buzz forums

So I used buzz live again last night and it crashed about six times leaving loads of dead air....eek

Each time I have played live I have had a minor crash (except for last night where it was MAJOR - crazy)....so I have decided to switch to a different host when performing (I will still produce using buzz)....

I own reaper and I think it should be able to do what I want...

I find it hard to explain my workflow to a reaper user...so I figured you guys would understand...and also I assume that a bunch of you use reaper as well.

With Buzz live I have my track all set up....
I play one of the synth parts live (I know reaper can do this simply)
I have some filters and effects that I tweak live....
Probably the main thing that I enjoy to use live involves fswitch -

I have a drum pattern playing through a bunch of different effects - buzz and VST (e.g. rIDMa, Destroyfx Geometer, Dover plugins, Chorpse, Flasbox, Granaliser, Unwieldy Delay) that are plugged into the fswitch

I link a peer control to the fswitch and I automate this with a midi controller knob

This means that while the beat is playing in realtime - I flick through the glitch effects creating a bunch of different glitchy sounds on the fly....

Sometimes I will have two layers of glitch effects so that I can flick one dial to a bit crusher and the next to some kind of beat repeat plugin....so I can create mangled goodness.....


Sometimes instead of having effects feeding into fswitch - I will have different tom fills feeding into fswitch and I can flick between the fills and morph them into one another live.....

Before discovering Fswitch I used to use peer state and automate which plugins were going through to the master with loads of cheapo amps




Here's my question for anyone here that uses Reaper:

Is it possible to do something like this in Reaper? Flipping between FX on the fly live....on the drum buss?....is it stable for this kinda stuff?
I am fine with basic recording and mixing in Reaper but I am very confused with the more advanced techniques...particularly after coming from such a modular workflow (buzz).


Thanks guys.

Probably not. If you're needing a more stable solution for live performance your best bet would probably be Ableton Live, or Reaktor.

thats how i use fswitch--peerstate as well . and it almost never ever crashes on me . what other machines are you using are any of them known to be problematic ?

i know that cheapo amps are usually problematic (wont even load over here )

cheapo is rock solid

you just need the msvcrt7 / 71 dll

anyway, use mixio ?

Thanks for the tips.

I use a very limited number of buzzmachines (e.g. chorpse, funkyverb, oppressor, unwieldy delay, utracker2, fswitch, flasbox, rIDMa and a few that I can't remember) and a bunch of freeware VSTs and VSTis.

I don't use any blacklisted buzz stuff.

tbh in 90% of live gigs I have had a minor crash of some kind but this was just ridiculous.

The reason I'm thinking of going Reaper live....is because I already own it....I don't particularly need looping functions at the moment in a live setting and also because it seems very stable in my experience....

My good friend also told me with smile that he is refusing to come to another gig until I get a DAW that doesn't crash.

Protip: They all crash :[

Protip: They all crash :[

indeed . tho yeah Buzz hardly ever crashes on me live . when i used to use ableton it crashed on me all the time .. im sorta curious about someone using reaper or cubase live . i mean at that point are you going to just play tracks ?

I use reaper live at the moment. My setup is:
4 instrument tracks each set to be played by one MIDI channel each from the keyboard.
2 tracks with a MIDI equivalent of IX Split
1 track for microphone input through a VST reverb.
0 sequences or recorded tracks. (think we used to have an intro that was on a pre-recorded track though)

Iirc you can set markers along a prerecorded track and skip to those in a BTDsys livejumphack style.
So I'm not really using it in the OP's kinda way, I guess you'd put you effects on send tracks and then control which ones are active on the fly. You can also control an effects' bypass state via MIDI I believe.

word that sounds pretty flexible .

Yes, you can do that in Reaper. There are probably a few ways to do it but I'd use a JS plugin to manage track channels feeding sends or parallel FX chains. There are a few channel routing plugins included but if none of them work as you wish you can customise one or write your own. It's fairly simple stuff.

Looks great! I will check it out!

@Grids - I assumed that it was you (as "J Reverb") asking for this functionality in the JS subforum. If not then check out this thread http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=153203