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What REALIVE Does

The complete feature list. Every group links into the User Guide.

REALIVE turns REAPER into a live playback system built for musicians — backing tracks that follow the band rather than the other way round.

161 features across 18 areas. Read the User Guide

What's new Latest

v7.273

  • Add-lyrics window — a proper help file built in, opened from the [?] button on the window
  • Transport bar — up/down arrows to nudge BPM, key, pad and sections by hand
  • Transport bar — hover the Status section to reveal the marker list; scroll or click to jump straight to any marker
  • Lyric strip — a slim single-line lyric display for tight screen space
  • Auto-Tune Portable — an action that builds the portable install for you, from the Control toolbar menu

v7.269

  • MIDI Learn — build a controller configuration by moving the controls; it's then available to use in the Control Surface Setup window
  • Extract selected regions to separate projects — with nothing selected, every region in the project is exported. Import a long Ableton set and split it into one project per song in a single step
  • MIDI Monitor — a window watching MIDI messages in and out of REAPER, live
In the guide →

Songs and setlists

  • Each song is its own project — portable, and a problem in one can't affect the rest
  • Up to 1000 songs open at once; around 500 is comfortable on a normal computer
  • Whole setlist stays loaded, so any song starts instantly
  • One song can start while another is still playing — real crossfades, segues and medleys
  • Playlists saved as simple text files you can read and edit
  • Drag to reorder; drag in audio files, folders or whole projects
  • Search a setlist by name
  • Merge another playlist into the current one
  • Separators to divide sets, services or segments
  • Place holders for slots that aren't songs — speeches, videos, breaks
  • Colour-tinting by set block
  • Set timing: elapsed, remaining, total, and current song length
  • Export the running order as text, with keys and tempos
  • 127 assignable actions to jump to any song from a key or controller
  • Save every open song and the playlist with one command
  • Consolidate a whole show into one folder
In the guide →

Live navigation

  • Navigate a song's structure while it plays
  • Cursor and playback are separate: line up the destination, then commit
  • Move by section, measure, four measures, or grid division
  • Seek without dropping a beat — REALIVE waits for the musical moment
  • Seek at the end of the bar, the end of the section, or immediately
  • Seek with offset: bar 3 of verse 1 jumps to bar 3 of verse 2
  • Cycle seek modes from a single button
  • Seeks cancel if you change your mind; late seeks are ignored rather than played badly
  • Move between songs mid-performance without stopping
  • Next Section window when the upcoming section is off screen
  • Transport Info window shows exactly what's about to happen, colour-coded
  • Three-stage stop: stop here, return to start point, reset everything
In the guide →

Looping

  • Loop any section instantly, release when ready
  • Guide cues mute automatically while looping
  • Loop counts: repeat a section a set number of times
  • Infinite loops for open-ended moments
  • Contextual looping — area selection, time selection, loop points or current section
  • Loops placed on the timeline as markers, so they happen by themselves
  • Section repetition is announced, including the last time through
  • Live Looping mode locks separate songs to a common tempo
In the guide →

Click and guide cues

  • Click track built automatically from your song structure
  • Nearly 300 spoken cues in eight groups
  • English, French and Spanish, with multiple voices
  • Separate cue mixes for band and vocalists, assigned automatically
  • Count-ins: half bar, one bar, two bars, cycling, odd meters
  • Running click — a beat before the song so the band finds the tempo
  • Solo click for recovery: beat, measure, or freewheel with percussion still playing
  • Fade into solo click rather than cutting
  • Add your own click sounds by dropping files in a folder
  • Accent notes, click volume following velocity, division click control
  • Cues can announce the section you're seeking to
  • Global mode: click and cues live centrally, triggered by MIDI
  • Cue language locked per song when a set mixes languages
In the guide →

Tempo and key

  • Change tempo live — takes effect on the next bar, on the beat
  • Tap tempo, with the display blinking at the current tempo
  • Half time, double time, fine increments
  • Tempo list showing every change in the song, editable
  • Warp, time and beat modes for how audio follows tempo changes
  • Find the tempo from a time selection
  • Time signature changes, including compound meters
  • Triplet feel conversion that does the arithmetic for you
  • Change key live, limited to a safe range
  • Formant correction so transposed vocals still sound right
  • Key changes apply to selected items only, if you want
  • Reference tones and a chord piano through the cue bus
In the guide →

Building songs

  • Conductor Track Build: markers become a playable song in about a second
  • Regions, structure display, click track and guide cues all generated
  • Marker abbreviations — type v for verse, c for chorus
  • Counts added automatically where a band needs them, skipped on repeats
  • Rebuild after edits without losing custom cues
  • Action markers that change song, loop, stop or trigger the drone
  • Stop marker in every song, movable
In the guide →

Importing

  • Import stems and have them sorted into folders automatically
  • Over 200 instrument name rules; vocals forced to mono
  • Import an Ableton Live set directly
  • Import audio from a URL, straight onto the reference track
  • Detect tempo from file or folder names
  • Consolidate all audio into the project folder
In the guide →

Audio routing

  • One routing project feeds the whole show — change an output once, every song follows
  • Scales the same way from three songs to three hundred
  • Mixer, patch list and routing matrix views
  • Routing assignment window with presets and copy-to-clipboard
  • Outputs already in use are marked, so you don't double-assign
  • Dual mono and reverse dual mono
  • Hard limiters on the output buses
  • Effects across the whole show, not per song
  • Always-online mode for instruments and effects that must stay live between songs
  • Offline mode between songs to save CPU
In the guide →

Devices and line check

  • Line check speaks each output in turn so one person can walk the stage
  • Check everything, or click and cues only
  • Automatic audio device detection on macOS — connect or disconnect and REALIVE reacts
  • Devices you've never used are ignored
  • Recover from a dropped interface without stopping the show
  • Playback buffering tuned for fast starts or maximum stability
  • Warning before playback if the audio device is missing
In the guide →

Timecode

  • SMPTE timecode out to lighting, video or any system that follows a clock
  • Frame rate is global — change once, every song follows
  • Freewheel MTC
  • Timecode can't be assigned to an output already carrying audio
  • Included in stem renders, excluded from mixdowns
  • Set up automatically during a line check
In the guide →

Lyrics

  • Paste lyrics in and REALIVE places them against the song's sections
  • Import from RTF with colours, italics and underlining intact
  • One blank line for a new group, two for a new section — that's the whole syntax
  • Repeated sections handled once, ordered automatically
  • On-screen display showing the current line and the next
  • Adjustable anticipation so lyrics arrive before they're sung
  • Prompter view on any phone or tablet
  • Colour-code one singer's lines
In the guide →

Live pitch correction

  • Auto-Tune runs in REAAT, a separate companion app
  • A plugin crash can't take your show down
  • Lowest possible latency, tuned independently of playback
  • Waves Tune Real-Time and Antares Auto-Tune, including the UAD version
  • Up to 16 channels — one per singer
  • Key, scale, speed, transition, amount and bypass controlled from REALIVE
  • Correction key follows the song key, so transposing a song retunes the singer
  • Over forty scales, from major and minor through modes to Maqams and ragas
  • Parameter changes placed anywhere on the timeline
In the guide →

Show control

  • Lighting cues fired from the song timeline, identical every night
  • Video and LED screen control via Resolume
  • Presentation software follows the song — ProPresenter, EasyWorship and similar
  • Program changes with bank select, to put a keyboard rig on the right patch
  • Continuous controller messages for anything else
  • Song number sent automatically on playback
  • 16 MIDI channels per type
  • External gear resynced when you move the playhead
In the guide →

Control

  • Run everything from the computer keyboard
  • MIDI controllers, foot pedals and control surfaces
  • Ready-made templates for common controllers
  • Automatic detection, with a window showing what's mapped to what
  • The same buttons navigate, change tempo, or change key depending on the view
  • Web remote on any phone, tablet or laptop on the network — nothing to install
  • Full control page, information page, stage view, and lyrics prompter
  • Every command assignable to any key or button
In the guide →

Rendering

  • Mixdowns, stems, buses, or click and cues
  • Render several songs at once, named and numbered in setlist order
  • Respects the routing project's mutes and levels — what you hear is what you get
  • Normalisation
  • Reassemble a multi-song bounce
  • MIDI export with tempo and time signature data
In the guide →

Drone pad

  • Sustained pad tuned to the song's key
  • Ten sounds, three octaves
  • Triggered from a window, an action marker, a key, a controller or the transport
  • Follows key changes and chases through seeks and song changes
  • Fade out or stop
  • Can follow the solo click automatically
In the guide →

Interface

  • Live view built to be read from a stage
  • Edit view for normal DAW work
  • Custom transport bar with tempo, key, sections, timecode and setlist timing
  • Clock, timecode display and next-section indicator
  • Screen and computer kept awake during a show
  • Interface zoom
  • Windows dock where you put them
In the guide →

Requirements

  • macOS and Windows
  • REAPER 7.76 or later
  • SWS, JS_API and ReaImGui extensions included
  • Control Surface Integrator included
In the guide →