Adjusting Recording Latency (Loopback Test) in REAPER

[Music] hi i'm kenny joya welcome to another one of my tutorials in this video i'm going to show you how to adjust recording latency using a loopback test in reaper now the way recording audio works in reaper or any daw the sound comes in through a mic or line input on your audio interface then it goes into your computer into reaper then back out your audio interface and into your speakers or headphones and the time it takes to do all that is what's known as latency and reaper will compensate for that and move our recorded audio earlier to keep it in time with our other tracks automatically and the number reaper uses is based on what our audio interface driver reports but as you'll see the number isn't always correct in fact i have five interfaces here and none of them are correct so let's check it together and adjust for it for your interface so the first thing we're going to do is go up here and choose the audio device settings now i'm using a mac so i'll choose my interface right here my block size over here which is going to determine how much latency i have if i'm using a soil computer i'll set this to a higher number or if i'm using a faster computer that can keep up without glitching i would set this number a bit lower 128 is a pretty good setting to keep our latency low so i'm going to start with this and if you're using a pc you're going to see a window that looks like this you'll set the audio system to asio and adjust the latency in the asio configuration right here or you could adjust it with request block size over here i only mention this because when we readjust the recording latency it can vary depending on the setting we set here although for my interfaces it didn't just setting it once worked with any block size or latency i selected but it's a good idea to start with the setting you use the most now let's go down to the recording tab we can see right here by default user audio driver reported latency is turned on so reaper is going to move our items by the reported latency of our interface or drivers to be in time with the rest of our tracks in our project so what we hear when we perform will be what we hear when we play back but like i said before a lot of times that reported latency will be wrong so let's turn this option off for now and see what the actual recording latency is i've set up a project here with a kick drum on this jack and it sounds like this we can really use any sample you prefer but the waveform on a kick sample tends to make it easier to see if our tracks line up so now we're going to perform a loopback test we record from this track to another and the easiest way i found to do this is to simply connect the output of our headphones to the line input of our audio interface and that'll create a loopback or loopback test so i'm going to create another track right here let's right click on the record button and turn off monitor input this way reaper won't feedback as we record from this track into this track so now we're going to record set our input where we plug the headphone output into i chose input 2 and now we'll check the recording level on our input make sure we turn up the headphone output and the line input on our interface and we can see we have level right here try to make it about the same as over here looks pretty good now let's record and see the result and we can see right now if we zoom in our recording is at a time compared to this track so created a delay but if you remember we turned the setting off so we should see that latency let's zoom in to the spot right here as much as possible put our cursor right where it crosses are zero axis and let's put a marker right there type m and let's zoom out and go to the same spot on this track right here where it crosses the horizontal zero marker put a cursor there type m and that puts a marker right there now we can double click in the space between the two markers and that creates a time selection showing us the delay from this track to this one that's the latency using our audio interface then we can right click in the ruler and switch it to be samples then we could look right over here and see the length of our time selection in samples on my interface it's 563 samples that's the latency using my audio interface but now let's try it where reaper adjusts it automatically let's delete this and the second marker we can leave the first marker because we could use it again go back to our preferences and now let's turn on use audio driver reported latency during recording so now reaper is going to adjust for the recorded latency by the reported amount it's going to record and now we can see it looks a lot better but in my system like i said before it's not perfect and if it's perfect on your system as you zoom all the way in then your system is fine you don't need to readjust it any further but my system looks like this so let's fix it manually let's zoom in again so that same spot put our cursor right here type m to create a marker zoom out double click and we can see it's off by 70 samples that's the difference between what my interface is reporting to reaper and what the actual latency is so once again let's delete this audio and this marker and now let's go back to our preferences and readjust it right over here on the input manual offset we're still going to leave this on but we're going to add to it over here so for me it's 70 of course for you it'll probably be different hit okay and now if we record it it should be perfectly aligned with this track let's try it zoom in and we can see the same point over here aligns with that same point over here so it's perfect and just to make sure it's going to work with any setting go back to our preferences on the device let's change the request block size to be smaller let's try 64 going to record with that setting it's still perfect let's change it to 32 try it again still perfect and if we go higher to 512 that's still in time as well let's do one more 1024 record and it winds up this track to this track perfectly based on my system which is off by 70 samples right here like i said yours will probably be a bit different but if we readjust it over here along with it being set automatically it should be perfectly in time from your input to your output keeping everything in line with the other tracks in your project so that's pretty much it that's adjusting recording latency using a loopback test in reaper i hope you learned something hope you can use it and i'll see you next time thanks [Music]

Channel: REAPER Mania

Views: 89,656

Keywords:

Id: HZcXZ9kEJbY

Length: 9min 40sec (580 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020