Hello

My friend brought an M - audio sound card which we managed to get to work.
I use it as input , ASIO in reaper.

We can record but we cant hear anywhere what we are recording.
Cause its both input and output I guess.

So how do we fix this?

Can we somehow keep the ASIO device I have right now
and use the m - audio as record monotoring or something?

Hi mate! You will find a mix level controller in your M-audio soundcard that let's you balance between the audio that comes from your computer and the audio that is entering through the input. That's how I monitor voices with my M-audio fast track pro. Do you have the mix leveler?

i'm not sure if this will help, but there's a direct monitor button on reaper, on whatever track you're recording, if you turn it on it'll let you hear what you're recording.

Both Gabi's and Marco's tips should help out - I am not using Reaper, but there should be a monitoring activation option somewhere for certain. Search it and let us know - Maybe Todd knows more?

I use the same with my Line 6. Be sure to have this button checked. Also USB 3.0 really helps cut down that latency if you have any.

USB 2 is more than capable of delivering low latency. What USB 3 offers is bandwidth that allows you to run more channels concurrently. There are however still very few audio devices that use USB 3.

If you really want performance you may well be better of with FW by the way.

I tried to jump head first into recording years ago. Bought some software, got a little mixer. But didn't have the patience to read a book or watch a video on the software. It lead to A LOT of headaches and long nights googling easy things I didn't know how to do.

For example, I didn't know you could lock edits down to the grid. So if I wanted to copy and paste a loop, it was NEVER a clean cut on the grid (if that makes sense). I made SO many bad edits.

I also had a session where I invited a few friends over and we couldn't get one of the channels to pass any audio. I chalked it up to a bad channel on the converter. NOPE, just didn't set it up correctly. That channel was never in record mode.

Hopefully you know a bit about reaper, otherwise I would say (and I mean this in a constructive way) STOP. Watch a video (there's SOOOOO many now a days). Go down the YouTube rabbit hole. Learn about the software. Learn how to set it up with your hardware, learn how to setup up a good session, and learn how to navigate and edit.

Creating a good workflow is crucial. Otherwise, as you've experienced, when you get your creative juices flowing, it will come to a crashing stop if you can't record or edit correctly.

Hope that's helpful.

ps. here's a good video to get you started.

Thanks for the sharing, man - indeed, building up a workflow (regardless of the musical activity involved - recording/writing/practicing) is a crucial aspect which sometimes, more often than not, makes the difference between success and an illusion of success in that activity.

Usually, we have to try to be as organized as possible in everything we do and this system called SMART has been of great use to me

More on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria

Just in case, by FW I'm assuming TONY means FIREWIRE? If so I agree Firewire is more suited for music production than usb simply for it's bi directional data processing. USB 3 has far more bandwidth, but it was not designed for music so it actually has some technical limitations on how it can work.

The best option imho is THUNDERBOLT but that's a Mac Only thing primarily. Though you can get tbolt ad on cards. It allows tremendous bandwidth and is great for use on Mixers/interfaces/etc.