I want to use my outboard effects within reason. How do I go about routing this? Sending track out of reason and back in

[IDosTheTechno]

I want to send an audio track out of reason through effects (outboard gear) back into reason. I'm using a focusrite i818 2nd generation interface. Can anyone help??
Routing? Do I need other gear like direct boxes? And if so please explain. Thanks.

[selig]

The biggest issue to deal with is latency, but with a little work you can calculate it and use Reason's latency compensation. This would be more important for insert FX like EQ or compressors than for delays or reverb FX.

The main problem will be using external audio during mixing, since this is the stage most folks crank up their buffer, which in turn increases latency to unusable levels in most cases.

So the main limitation would be that you would have to print these effects in some cases, and then align them as audio clips to be sure latency wasn't an issue,.

As for direct boxes, they are used to convert line or instrument level to mic level, and would only be necessary if you didn't have line inputs available. The Focusrite interface you listed above should have no problem with line inputs.

One place where you WOULD need to convert levels would be to use guitar pedals as send/return or insert FX (which is pretty fun if you have a few or a lot of pedals laying around during mixing).