC because over the years i developed a trust in this certain machine.. it never ever crashed, and years ago i put alot of effort in designing it.. if you build ADM into reaper, you can count me in as a new custumer, and i will propably be proudly telling my sourrounding scene about this rather unknown new DAW.

Well, I'm in the same boat. Direct Monitoring is essential to my work flow. I have no desire to have to open my soundcard's monitoring software to set up headphone mixes when I can check 'Direct Monitoring' in Cubase and I'm there. Without this feature in Reaper, I'll have to just play around with it and use Cubase for my serious tracking sessions.

On a positive note though i can get 1.5 ms latency on my lynx l22 card at 90% cpu on a quad core no problems and since it is very fast to set up sends to a "headphone track" with the ability to have them tapped from any point in the channel i'm not that fussed about direct monitoring anymore ;) just need a solo ignore ability for the headphones. This kind of performance i couldn't get anywhere near with nuendo 4 ;)

I'm not quite sure what your complaining about. I get direct monitoring happening for all the vocals I record and am able to add reverb. I'm mainly using my old trusty M-Audio Delta44 It's easier than Cubase for me. I will generally turn the master down a bit to match the input volume and then turn the headhones up. If you don't have your control panel for your audio drivers set properly you may have issues, but once set it's sorted for every session. Maybe your doing more complex stuff with separate headphone mixes or something.

I'm not sure I'm complaining. This is the 'Feature Request' forum, right? I'm asking for ASIO Direct Monitoring be available in Reaper (like Cubase) so I don't need to use my soundcard panel and such. Can it be done by way of my RME TotalMix? I'm sure. Should I need to open another app so I can just send my signals directly out without passing through Reaper? I don't think so. That's why I'm asking for this feature. It would make me more comfortable working with this program coming from my way of working with Cubase. I'm sure not everyone needs this feature but I'm just asking for it as I've also seen other's ask for it as well.

hi again, during the last couple of days we evaluated reaper as the future DAW for our studio.. i have to say: as soon as you build in this ADM-functionality, you'll have us, guaranteed.. as long as ADM is lacking we have to stick with sx2 and frustration.. pls keep in mind we often track up to 20 signals at once, while playing back another 30.. latency sums up.. i understand that for many recordings nowadays only one or 2 tracks are recorded at once, so latency might seem an issue of the past to some here.. anyway, we're doing old-fashioned multitracking and we are very sure about what and why we do.. ,-) if it's not too much of a problem (i don't have knowledge about the asio-api) pls add ADM and get a new custumer (1 here that is, and certainly many others too ,-) ) thx in advance, symbiosonics