ReWire (again?)

[klushund]

Yes! like a charm! but Reaper is the master. Not a bad thing imo.

So you managed to get it working stable? I tried different things but took Cubase finally. -- and then changed to Sibelius (which is mighty but not intuitive, I think; and has only one Rewire-Channel).
Could you please give a short description of your setup? Maybe I can get my setup right?

[elerouxx]

So you managed to get it working stable? I tried different things but took Cubase finally. -- and then changed to Sibelius (which is mighty but not intuitive, I think; and has only one Rewire-Channel).
Could you please give a short description of your setup? Maybe I can get my setup right?

It's easy.

Once you have both Notion and Reaper installed, and ReWire turned on in both (it's on by default in Reaper), you just open Reaper first, add a Virtual Instrument on a track and select ReWire: Notion from the list. You will have a new track with the Notion input.

Then you open Notion and it will detect Reaper as Rewire master. From then on you can play the score from any point in either Notion or Reaper. If you aren't getting sound from the notion track, you should try arming the track for recording and/or turning on forced monitoring. But check if you are getting sound from Reaper, by turning on the metronome for example.

I used the metronome in Reaper and a simple woodblock on every beat in Notion to check the sync, regarding that both had the same time signature. I observed that Notion was slightly behind, but I am sure there's a way to sync it better somewhere. For the time being, the ASIO4ALL drivers work much better than the other options, and reduce the lag to almost nothing. (I am on Windows btw).

Playing a video file in Reaper is the easiest thing in the world. Just drag the video inside Reaper and it will create a new track with the audio waveform. Then you can open the 'video player' window from the menu or ctrl-shift-v.

Time markings in Notion will be ignored and tempo will be handled by reaper, which in my opinion is much more consistent when working for film. You can add the same tempo changes in notion just for compositional reference and for working on the soundtrack on notion alone without Reaper turned on.

In this setup I see Notion as the big orchestra that sits among other instruments, voices and effects that can be added together in Reaper. Great if you want to use pianoroll to compose for certain instruments (in parallell to those inside Notion).

Plus, reaper is really affordable and fits in less than 10MB disk space. It's amazingly complete. I guess many parts of the UI are economic, leaving the typical cool looking interface for the main screen only. (As opposite from most DAWs in which the cool but memory hungry knobs and gadgets became a must).

[pcartwright]

Hmmm... Does Reaper and Notion stay in synch with tempo changes (faster and slower)? This is what prevented me from using Notion with rewire in previous projects.

[elerouxx]

You can introduce tempo changes anytime in Reaper, and Notion will follow. Not the other way - time markings in Notion are ignored. This is an expected behavior between rewire master and slave.

I've tried several combinations. I got beat by beat syncronization.

[ulrik]

You can introduce tempo changes anytime in Reaper, and Notion will follow. Not the other way - time markings in Notion are ignored. This is an expected behavior between rewire master and slave.

I've tried several combinations. I got beat by beat syncronization.

Tempo changes from the slave is supposed to work with Reaper as master and Notion as slave, there is an option in reaper where you can allow Reaper to sync to the slaves tempo changes, however it is not working with Notion as slave, so for my purpose it is pretty useless because I would like Notion to set the tempo changes.
I have filed this behavior as a bug, both to the reaper team and to the Notion team but nothing has happened, I really hope this issue will be fixed with Notion 4.

I'm sorry if I went a little off topic.

[elerouxx]

You can introduce tempo changes anytime in Reaper, and Notion will follow. Not the other way - time markings in Notion are ignored. This is an expected behavior between rewire master and slave.

I've tried several combinations. I got beat by beat syncronization.

Tempo changes from the slave is supposed to work with Reaper as master and Notion as slave, there is an option in reaper where you can allow Reaper to sync to the slaves tempo changes, however it is not working with Notion as slave, so for my purpose it is pretty useless because I would like Notion to set the tempo changes.
I have filed this behavior as a bug, both to the reaper team and to the Notion team but nothing has happened, I really hope this issue will be fixed with Notion 4.

I'm sorry if I went a little off topic.

In no way you are out of topic. I'd love to sort this out as far as possible and the more you help, better.
I just started messing around on Reaper yesterday so I guess there's a lot to be discovered.

I found this option called 'ReWire Slave settings' in Reaper, either in Project Settings, or in Preferences (which sets default Project Settings). Is this you are talking about?

But I am guessing this only sets how REAPER behaves as a slave. Thus, you can tell Reaper to 'ignore tempo change notifications from master'. But you can't tell Notion to ignore tempo change from Master, in this case, Reaper. Notion has no options but turning rewire on or off.

I tried to use Rewire as a slave but it just doesn't go. These settings aren't useful.

I am experiencing very ocasional flaws in the playback (i.e. notion misses a beat, or plays very slightly lagged all along). But these dissappear when starting over. I am looking now for a way to manually compensate lag/latency, but didnt found it yet. Ableton Live, for instance, has the ability to set a manual delay, positive or negative, to any track. That would be very useful here.

[pcartwright]

Interesting. I never experienced this kind of success with Reaper and Notuon. I'll have to give it another try.

[elerouxx]

Well, there might be some issues, but it's the best setup I got so far.

Today I tried rendering to a wav file. I see Notion misses some notes sometimes. Also, it seems that full speed offline rendering doesn't work fine. Online rendering is better than 1x speed offline render too. I'll mess a little more with the toys and post some audio in mp3.

[elerouxx]

Okay, this is a short sync test. Panned to the right channel, there's a free VSTi (Revitar2 guitar), inserted inside Reaper and manually written notes for each beat, like a metronome. Panned to the left, Notion's arrangement which consists on: the free VST instrument 'Surface', notion3's Claves, GPO4 Piano, and miroslav Tambourines (decided to pick one of each flavor of virtual instruments I use).

rewired_offline_1x.mp3

(404.8 KiB) Downloaded 334 times

The tempos were changed inside Reaper.

4/4 100bpm (1 measure)
120bmp (1 measure)
240bmp (2 measures)
240bpm (2 measures) that gradually goes to the next marker which is:
90bpm (1 measure)
6/8 at 100 bpm (2 measures) accelerating to:
4/4 at 200 bpm (2 measures) slowing down to:
100 bpm (1 measure and a half)
300 bpm starting in the middle of a measure. Notion didn't sync right in this case. I guess tempo alterations have to be done in the measure 1st beat.


I noticed some lack of sync but I'm still analyzing the setup. I think it's workable.
I had to render at normal speed, off or online. In full speed offline rendering, Notion plays only a few notes. But in sync! lol.

Ok, your turn guys

[elerouxx]

Now I did the same experience with Ableton Live, and really, it is absolutely in sync, even with drastic accelerandos and rallentandos. Furthermore, Ableton has this 'DELAY' among the track controls, in milliseconds, so you can fine tune the sync. Oh but nothing's perfect, we go back to the problem that you can't start playing anywere from Notion. The 'cursor' only obbeys the Ableton timeline.

AND... a new problem I got. I just wasn't able to render the Notion track from inside Ableton. In Reaper, the 'bouncing' can be done in 1x offline (or 1x online) modes, which work, but the Full Speed render scrambles the Notion part. Ableton Live doesn't have 1x or offline mode render, so... I guess this is the problem.

The good news is... none

Ok, your turn guys

...oh well, before you take this bad, I know this has been done for years now, and for sure Notion has to solve the problems with Rewire on their side. I'm just looking for a way to get started right away, and so far Reaper is the only thing than worked... let's say, 80% well.