Rendering

Does REAPER only render at 1X or is there a setting to do this faster. When ever I render to stems it does this realtime. I don't see why it wouldn't do it at the fastest speed the CPU could handle. Have I changed a setting or is this normal.

I have always found Reaper renders at high speed, typically about 4x to 7x (depending on the project). In the File, Render box, check what you have selected from the drop doen list that includes Full Speed Offline, 1x Offline, and Online Render.

why is it that each render type produces a different file? when doing an online render and a full speed or 1x offline, they dont pass a null test. why would this be?

This can depend on the type of effect you use.. many reverbs and most modulation fx will not be the same on null but most compressors and distortions should be but this could also be to do with your plugins and the way they handle offline rendering. I haven't tried nulling here myself yet but if you can find one plugin that does null everytime then it's probably not reapers fault :) but not saying that reaper does null correctly but I'm sure this argument has been solved before on this forum. what plugins have you tried?

Trying to null different renders from projects with plugins on it is prone to fail anyway. There are things like unsynced LFOs and "analog randomness" algorithms making this impossible even if 2 files were rendered using the same settings plus some plugins don't like full speed offline rendering at all, which explains why a 1x can differ from a full speed render. Options->Preferences->Plugins->VST->"Inform plugin state of offline rendering state" may have an influence on that.

So this brings us back to the question "Does all DAW sound the same?". In theory they should since digital summing is pretty straight forward... as long as you are summing perfectly synchronized digital signals right?

it's not normal. (although i find that disabling effects on tracks other than the one i'm rendering makes it run faster, but that's a separate issue). i'd suggest backing up your settings and reverting everything to defaults. there's an option in the start menu/programs to do that, i think.

Oops, sorry. Same result online vs. offline: Alignment Null test

weird. i just repeated the same test with nothing changed at all, just another set of renders, but this time they line up. that might be more disturbing than being consistently off by one sample.