Interesting. I just learned something new and thought I’d share it. Might be old news to y’all, but new to me…
In REAPER’s View menu, along with Docker, Mixer, Master Track, etc., there’s an option called Monitor FX. Was curious what that did, and did a little research. Turns out it’s pretty handy.
What it does is create an FX chain that you can add whatever FX to that you want; you’ll hear the FX as you monitor your project (well, so long as it’s enabled), but only on playback; when you render your project, those FX are disabled.
Very handy for FX such as Sonarworks REFERENCE 4, which you do want to hear when you mix, but want to disable before rendering. Easy to forget. So, just put it on the monitor FX chain. Not a big deal, but pretty cool.
Wow, thanks! I was looking for some sort of workflow just like this when I got IK’s ARC 2 awhile back! I haven’t fully tested this yet, but it looks like once you instantiate it then it’s always there on every session … doesn’t need to be loaded each time.
I notice that there’s something at the top left just under the File menu, apparently called a Project Tab, and there’s also a green FX button and power switch at the top right just under the sample/bit/buffer display. If I click on that “+” sign on the Project Tab, there’s a little drop down menu with 3 items checked, and one of them is called: “Force project tabs visible when monitoring FX in use”. I guess that’s what tells it to display the Project Tab and the FX button.
Just curious, if I were to uncheck that how would I find the menu item again and recheck it? The Project Tab would not be visible and neither would that menu. I do see you can handle it in the Actions list, but you’d have to remember what it’s called to find it.
Another bonus is that ARC 2 used to impact my Master Bus where it was placed at the end, and tweaking the level match between Correction On/Off (for comparison) while not clipping the Master or being too low in level was a PITA. That seems to be totally solved now. You rock Mr T!
Hm,m. Never noticed that. Sounds like with that checked you’ll always have at least one project tab open if you have any FX loaded in Monitoring FX. If you have no FX in MF, you’ll not have any project tabs, unless you have more than one project open. YouTube explanation here.
I’m not sure I understand the significance of that. I just leave it checked all the time.
Yes, though more important to me has been the little FX green box and FX power toggle at the top right. I don’t always want my ARC 2 enabled, though now with this feature I’ll probably use it more as I don’t have to load it in every project every time. And if I want to pull it up and tweak it’s quick and easy to get to. I think if the project tab goes away, that goes away too.
I also will probably make use of the Project Tab feature to have multiple projects open sometimes. I think it can come in handy on occasion. I remember learning about Subprojects but haven’t taken advantage of that feature much. Both the cool thing, and the challenging thing, with Reaper is the constant updates and new features.
