Reaper/Live users have an MPE workaround!

[Machinesworking]

OK so Reaper ReWired into Live 10 as a Slave allows the hosting of VSTi's and recording of MIDI into it's own timeline!
BAM! There's a solid workaround for MPE support for now, plus Reaper is about twice as efficient as Live in terms of CPU use, so as a host for VSTi's it's also a solid choice!

I mostly have used Live as a slave to Reaper but this might be even better, I definitely prefer lives warping to Reapers in terms of ease of use. and Session View! When an idea is just a loop to start with Session View is where I would rather be to try out different parts. Curious as to what other functions of Reaper that Live currently doesn't have can be used rewired!

[stoersignal]

thx for the tip

[Machinesworking]

Just to clarify, What I did was set Reaper as a rewire slave to Live, just a stereo audio track into Live.
Then luckily enough Reaper can still use the Roli Seaboard Block here as a MIDI controller so set that track to Roli all inputs and you can record MIDI into Reaper while the timeline plays in Live. Wonder if you can use Reapers bounce to circumvent recording audio in real time in Live to port the final products?

[nathannn]

Nice tip. Out of curriosity, how long have you been using Reaper? I decided to give it a tenth chance about a year ago and I finally clicked with it. It took a while to set it up how I like it, but after setting it up I have been using it almost as much as Live.

[kitekrazy]

Nice tip. Out of curriosity, how long have you been using Reaper? I decided to give it a tenth chance about a year ago and I finally clicked with it. It took a while to set it up how I like it, but after setting it up I have been using it almost as much as Live.

There's a lot more support on how to use Reaper than when it came out. It's very deep but for some things I like Live's layout. If finances become the major issue for DAWs Reaper would be the choice.

[Machinesworking]

Nice tip. Out of curriosity, how long have you been using Reaper? I decided to give it a tenth chance about a year ago and I finally clicked with it. It took a while to set it up how I like it, but after setting it up I have been using it almost as much as Live.

Same time frame and story basically. Was looking at going back to Logic for MPE support, ( left at 8 ), bought it even, then demoed Reaper again and finally started liking it. Mostly as a Mac user, the key commands are all sorts of fucked up, but you can change even the mouse behavior, and once I could option/alt click drag to copy a note in the MIDI editor, change the behavior to where it's a double click to create a note, and click drag selects notes etc. it started to make sense.

I use it more than Live at this point. Both Digital Performer and Live are not MPE compatible, plus the CPU hit is literally on my system: 8 instances of Diva in divine mode in Live, 11 instances in DP, and 13 in Reaper. Probably never give up Live or DP 100% but Reaper is a blast once you get beyond the 100,000 choices you don't need and awkward ugly GUI and UX it comes with out of the box.

[pottering]

Reaper uses "Predictive Rendering", which adds extra "smart" buffer size to Reaper's processing. It is a pretty large buffer, I think it defaults to 50 ms (equivalent to 2200+ samples of buffer, in 44.1 KHz). It does add to the overall latency, I think the "smartness" is to disable the extra buffer with VSTs in a track the user is currently playing/recording MIDI real-time.

You may want to try to increasing Live's "dumb" buffer to a similar huge 2200+ samples buffer. Maybe "Reduced Latency When Monitoring" helps faking the "smartness" too, not sure.

Raising the buffer to deal with CPU is pretty normal with all DAWs IMO.

Real smart of Reaper to do it "automagically" though.

[Machinesworking]

Reaper uses "Predictive Rendering", which adds extra "smart" buffer size to Reaper's processing. It is a pretty large buffer, I think it defaults to 50 ms (equivalent to 2200+ samples of buffer, in 44.1 KHz). It does add to the overall latency, I think the "smartness" is to disable the extra buffer with VSTs in a track the user is currently playing/recording MIDI real-time.

You may want to try to increasing Live's "dumb" buffer to a similar huge 2200+ samples buffer. Maybe "Reduced Latency When Monitoring" helps faking the "smartness" too, not sure.

Raising the buffer to deal with CPU is pretty normal with all DAWs IMO.

Real smart of Reaper to do it "automagically" though.

Logic and DP etc. also do this, even Live does this. Unarmed tracks are given a huge buffer.
Live and other DAWs like Bitwig error on the side of caution though as far as you the user changing something, firing Scenes, Clips, MIDI monitoring everything a control surface is using etc. All this takes more CPU than the way other DAWs work.

I will say though Reaper is relatively glitch free like Live when it comes to that, Live losing 45% of it's CPU power is probably more due to the guy from Reaper being a brutally lean coder, in interviews that's a huge thing to him.