Hi,

I am having problems with my DAW (REAPER) which may well be the routing inside my PC, and not the DAW. 

I have just bought my first decent outboard compressor (mono) and I want to use it on a mono insert to just noodle my way through wavs and see what it can do.

I have a PC - Q6600 with 8GB ram and an SSD drive running Win8 pro 64.  Audio is handled via an RME HDSP 9632 with 6 balanced analogue ins & outs.  I have plumbed the compressor into output 6 and return 6.

I set up a new REAPER session, add a wav (mono or stereo - it doesn’t matter) - everything is fine (and REAPER in general is fine, I have used it regularly recently). 

I insert a reainsert into the track - this defaults to using channels 3 & 4 for ins & outs and therefore I should hear nothing now as there is nothing plumbed into 3 or 4.  Even though nothing shows on any of the mixer channels, and nothing is showing on the return channel in reainsert, I can still hear the audio through the monitors.

If I change the channels to plumb in the compressor then a signal shows on the return and the mixer channel, but when I fade it up (obviously) there are now two channels playing (one is effected) and they are out of time (because of the delay compensation) - sounds like a slap back delay!

Also, as soon as I set ANY of the output channel on reinsert, the audio sounds, it's almost as if all of the physical outputs are also summed to 1 & 2 (the main stereo outs).

I am assuming that, given the meters show nothing in REAPER, the problem may well lie within the RME soundcard (or the TotalMix software). 

Can anyone help?

Cheers,

Darren