Sly, Herb speaks volumes of truth. Sure it can be done, but is it wise?!? If you load up a ton of FX and run the input monitoring on that track it will eat up a lot of CPU cycles and risk pops, crackle, and glitches in playback. So you say then i will bump up my sample rate, well sure but now you risk latency.

I use RB for live performance, but i process my vocals thru my TC helicon hardware for reverb and such. Also the software mixer for my Presonus interface has the VSL that mac talked about, and it has the "fat channel" feature which has reverb, delay, compression, noise gate, and limiting capability on all channels. This is done pre-master fader and works well on live vocals. It is also outside of the DAW so it has less effect on the DAWs performance.

So using nectar is great for recording, and i am sure someone will come along and say we are full of baloney, and it is great. But all you have to have is a failure live and it get rather frustrating.

I do not want my backing tracks to detract from the show, or hinder it's flow in any way.

I do not know if you got your interface yet, but which ever one you choose i hope it has a real good software mixer with some great effects, like the Presonus does. Best part about the Presonus interfaces is that you get Studio one artist, and it is a great little DAW with some real nice effects in it. Fat channel is one of them as well. A great place to take any RB tracks that need just a tad more work like vocal comping and such, that Rb does not have yet.

HP Win 11 12 gig ram, Mac mini Sonoma with 16 gig of ram, BiaB/RB 2026, Reaper 7, Harrison Mixbus 11 , Presonus Audiobox USB96