I am DJ since 1978 and a professional in electronics and used to run a complete sound system since the early 90ies. I had my self made console
with 5 channel Dynacord Mixer, 3 1210s and built in monitor speakers, digital live sampler with the technics pitch control fader + bpm display,
effects rack with enhancer, subbass generator, echo, delay etc. + Amiga500 for my efx keybord in the console.
Additionally 2 amp racks and 24 speaker boxes and lots of vinyls and heavy dubplates with aluminium core and used to tour in Europe.
Over the years the heavy load did start give trouble to my spine bone and I startet do dip into digital audio.
My new goal was to emulate my old analog system the digital way. No more cables means much less work to set up and service
and most important no noise at all. The best part of it: Endless VST effect plugins!
I am using no more analog cables except mic cables for the 2*2 mic interface Behringer UMC202HD.
The heart of my emulation is Reaper which is connected to the DJ-Controller via Rearoute ASIO driver.
This opens creativity when it comes to sound design with VSTs and JS-efx.
My efx chain is emulating hardware like Aural Exciter, BBE enhancer, DBX 5BX dynamic expander, Richter Scale and some more.
There is also an Akai MPK mini connected to launch effect samples and to control STEM mute buttons in Traktor.
Now the problem starts. Most DJ controllers, especially my AA VMS4, have a crappy mic input.
It is not possible to add a second ASIO device to the same DAW. Even if you interconnect them via ASIO4ALL it will not work
because clock drift will create audio dropouts and other problems.
The solution is a next session of Reaper for the ASIO Mic interface. Turning down mic input gain on the controller and boost
output gain on the Mic interface hardware was my solution to work around my crappy mic input. Since the mic mix in my
DJ-Controller is analog there is only interface latency which can even set up with other buffer size than the first Reaper session.
This allows mic use with live artists and any kind of all purpose efx like delay, reverb, autotune, gate and a ducker.
The ducking control signal is processed here and forwarded via loopMIDI to the first Reaper session damping the volume there
with very low and not noticeable latency.
Now the elder DJ starting get tired of party and radio comes into the game. A Whatsapp phone line needs to get connected and
a radio jingle player too! Playing media from any internet source would be also a useful feature but no more digital inputs
available.
My solution is a 3rd session of Reaper to control all auxiliary inputs via ASIO4ALL driver and preferred amount of virtual audio cables.
Latency again depends on buffer size and can be set independent from other sessions.
Audio is routed via Reastream plugin to the 1st Reaper session which is causing additional latency.
This is no issue since none of these sources need to be synced with anything, practically I have no problem at all.
Mic is also routed via Reastream to the 3rd Reaper session to feed Whatsapp.
This session is also handling the ducker for the Whatsapp phone line and of course Jingle Palette Reloaded.
Again this Reaper session is also connected to all other sessions via loopMIDI.
All sessions must be set to the same sampling rate to avoid dropouts!
BUTT can be connected to the 1st Reaper session via Rearoute. The stream signal can now be processed differently
from the output and recording signal in Reaper.
I am not using BUTT any more but would run it on the streaming PC if I would need it again.
Part 2 of the radio system is the streaming PC which is quite simple.
Audio signal is routed from the 1st Reaper session on the Laptop to Prism Live Studio on the PC via NDI Tools
Reastream plugin did work too but did cause dropouts once and then.
Midi is received via rtpMIDI to switch cams. The switch signals are created by the first Reaper session on the Laptop
by a midi sequencer and the mic button on the DJ-Controller.
OBS delivers the scenes via NDI Tools to Prism for the green screen background.
I wish I had an easier solution, it took years development and testing on PA systems and takes about 100 plugins
to reach where it is now. Feedback about sound quality is appreciated
Some stylish schematics are here
- FB_IMG_1749561450690.jpg (28.12 KiB) Viewed 109 times
- Schematic Laptop.jpeg (1.06 MiB) Viewed 109 times
- Schematic PC.jpeg (567.17 KiB) Viewed 109 times
Perhaps some incomptibilities with your system, that looks, like you wrote, a little bit complicated (I have difficulties to imagine and understand your setup lol).