Routing audio in and out of Rack in Windows

VCV Rack
1

I am struggling a little with audio on my new Windows laptop; I didn’t realise how much pain CoreAudio removes on my Mac.

I don’t have an external audio card and am enjoying the joys of ASIO4ALL, with an interface that looks like it has not been updated since the 1990s :wink:

On my Mac I use Soundflower and Loopback to route audio wherever I want it and am very happy to use standalone applications without the DAW overhead.

Trying to set this up on Windows I have spent a day fighting with Virtual Audio Cable (Virtual Audio Cable (VAC) - connect audio applications, route and mix sounds) and VB-Cable (VB-Audio Virtual Apps) but I cannot make them work like Soundflower/Loopback works on a Mac.

I can route audio with them to ASIO4ALL where they appear, but when I route audio into Rack I cannot have my cake and eat it, that is, if I route audio in from another application, I get no output on my headphones. If I route audio out then wherever else I go the same happens, unless I disable the virtual cabling in ASIO4ALL I cannot get any audio out of whatever I am using.

Am I doing something wrong or is there no way of getting Soundflower like functionality in Windows ??

2

Nothing quite so pretty as Soundflower and Audio Hijack, I’m afraid. Virtual Audio Cable is as close as it gets that I am aware of.

2 Likes
3

You could try this software from Dante, which is a professional industry standard.
I think they have a working demo?
https://www.audinate.com/products/software/dante-virtual-soundcard

3 Likes
4

Thanks. Another bit of Dante software, ‘Via’, does the job nicely :slight_smile:

2 Likes
5

They provide excellent stuff and are embedded in many hardware devices. My guess is the MOTU i have, is using their stuff too internally. Glad it worked for you :+1:t4:

1 Like
6

is there any reason you need asio? i just use wasapi and the bridge with reaper and it works great.

7

Ableton doesn’t appear to support WASAPI.

8

how braindead is that?

1 Like
9

Quite.

https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?t=228482

10

i shall call it disableton from now on.

and i cannot recommend reaper enough!

6 Likes
11

I have spent so much over the years on Max4Live devices …

That said, I am intending to investigate Bitwig 3 when it next goes on sale, so I might be selling off all that stuff. Rack does a lot of it now !

1 Like
12

bitwig does look interesting, especially with the new modular stuff. i may have a play around with it if that stuff works in a demo version.

but vcv rack and reaper sufficiently cover my music making needs for now.

4 Likes
13

That is exactly what i have done after 10 years Ableton.
I sold my license as Ableton is not progressing in a fresh manner.
And waiting for the Bitwig 3.0 release to buy.

2 Likes
14

I have an Ableton Live lite key lying around that i haven’t used yet. I always wanted to try “simpler”, the sampler who looks like super fun for sound design. But other than that Reaper does what i need it to so far, so maybe i’ll stick to it for a while.

15

I was kind of excited for Bitwig, but I don’t do the online activation stuff. It looks like Reaper’s linux versions are getting re-evaluated though. They have an experimental build mentioned on the download site.

17

I can only recomend Reaper, too. For 60$ it’s a steal, its extremly lightweight, very flexible with
channels and routing (convert a stereo track to 64 channels ? no problem), and it comes with
ReaRoute (optional install virtual ASIO I/O) which is quite handy to get audio and CV transfered between
VCV-Rack and Reaper.
Bitwig is nice, too, but less flexible with channels ( = stereo only), and routing between tracks takes a
bit of geting used to (set another track/device-on-other-track as input AND add the audio-receiver device …). But it works fine with WASAPI and the VCV 0.6 bridge device (you can only send 4 mono channels of audio or CV per VCV-Bridge VST (1+2 on the main stereo in, 3+4 on the sidechain channel) from Bitwig to VCV-Rack. Rack -> Bitwig you can use all channels of bridge , just use the “add missing chains” in the plugin multi-out-chain selector (and do some re-routing) :slight_smile:

2 Likes
18

i am always surprised to find out that the much more expensive daws are not as flexible and fully featured as reaper.

19

Reaper and ReaRoute for me. And CopperLan for routing midi.

20

Reaper is also one of a very small list of DAWs that lets you delete notes by right clicking them :wink:

Almost all of them on the market make you go through extra steps, except FL, LMMS and Reaper…

1 Like
21

Bitwig also does offline activation. I just did this a few days ago.