VSTi as Item FX, monitoring?

I can get my VSTi to work on an item, I just can't seem to monitor it when I record to it. Is this possible? Is it possible to route midi through an item to a synth or sampler for monitoring while recording?

In my Live setup as a keyboard player - also on stage - , I use Reaper as an extremely versatile VSTi player without recording even started. So: Of course you can: Arm Track, activate Monitoring, don't set Mute. -Michael

The question is regarding a VSTi on an "Item" as opposed to a "track".

Might be best not to try to use VSTi's as item fx. Is there some particular reason you would want to do that?

Yes, I'm scoring a full length film on an older computer, and it would be tidy if every film cue could be it's own multichannel midi item with either maschine or kontakt, and when I'm done I'll simply 'apply fx as new stereo take' to save processing power. Then if I need to tweak I can get it back easily, but all my cues are on the same track / timeline.

so you are recording in overdub mode onto an item with the VSTi? I can see a path to do this with a JS, but I also see your head exploding in a massive burst of feedback, heh. And the timing is always going to suck, so it's not really woth exploring.

Ya that's right, overdub mode

I don't think you can record live into a instrument on an item but you can draw in notes on the item itself. Not great but something I use for certain styles of music. I like it because it stops taking up CPU once the item is no longer under the play cursor :) I recommend looking at "PIPs" (Project In Project) as a way to do scores as that's what I use for film and games. It's a alpha function that needs enabling still at the moment but it allows you to create a "PIP" item in the main project and then double click it to open it in a new tab. If you copy the video area into the PIP too you can write a piece of the music in this PIP and then when you come back into the main project, the PIP item renders (into RAM) the sub PIP project as if it was a normal piece of audio and doesn't take up any CPU once rendered. This means you could have all the musical pieces in PIP items that are easy to move around, manipulate and edit and they only take up CPU on first load of the main project as the sub PIP items get rendered again into RAM. After that, no CPU is taken from what would normally be full projects :) They can even be copied into multiple places, effected,reversed etc an they all update at the same time. One issue is that you might end up needing a lot of RAM which is something a few of us keep pleading with the devs to sort out. Still, It's a feature that saves me massive amount of time with media projects. :) Search the forums for "PIPs" to see who to enable them.

Thank for the replies. I tried out pip last year but at the time decided the complexity outweighed the advantages. Now that I have an endorsement I might have to give it a try again...

This pip thing sounds like a cool idea. In the meantime a little check to "send midi to item fx while piano roll open" or something like that would be nice. I also recently discovered using vsti in midi items. Much easier than making a track, soloing it, freezing it, moving the audio off, then deleting it.