Weird rendering issue with Reaper and 32bit plugin

[Drew Stephenson]

TL:DR a 32bit hammond plugin is being weirdly down-tuned when I render a project in Reaper, any ideas?

More info:
In today's episode of 'my computer is trying to drive me insane' I have a new issue and a couple of requests of the general knowledge bank please.

For ages I have used the Keyzone Classic plugin for Hammond duties. I've kept the 32bit version running as the new, 64bit one doesn't have the Hammond option.

This is my 'go to' Hammond choice and I tell you this because until today it has been working fine on loads of projects, including ones I'm still working on.
But today one project has decided it does not want to play ball.
It sounds absolutely fine when playing back in the project, but when it renders that plugin (and that alone) has been detuned and sounds as horrible as you'd expect.
I have not updated Reaper since 6.82 came out and I have not updated that plugin in years.
CPU usage is not going above mid-40% and memory usage is generally just over halfway.

So, two questions:
1) Any ideas as to why this might be happening (and whether it will now start happening with any other projects that also use it?)
2) Does anyone have any recommendations for cheap/free Hammond VSTs that I can use to finish off this album if this has corrupted irredeemably?

[MOF]

Can you bounce the output of the whole track which is ‘playing normally’ back into the computer?
Is the render realtime or faster than that?

[Wonks]

Is it going through another plugin e.g. a Leslie plug? Or if an internal Leslie, does it render OK if the Leslie is turned off?

Otherwise a recent OS update could possibly have affected the way an old plugin works.

[The Elf]

Happy to render with my XK5 for you if you export the MIDI parts to me.

[tea for two]

If you bounce down just one track in the song with that plugin, whilst still in the project, ie.not export, does it still do a wobbly.

2) Does anyone have any recommendations for cheap/free Hammond VSTs that I can use to finish off this album if this has corrupted irredeemably?

https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2020/0 ... hanon-b70/
Hanon B70 sounds pretty alrighty it's free. There's a vid of it near the bottom. Here's the download page B70 is at the bottom. https://lostin70s.com/shop/

[RichardT]

Plugins often use different data streaming methods when run live and run in rendering mode. So they definitely can behave differently in the two cases.

Using the wrong sampling rate somewhere in the process can result on this kind of detuning. Is the detuning of the order of a semitone? That’s roughly the difference caused by 44 / 48 errors.

[Wonks]

Could it be related to your weird buffering latency issues?

[Wonks]

And is this PC or Mac? I forget what you use.

[Drew Stephenson]

Thank you all, good questions and suggestions.

Can you bounce the output of the whole track which is ‘playing normally’ back into the computer?

As in render it into a stereo file in the project? I shall try this and see what happens.

Is the render realtime or faster than that?

Rendering is set for real time (Full Speed Offline is the actual setting) but is actually happening at 0.7x that. It also appears to be happening in a very stuttered approach, i.e. 20 secs ish will show on the progress bar, then it'll pause, then another 20 secs or so.

Is it going through another plugin e.g. a Leslie plug? Or if an internal Leslie, does it render OK if the Leslie is turned off?

It is. I shall try turning that off.

Otherwise a recent OS update could possibly have affected the way an old plugin works.

Always a possibility with Microsoft being helpful...

Happy to render with my XK5 for you if you export the MIDI parts to me.

Thank you, much appreciated. I may take you up on that if I can't make any progress with these suggestions.

If you bounce down just one track in the song with that plugin, whilst still in the project, ie.not export, does it still do a wobbly.

Will give that a go.

https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2020/0 ... hanon-b70/
Hanon B70 sounds pretty alrighty it's free. There's a vid of it near the bottom. Here's the download page B70 is at the bottom. https://lostin70s.com/shop/

Thank you, bookmarked.

Plugins often use different data streaming methods when run live and run in rendering mode. So they definitely can behave differently in the two cases.

Makes sense but I don't think I've changed anything that could prompt this. However I'll go back to the latency thread and check I've not flicked any other switches.

Using the wrong sampling rate somewhere in the process can result on this kind of detuning. Is the detuning of the order of a semitone? That’s roughly the difference caused by 44 / 48 errors.

To my ears is sounds like a greater downtune than that, but also I'm working in 44.1 anyway so it'd have to be going down to 32k - which would be very weird.

Could it be related to your weird buffering latency issues?

It could be, I'm going to double check I've not accidentally ballsed something else up whilst looking at that.

And is this PC or Mac? I forget what you use.

PC. I blame Bill Gates for everything.

Thank you all, will report back in due course.

[James Perrett]

Rendering is set for real time (Full Speed Offline is the actual setting)

That's not what I'd call real time. Try a 1X Offline or an Online render.

Your alternative best bet is to try freezing that track (which turns the track into an audio file with all effects applied) before rendering.

Freezing tracks that use high CPU plug-ins would also help with your latency issues. The other thing is to avoid using plug-ins on the master bus if possible because they can slow things down more than using the same plug-in on a track. I think using folders would be a better alternative if you need a plug-in on more than one track.

[Drew Stephenson]

That's not what I'd call real time. Try a 1X Offline or an Online render.

I assumed an offline render would use less oomph than an online one, especially if it's struggling to manage doing it a full speed.
However I shall try that now.

Your alternative best bet is to try freezing that track (which turns the track into an audio file with all effects applied) before rendering.

I shall do that next.

Freezing tracks that use high CPU plug-ins would also help with your latency issues.

What do we consider as high CPU for a track? The stand-out high use ones tend to be my reverb tracks and freezing them will presumably result in them not actually reflecting any subsequent changes in the mix until they are un-frozen and re-frozen again.
All of which is something of a hassle when I'm not reaching 50% CPU usage and it used to work without doing this.

[James Perrett]

What reverb are you using? Are you using reverb busses?

I've just checked on a mix that I'm working on and the convolution reverb tracks are each using just over 1% CPU (2nd gen mobile i7) with a 96KHz sampling rate. These have a Max FFT of 16384 and the ZL and LL boxes are ticked.

The other processor hogs on that project are old Synthedit based 32 bit plug-ins.

[Drew Stephenson]

Main reverb is Clearmountains Spaces (Apogee) - which is on its own track and receives the sends from my main 8 bus tracks. That's ticking along at around 1.5% CPU
I've got Audio Things Texture in its reverb setting on the acoustic guitar, that's taking about 1%.
And SoundToys Little Plate that's also running around the same level.

Quite a few other tracks running between 1% and 2% and I do have quite a few plugins on the Master because I mix into them after a certain point in the project. That's running at about 3%.

[Drew Stephenson]

OK, tried all suggested changes with no luck, except using the freeze track option.
This behaved very weirdly though. For those that don't use Reaper, when you freeze a track in place it does a little render process and gives you the usual render screen with a waveform building as it goes.
When I froze this track it did the stuttered effect that I mentioned with the overall rendering, doing it in sort 20 second chunks, but this time it was reporting the track as going massively into the red, by up to 7.5dB, at each of these 'stutter points'.
I was expecting the resultant output to be unusable but it was actually fine with no sign of any clipping or glitches.
I would post an image but imgur appears to be down at the moment.

[Drew Stephenson]

Success!
I have re-downloaded and installed both the latest focusrite drivers (I had them anyway but what the heck?) and the 6.83 version of Reaper (I'd missed that update) and things are now functioning properly.

However it's clearly time to retire my old 32 bit organ so I've also grabbed the Hanon B70 that TFT suggested.

Thank you all for the advice and suggestions.

I'll start a separate thread to bitch about the low output from my WA-87 R2...

[Wonks]

If your organ’s in 32 bits, you definitely need professional help!

[Martin Walker]

Success!
I have re-downloaded and installed both the latest focusrite drivers (I had them anyway but what the heck?) and the 6.83 version of Reaper (I'd missed that update) and things are now functioning properly.

Hooray!

One possibly relevant point though - when Reaper 7 came out I immediately thought as a Reaper 6 owner that I'm perfectly happy with the latter, but then discovered that v6 owners get a free update to v7, so there's no need to stick with 6.83

[Drew Stephenson]

Hooray!

One possibly relevant point though - when Reaper 7 came out I immediately thought as a Reaper 6 owner that I'm perfectly happy with the latter, but then discovered that v6 owners get a free update to v7, so there's no need to stick with 6.83

Yes and no. You get one major version upgrade and all the interim minor upgrades in your purchase. So if you bought at v6.01 you can upgrade until the final 7.xx version. I bought in at 5.xx so 6.83 is the last I can get before upgrading.
I will probably do that next year but not before finishing off this album.

[Sam Spoons]

I still have a licensed version of Reaper V5 on the studio Mac Pro and haven't upgraded as it does what I need (my previous license was for V4 so doesn't extend beyond V5.99) but I'm teetering on the cusp of upgrading to V7*, can anybody point to any significant improvements, given that I use it mostly as a 'digital tape recorder'?

* I didn't go for V6 as they had switched a couple of controls around on the transport bar and I had got used to the way they were. I have a V6 demo on the MBP which I revisit every so often so have got used to the changes a little.

[James Perrett]

I'm teetering on the cusp of upgrading to V7*, can anybody point to any significant improvements, given that I use it mostly as a 'digital tape recorder'?

From my point of view there were some useful upgrades during the lifetime of V6 in areas that are important to mastering. These included sorting out dithering when rendering multiple formats (in fact I think that rendering to multiple formats simultaneously was a V6 thing) and big improvements to metadata. At some point Reaper acquired the ability to read DDP images although I'm not sure when that was.

I think ReaLimit was also a V6 addition - it is now my standard limiter.

[BWC]

I'd agree, lot's of good updates during v6. Useful for you? No idea. I'm currently at v7.03 (I see 7.06 is now out), and haven't had any issues, but haven't found many useful (to me) improvements, so far. I do like the track spacers, but that's pretty minor. I reverted back to the v6 theme immediately though. I'm curious what everyone else thinks of the new theme. ...or any custom themes to share / recommend?

[Sam Spoons]

Thanks guys, interesting about being able to use the older theme with the new version, with hindsight I did know you could change themes but doing that did not occur to me, I will look into it further.

Partly my reason for not upgrading was that I had a couple of mates I was 'mentoring' on using Reaper so wanted to stick with the same version (and theme). It's probably time for an upgrade

[sonics]

For organs, I think the best value Hammond VSTi may be the AIR DB-33. It's often going on sale; currently just $10 everywhere. It's certainly usable, and includes a Leslie simulation. It's iLok, but computer or dongle.

I prefer to use the IK BX-3 and the UA Waterfall but they're much more costly.

[Drew Stephenson]

Thanks Sonics, I'm finding the Hanon that TFT linked to will likely do the job but I'll keep that in mind too.

[sonics]

The scanner and rotary speaker emulations are much better in the DB-33, if that's important for you. Not "perfect", but usable, unlike the HaNon. IMO, of course!