Connecting The Behringer XR18 To Reaper - Settings for X-Air and Reaper w Virtual Soundcheck Option.

hello again and welcome back to the channel this episode is all about connecting the behringer xr18 to reaper there are several good reasons why you might want to do this i originally did this video a few months back with a backing track but several people asked me to remove the backing track so that's what i've done and i've re-edited the video while i was at it as always please like and subscribe and click those affiliate links to help support the channel so let's get started first we'll set up the behringer you'll need to hop on the web and head on over to the behringer website to download some software you'll want to download the latest x air edit software currently that is version 1.5 while on the behringer site i would go ahead and download the latest firmware that way you'll have it ready to load if your ex air is on older firmware pc users will have to download and install drivers i installed the most recent driver first but then i needed to install the older driver as well to make things work correctly so you might have to as well so download and install the drivers and also install the x air edit software all right now we need to connect the hardware the usb cable will be for reaper to talk to the xr18 and the cat5 cable will be for the x air edit software to talk to the xr now you're ready to load the x air edit software and it should look like this now the first thing you'll want to do is go to the setup button at the top right click the setup button to bring up the setup window you should see the xr18 listed in the left side of the window you'll want to click that if it is not there make sure your ethernet cable is not connected to the alternet port it should be in the remote port and the switch by the port should be in the ethernet position once you've highlighted the xr click connect you'll have to choose mixer to pc or pc to mixer you'll want to choose mixer to pc the software will load the last scene in the mixer in my case this is my show file scene from tracking a live band you probably don't want to lose the last show you had in the console so at this point click save save a scene come up with a name for the show and save it which will save it to this computer if it's a new mixer there won't be a scene to save so you can skip this step as soon as this part is completed we need to go back to setup for another setting change click the setup button to bring up the setup window again mouse over to the audio midi tab look at the clock rate line you have the two choices of 48k and 44.1 you can choose either one but reaper will need to have the same clock setting as this so let's just use 48k and then after that we're ready to set up our routing this time we'll want to mouse over to the in out button at the top right let's first mouse over to the input tab and check everything here everything should be patched one to one on the grid just as you see here now mouse over to the usb returns everything should be one to one just like you see here except for the aux left and right which will go to 17 and 18 in the same row next we'll mouse over to the usb sends there are some options here which you can see the legend at the bottom showing you what each one of these colors represent for recording purposes you generally want the red ring and that's what's shown here once again it's all one to one if for some reason yours doesn't have the red ring right click on each one of the graphs and that'll give you an option to change that we can skip alternet and mouse over to aux out once again you have a legend at the bottom to show you options and in this case you're going to want the blue ring for post fader this is actually the typical default setup and it should be fine and lastly on this page we need to mouse over to the main out tab typically it should look just like this you check these settings we can close out of this and then we'll go back to the main mixer page i'm going to assume some of the ox hats you're going to use for monitors whether in the studio for headphone amplifiers or actually live work on stage so let's make sure they're set up for that mouse over on the mixer and choose any channel then on the top of the screen mouse over to sends and choose that make sure the globe is highlighted where it says changes affect all channels it should be blue and not grayed out any of the six outputs that you want to be monitor sends can't be post fader or sub group they can be pre-fader post eq or pre-eq i have all six buses set as monitor outs and i've made them all pre-eq since the globe is blue that tells us that all those changes will be applied to every channel now we can go back to the main mixer page and we're gonna have to take one last look at the routing so we need to click the in out again what we want to look at here is the usb returns and the usb sends so we'll take a look at usb returns first behringer has given us some handy buttons that we need to learn about when you're doing a band recording you want to click the off analog button and load that preset that makes sure that all the mixer channels are getting their signal from the preamp and not the usb input in the usb sends tab this gives you a couple quick options this allows you to quickly send the left and right to track 17 and 18. for a live show this would give you 16 channels of individual tracks plus a left and a right track of your complete mix or with just the press of a button you can switch back to channels 1 through 18 all being individual tracks if you want to show mix that's a quick way to do it what we have at this point is we have everything ready in the xr to be able to send a signal to your daw we also have it set up so you can bring a two-track mix back from the daw or you can bring individual tracks from the daw back into the behringer and even do a virtual sound check now let's move on to the next part of the process and that is setting up reaper the first thing we need to do is connect your xr18 to your reaper computer with usb and pc users will need the reaper usb drivers installed on the reaper computer let's get started in reaper mouse over to options and click it scroll all the way down to preferences and click that on the left side highlight device under audio open the audio system drop down choose asio in the asio drop down you should see the x18 listed so choose that enable input should be checked the first drop down should be one in one the second drop down should be 18 and 18 output range one out one last 18 out 18 check request sample rate in the first video we set the xr at 48k so we need 48 000 here block size 256. i left the bottom line checked as the default now click ok now let's build our tracks mouse up to the left side to the track area right click and choose insert multiple tracks in the drop down you can actually type in 18 put whatever name you want in the name area i'm just going to type track and then click ok this will give us our 18 tracks each track will be named track 1 track 2 track 3 track 4 all the way to track 18. let's scroll our tracks and get to track number one if you left click in the meter section you can choose the xr18 preamp channel let's just go one to one so track one is one track two will be two track three will be three track four will be four all the way to track 18 which will be 18. at this point you should be able to get signal from the xr18 into reaper connect a mic into input 1 on the xr18 and we can check this on the track and check for signal testing one two three four test test test all right now we can move the mic to another channel on the xr18 and it should come up in the corresponding track here in this case track two testing one two three four test test test at this point if your plan is to record a show or session on this computer then bring the tracks or the computer back to your studio and connect to a different audio interface then you're effectively finished this will be all you need to do on the other hand let's say you want to do something like a virtual sound check where you're bringing back all 18 tracks from reaper into the xr18 then it's going to take some more settings inside of reaper reaper by default only sends two channels of output which is from its master the left and right output to whatever audio interface it's connected to alright let's take a look at reaper again this first step is only necessary for virtual sound checks in cases where you want to mix all 18 tracks inside the xr18 in that case click the routing button on the master section of reaper mouse down to the very bottom of the tab and you'll see a drop down choose none now close the window reaper will no longer output a left right mix now we need to sign the routing of the track outputs individually starting with track one click the routing button mouse down to add new hardware output choose one out one close that window now we'll do the same with the routing button on track two add new hardware output two out two close now the routing button on track three add new hardware output three out three do the same thing for all 18 tracks all the way to 18 out 18. depending on the reaper theme that you're using the routing buttons could look different they could even be in different locations including on the tracks themselves in any case the routing buttons will work the same reaper does offer another way to do this and that is through the routing matrix so let's take a look at that mouse up to view click it scroll down to routing matrix and click it this will give us a matrix to work from follow the master section across to out one and click it and again you'll want to choose none in the window that comes up the track numbers are on the left of the graph and as you come across each line you'll be able to see the outputs on track one click in the box for out one on track two click in the box for out two on track three click in the box for out three continue on one to one until you get to track 18 and out 18. now reaper will feed 18 tracks individually into the 18 inputs of the xr18 i would suggest saving this as a template mouse over to file click it mouse down the project templates choose save project as template and name it and save it you can now load this xr18 template anytime you start a new project with the xr18 in fact besides these basic settings you could also name the tracks and even color code the tracks even match the xr18 this is a quick look at my reaper template for the xr18 this basically matches my track colors and track names in the x air edit program speaking of the x air edit program let's take a quick look now that we've set everything up when you're ready to record a show or session click the in out button and mouse over to usb returns for recording the show or session mouse over to the off analog button hit it tell it okay and that now quickly sends all 18 channels of the xr18 to reaper when you're ready to play the tracks back through reaper go to the usb returns and now click the channel 1 through 16 button now click ok to load it that sets all 18 inputs of the xr18 to take their signal from the usb input and that should be the 18 tracks from the daw even if you leave the default reaper routing in place doing your mix down and reaper using the xr18 interface to feed your studio monitors you'll still use the same x air edit usb return presets the default reaper routing will have the master output the left right feeding the behringer xr18 into channel 1 and channel 2. that is important to remember if you skip a step or you try and do something differently so chapter 3 is based on a viewer question the viewer wanted to know if there was a quick way to hear what he had just recorded without having to go into the xr18 routing settings this way is not only good for that but also if you're mixing in reaper but you're outputting your signal from reaper into your xr18 and your xr18 is what then goes out to your studio monitors or your headphones for mixing then this is the simple way to do that as well okay so let's take a look at reaper mouse down to the master section and click on the routing button we want to bring up the routing window click on the add new hardware drop down choose the line that says 17. out 17 out 18. that is all you need to do on the routing tab here and now you can close out of this everything else we did in reaper in the previous chapters can still stay exactly the same all of reaper's tracks are routed to the master section of reaper and we just assigned the master section of reaper to output on channel 17 and channel 18. now we need to take a look inside the xr 18 in the x air edit software and make one change so that the xr18 will be listening to 17 and 18 to hear these tracks coming back from reaper channel 17 and channel 18 are the aux in on the xr18 so on the x air edit software click on the aux in channel mouse over to the input tab and click it at the top of the screen look at the channel source line you want to make sure that usb is the button that's highlighted again usb is the button that you want highlighted here that's telling the xr18 in channel 17 and 18 the aux in channel to take its signal from usb and usb in this case is coming from reaper which is the master outs of reaper feeding down 17 and 18 like we set up earlier with the usb button engaged you can save this scene as your recording scene to have for your recording baseline scene so that the usb is always set on channel 17 and 18 the oxen channel bringing the ox in fader up on the xr18 will allow whatever reaper's plane to come out of your xr18 speakers which could be your studio monitors or your headphones the only caveat here is to remember when you go back into record mode you either need to mute the aux in channel or you need to bring that fader all the way down other than this change you'll still use your usb routing for the behringer like we discussed in the first chapter for your recording and your playback i'm going to leave a link here for setting up the xr18 for monitors because that information will apply whether it's on stage or in the studio and i'll put a few more related links at the end of this video this is a long video so thanks for sticking with it please like and subscribe click the affiliate links in the text down below and i will see you next time you

Channel: Alan Hamilton Audio

Views: 12,617

Keywords: mr18 to reaper, X Air to Reaper, xr18 to reaper, XR18 recording reaper, xr18 reaper setup, Reaper to xr18, Connect Midas to Reaper, How to connect XR18 to reaper, how to connect behringer xr18 to reaper, connecting reaper to behringer, Connect Reaper to Behringer, connect behringer to reaper, x32 to reaper, xR18 USB recording, XR18 audio interface, x air xr18 tutorial, Behringer X32, Reaper Tutorial, virtual soundcheck, Behringer recording, church audio setup, home studio

Id: xYmJGyroVe0

Length: 16min 26sec (986 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021