Soundflower into Reaper for Effects - Reliable?

[Andrew Blizzard]

Hi List,

I am thinking of setting up a secondary piece of software alongside of Qlab3 for the purpose of applying effects to live mics. I just started testing this and so far it seems to be working okay. I have it routed like this:

Qlab3 -> Soundflower -> Reaper -> Audio Interface

I do not have anything setup as an Aggregate Device at all...just using Soundflower and my Interface at the same time. Does anyone have any experience with a setup like this? Anything to watch out for?

[micpool]

I have a prejudice against soundflower for show use. It may be ill founded, but I always use hardware apaches between inputs and outputs on the interface To route audio between apps.

However do you really need to send any audio between the 2 programs? If you are just using the effects on Microphones then you could just do that in reaper and automate the faders and anything else you want by Sending MIDI cc messages from Qlab to Reaper over IAC MIDI

Mic

[micpool]

Sorry thats hardware patches

[micpool]

I am assuming you wantto use vsts or there is some other reason why you do not want to do this within Qlab

mic

[Daniel Perelstein]

I've done this on a dozen or so shows the way Mic describes. No need to use soundflower. Mics go directly into reaper, audio out directly from reaper. Mics muted and unmuted, volumes or pans or other parameters automated, via midi cc messages from qlab via iac bus.

Works nicely!

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[Lists]

Why not use Qlab for the mics and effects with mic cues and AU plugins?

Charles Coes

cco...@gmail.com
www.charlescoes.com
"Whether we like it or not we are amphibians, living simultaneously in the world of experience and the world of notions, in the world of direct apprehension of Nature, God and ourselves, and the word of abstract verbalized knowledge" - Aldous Huxley.

[Chris Ashworth]

On February 25, 2015 at 9:50:41 AM, Lists (ccoes...@gmail.com) wrote:

Why not use Qlab for the mics and effects with mic cues and AU plugins?

One limitation that comes to mind is the inability of many effects to be inserted on mic cues that have more than 2 input channels.

This is something still on my radar as needing improvement, sorry it hasn’t happened yet!

-C

[Lists]

A fantastic workaround for this is to create mic cue patches in preferences with the effects inserted on the cue outputs either in mono, or in stereo (thank you!) and use the mic cues purely as routers to those various effects (or to 'dry' cue outputs', and then route the effects out in the mic 'device routing' tab.  It limits you a little bit  as you're unable to change the routing of the mics to device outputs cue to cue, and often means having 2 versions of effects (L/R Reverb and Surround reverb) to make this doable. Depending on the effect (if you ever stop the mic cue), you run into a cropped reverb tail, but leaving the mic cue running all the time seems to solve the problem of AUs not reporting the continuation of audio.

Charles Coes

cco...@gmail.com

"Forms and rhythms in music are never changed without producing changes in the most important political forms and ways" - Plato

[Andrew Blizzard]

Some wonderful ideas here everyone! I have a feeling that my answer is definitely among those solutions. I tend to over complicate things such as this, so perhaps I can elaborate on what I intend on doing in hopes that the expertise here will set me on my path.

I am only using one mic. Not multiple. This mic will need to have different effects applied to it throughout the show, so it's not just set the EQ, Comp, Reverb and leave it that way for the show. Sometimes a pitch effect will need to be mixed in with the dry signal, along with some reverb and delay. Then I need to quickly change that to a thick chorus effect with some stereo widening. So I need multiple effect chains accessible. 

Also, I intend on trying some quick panning among 8 speakers on stage, possibly while the effects are changing.

The options listed so far are:

1) Use Reaper for all mic effects and use MIDI to control all panning, muting and such. I like the idea of an external program that doesn't interfere with QLab in any way. My concern is that when I start changing panning for 8 speakers, and switching between effects things could get complicated and confusing.

2) Keep all effects within QLab. I think I understand the method of setting up the effects on "cue outputs". For example (I have 20 speakers) I would have channels 1-20 going straight to my device outputs without any effects. I would then setup channels 21-40 with the effects needed, and then route those back to the device output 1-20 so I could send to my speakers. Is this right? The problem here is that that would only allow me to access one effects chain on each of the cue outputs right? So to have access to multiple effect chains I would need to also do 41-60, 61-80, etc...which is beyond the limitations of QLab I think.

Maybe it is simpler to actually use effects on the Mic Cues themselves? That solves my panning by being able to use fade cues to move audio around from speaker to speaker. What I don't know how to do with the "effects on mic cues" setup is change effect chains. I can only use a fade cue to affect the audio effects on a mic cue, not add or delete effects. I would then need to have a whole bunch of plugins instantiated and then automate parameters using fade cues to "change" my effects chain.

Do I have this correct? 

[Daniel Perelstein]

I can only comment on the reaper solutions. The shows for which I have done this were all during the era of qlab 2, so I haven't had reason to explore yet in qlab 3 with mic cues beyond the most basic stuff. Clearly, Chris and the qlab team is working to make the stuff you describe all be possible, easy, and stable within qlab. I have no clue where they're at at present with that goal, but obviously once they've achieved it, qlab will be the one stop shop for this stuff.

Historically, for situations like what you described, I'd create a single reaper track for each instance of the mic needing different parameters. Each channel record armed, set to the correct mic input, and with monitoring turned on. For each channel one at a time, I'd set the effects as appropriate for that instance. Routing can be handled per-instance as well in the I/O window. Uncheck the send to master bus, add in new seeks to hardware outputs for each output you want to address (as stereo, mono, or multichannel busses, as you prefer), and adjust the send level of each to balance the outputs as you'd like for each unique instance.

Then, I set up midi commands in qlab to mute and unmute each of those tracks as needed throughout the show. Or you could automate fades between instances if they overlap.

If you need master fx for the mic, or for outputs, the above can easily be modified to handle that.

In hindsight, it occurs to me that following the above verbatim, you'll hit a limit in terms of processing power, which could be corrected by record arming only one channel at a time instead of keeping them all armed and muting / unmuting. The benefit of working with mute is you can assign midi cc 0 and 127 to set mute state, whereas I believe record arm can only be addressed as a toggle state. In any case, I have done the above with a relatively large number of tracks for individual effect instances for 8 or more mics in a pretty complex children's show, and had no problems with processing power. 

I also start my qlab session with a series of midi cues re-initializing all my reaper channels for which volume, pan, effects parameters, etc, are automated throughout the show.

I'm happy to go into more detail on any of the above if it's useful, although maybe that's better off-list. I likely have already hacked through it once or twice if you search the list archives over the past couple years if you search my name and reaper.

Happy automating!

Dan

[Andrew Blizzard]

Thanks for the detailed explanation - I'm going to do some testing and see what I can come up with. I've never done any MIDI autamation in Reaper before, so I need to dig in there first...

Any issues with using the same interface at the same time for both QLab and Reaper?

Again, really appreciate the advice.

Andrew

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[Lists]

Because Mic outputs are setup completely separately than audio cues you don't need 20 outs.  You only need to have direct outputs for the speakers you're actually using (you say 8)

1-8

Double that for pitch

9-16

Do you need the reverb to pan?  If not you can assign a stereo reverb output to multiple speakers in the device routing tab of the mic audio device settings

17-18

same question with the chorus...

Charles Coes

cco...@gmail.com
www.charlescoes.com
"The right to express ideas, good ideas, bad ideas, crazy ideas, impossible ideas - this is the most precious right that the individual can have." - Dalton Trumbo

[Andrew Blizzard]

Okay that makes sense now regrading using different mic outputs and routing them to physical outs. Clever.

And yes, I need the mic cue to be panned among these 8 onstage speakers. So I'm thinking of doing this:

1-8 BASIC (comp, eq, some reverb)
9-16 HEAVY VERB
16-24 PITCH
25-33 DELAY

All of these route to my onstage speakers. Then I can pan between them. Then if I need any of the mic cue in the house speakers (which wouldn't be a lot) I can add as needed on 34-48.

You may have guessed by my fx that this is a ghostly voice cue!

So I am going to be using FabFilter plugins for the comp and delay. They seem to be pretty stable so far in my testing. Anyone have any experience using these within QLab?

Probably the Apple Pitch AU because it works well.

My real problem now is finding a reverb that works well AND sounds good. That is a challenge.