How to Route Audio & MIDI Between Any two DAWs (Rapid-fire REAPER Tutorials Ep80)

How to Route Audio & MIDI Between Any two DAWs (Rapid-fire REAPER Tutorials Ep80)

Hey folks! As promised, here's the non-ReWire tutorial for sending audio/MIDI from REAPER to other DAWs and back. For PC users, I did my best on the blog to nudge in the right direction, but some of this stuff will be different cross-platform.


More Info cut for time, Custom actions and downloadable material for this episode👇🏽

Instagram: iddqdmusic

🎧 My Music:

Chapters:
0:00 Why not Rewire?
0:42 Setting up a Virtual MIDI Bus
2:20 Sending MIDI out of REAPER
3:59 Receiving MIDI in Destination DAW
4:45 Setting up a Virtual Audio Interface
6:20 Setting up an Aggregate Audio Device
07:41 Routing External Audio into REAPER
08:38 Demonstration & Potential Issue
9:52 What's missing from our Setup?
11:07 Public Meltdown

[AntonovichHicksenbrau]

Thank you. I am a lifelong Midiot - This helped tremendously, .. great demonstration

[mathumphreys]

Another great tutorial. I had a similar huge latency issue when using ASIO4ALL with a new driver for my (Gen I) Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 to "aggregate" it with a new audio interface. The issue seemed to be the Focusrite driver so I had to change my setup a bit to get around it.

[oscaremusic]

This is great, thanks! I'd love to see the next one on clock sync please. I am using this setup just for a performance in ableton with a controller then recording the whole set with reaper. I don't like that the record buttons are wired together though, It would be best if reaper could just be on to record regardless of ableton's play controls. I was hopping not to need the flower dependency but I'll give it a try.

[thareeqroshan]

Yo awesome. because you asked to ask :p, please do put out the next video with the transport sync between DAW's. Is there way to sync DAW's using MTC or something ? for example pro tools allows you to sync multiple workstations together for large scale mixing. Someone told me that is one thing that is stopping post mixers from adopting Reaper for their workflow

[xxrounds]

I guess I don't need to waste any more time with getting Image-Line's standalone FL Studio VSTs to work in Logic when I can just use FL as a sound module haha

[Nightowl]

GREAT video! I’ve been trying for the past 7 years (on & off) to create the equivalent of a live-stage-use Korg Kronos Keyboard Workstation with REAPER on a high-powered tablet with a good USB audio interface. At first glance, it might seem like an effortless thing for a software as powerful and customizable as REAPER, unfortunately it’s not the case.
With the use of SWS extensions (snapshots, action markers…etc) and some scripts written by some smarter dudes than I, I’ve managed to get close. But there are a couple obstacles. Speed is the worst one. Any DAW will run rings around a keyboard workstation in terms of sonic ability, but that comes at the cost of loading time. 
In my band, I need to be able to stop one sequence/song, switch to another random sequence and start it in-time with my drummer often within the span of a single beat as we instantly mix from one song to another at random (not in a playlist) without stopping. Korg (and others I suspect) workstations are brilliant at this, the entirety of their sonic capability is loaded 100% into RAM and therefore instantly accessible at all times. This just isn’t the case with VST sample instrument playback no matter how fast your SSD is, no matter how small the sample size, just loading one instance of Kontakt in a snapshot takes more than enough time to derail such a quick transition.
Rewire offered a solution to this, I could keep often-used sample libraries permanently loaded in a second portable instance of REAPER acting as a sound module (similar to what you mentioned in this video) while tasking the primary instance of REAPER with playing the “sound module”, MIDI sequences, audio track playback, mixing….everything else. Your solution in this video looks like a viable alternative to Rewire but the round-trip latency would definitely be a problem, especially since it sounded like a lot more than 41ms, more like 410ms actually.
To make a long comment even longer, I am VERY interested in this kind of topic.

[joaommeirelles]

very nice! i've tried here and works great. saving templetes is important, though. :) ... other thing is, I manage to sync reaper and ableton really easy, just sending clock from reaper to ableton and using "ext" in ableton to be slave of reaper. clock sync and transport working great as well!

[Huginnm]

Inspiring. Because of these rapid fire MIDI tutorials, I started to hate the Piano roll less and less (lol) it also got me thinking if I can get my Audio interface's (Zoom R8) Drum pads to work as a tactile MIDI controller when working with beats instead of the Midi Keyboard. Problem is, the pads were designed as a standalone drum machine which triggers audio from its own sound bank, and while you can program some of its knobs and dials as a midi controller, the documentation says the drum pad doesn't work while being on the USB Interface mode. But doesn't its basic concept work the same? The pads have specific velocity sensitive signals which draws sounds from its own sound bank. Is it possible to program or emulate how the pad functions and turn that as my own drum machine? Sorry for the long post.

[NunoCabral]

Anyway to offset the clock so we can record on the grid in ableton??

[daniele_girotto]

this is awesome! as other users asked, i play everything through ableton using a Behringer XR-18 mixer as audio interface (it feeds the PA and the 2 different cue mixes while we play). it's all live real time looping and playing so we can't record it properly on multitrack and this thing could help me a lot. do you think that using soundflower (we're on mac) could solve my problem? i just need reaper to start recording every track in my ableton project and not interfere in any way with my workflow in Live 10. thanks a lot for the info anyways

[sleepisoptional]

ABSOLUTELY MAKE A VIDEO ABOUT SYNCING CLOCKS. so many things in max4live which would be fun in reaper. especially for glitch music. lots of wonderful science projecty stuff in ableton

[citadeloricks]

Also I am finding that if there is PDC in Reaper there is no compensation on the bus (or too much) and Live comes back late. Any thoughts?

[AlternativeKava]

Loved the vid, big help. Is there anyway to also get the articulations of the studio horns from logic to work?

[jakemonaco]

Been using rewire w Cubase and Ableton Live for years — has been a solid part of my workflow for scoring to Film/TV — The abandonment of rewire will switch things up quite a bit… I’m still looking for a solid way for Ableton to run in tandem with Cubase — typically, I do have tempo changes. I am more than happy to manually input, tempo and meter changes in both DAWs — have tried some MTC and LTC options but nothing solid — any insight is welcome! Thanks!

[lazykid]

well i'm syncing ableton and bitwig this way. Transport is triggered via ableton link. Dont know if reaper also supports ableton link

[RandomGamesHDPlay]

Thx for video! I have problem with LED feedback on Windows 10 when I using my midi controller XONE K2 mapped in the Ableton and Traktor 50/50. I using LoopMIDI and MIDI-OX for make it possible, but I can get LED feedback only from Ableton or Traktor. Can you help me?

[nectariosm]

I am very interested in this. I would like to just send clock to Live 11 and receive audio from it.
I like to use Live 11 Simpler/Sampler and some of its great plug ins.
I am not interested in sending MIDI from Reaper to Ableton, I just want to tightly sync them together, press play on Reaper/Ableton and both DAWs start playing.

I stopped using Reaper to make my own music as I use many hardware MIDI instruments and when setting a loop the MIDI that controls my hardware starts off fine and when it loops around, it goes off sync.

Enabling "Force project tempo/time signature changes to occur on whole samples" in Project Settings, forces my tempo to decimal points like 148.999...or 149.002 or whatever and then whatever long audio files are on the grid, they slowly drift off the grid down the like a few minutes later.

Its a shame cause Ableton or Logic do not suffer from this and makes Reaper unusable for making music. I just use it to master and mix other people's music and I have to use Ableton to produce my own.

[tauvholiik]

Is there any way to sync up variable tempos from Live 11 as the host that is set up to FOLLOW live guitar playing of which I also manually speed up and slow down the tempo with two foot pedals, one mapped for fine tuning and then synced up to Reaper as a slave Daw? Or does this method keep every DAW as a host DAW? I already use Rewire to slave sync FL Studio into Ableton as well as sync up multiple computers with Ableton's Link (EXT does not sync midi accurately). I also can use Rewire in Cakewalk by Bandlab with all 3 DAWs slaved to Cakewalk, but cakewalk cannot FOLLOW realtime tempo detection like Ableton 11, but CAN drag and drop a master audio track already recorded to map out variable tempo changes which I rarely use this technique as I want to manually adjust the tempo as I record my guitar in freeform style whereby the grid is no longer quantized but rather the grid snaps and follows realtime freeform improvisations based entirely upon the humanistic feeling approach that is akin to freeform jazz, but in a cinematic symphonic electronic atmospheric black/death metal fused with progressive thrash jazz.

Reaper will still use both 32 and 64 bit plugins while being slaved, unlike Unableton which disables plugins while being slaved and does not support 32bit plugins unless JBridge or other hosting plugin that runs any other plugin of which I have yet to use. Reaper has some other benefits that Ableton cannot do, but I need Ableton to remain the host DAW and master clock. I already use Live and FL with Rewire AND linked to 5 simultaneous computers each with at least 18 analog inputs with a total of 108 analog inputs through 9 usb/firewire interfaces and 3 lightpipe interfaces to which routes and tracks simultaneously ALL of my outboard gear, 12 guitar pedalboards and 9 rackmount effects, with 3 PC's each using one Akai APC40 and the other two each with a basic Novation Launchpad. None of the analog inputs are used for mic'ing drums or guitar cabinets as I use both midi plugins and a midi drum kit but rather for mixing everything together in live recordings with multiple layers of greatly varying guitar distortion techniques from super clean to the heaviest possible wall of noise that blends together with an infinite array of guitar tones possible at my finger tips that are also automated non-destructively in each DAW. My setup allows the recording engineer to mix on the fly as part of the live performance without bouncing any tracks or any additional post production. This is still a work in progress as I am still setting up each computer of which I have two more to do.

I want to start learning Reaper and perhaps I will not have to buy two more Ableton licenses if I can figure out all of Reapers capabilities, but for now, Reaper must not be the master host DAW unless it Link up to Ableton's 11 Link and Follow functionality.

[gibsonbrent]

Can you do this with with two different computers?

[rafalvarezsevilla]

i have an off topic question, today i tried sidechaining two vocals against each other for a podcast, so when one person is talking, the roomsound of the other microphone gets ducked, and the same thing on the channel of the other person. however, reaper doesn't seem to allow two channels sending into each other, although the sidechain channels 3/4 on both audio tracks are not played back anyways... do you have any idea how to fix this or do we have to recode reaper? =D