Reaper Tutorials?

[ken]

Hello all,

I'm the guy who was asking about cool control surfaces in another thread.

I had heard on other forums that Reaper is a very popular DAW that didn't need a control surface, so I decided to get a copy and try it out.

So far, I can feed it a song and listen to the music but I can't do anything else yet.

Would anyone know about any useful tutorials for Reaper?

thank you,
ken

[Steve A.]

ken:

None of the DAW software requires a control surface. A lot of people just use a mouse but once you've tried a control surface its hard to go back to a mouse and keyboard.

Reaper does support a lot of different control surfaces- I've been trying to get my Roland SI-24 mixer/control surface running again and I read that Reaper is my best bet. The last time I installed the program I looked at it, imported a few WAV files and wondered how to do anything with them... While I really hate the dumbing down of programs, etc., in recent years on the other hand there are programs that are too damned complicated with a very steep learning curve. Trying to figure out (and remember!) where something is located with 100+ menu options can be rather daunting.

My favorite digital editor is Adobe Audition 3 (which started out life as Cool Edit Pro.) But for recording I prefer Sonar. I believe that there is a 30 day trial version of Adobe Audition 3 that you can download free to see if you can work with the program. If you decide you like it send me a PM- I can probably get you a good deal on it.

Steve Ahola

[Steve Conner]

If it helps, I found Reaper easier to work than the other recording software I've tried.

It is basically a multitrack tape recorder. To go further, you need to find some content to record, as there are no pre-made backing tracks or the like. Maybe try overdubbing a bunch of guitar parts.

Then you need to make sure your audio interface is set up correctly, create some tracks, assign them to the appropriate inputs on your interface, record-enable the ones you want to record on, and you're good to go. The latter two things are done by clicking on little buttons in the control area to the left of each track.

[ken]

I decided that if everybody else is using their DAW with a keyboard and mouse, I had better try it too.

I'm enjoying Reaper a lot here.

I'm using a M-Audio Delta 44 card here (four stereo I/O) and the breakout box and it works great. The only problem I have so far is figuring out how to
make the playback come out through the computer's headphone jack instead of back out of the breakout box.. My wife hates to hear me sing just once,
so if I can use my headphones here I can keep her suffering to a minimum.

ken

[Steve Conner]

Trust me, you don't want to go there. The computer's headphone jack is driven by a different sound chip, and there's no way to synchronise it with the one inside the Delta 44. Even if there was, I doubt Reaper would support two audio interfaces at once.

You'll be better off getting some sort of headphone amp for use with the Delta 44.

[ken]

You mean you can't turn off the sound card's output so you can just use the headphones???

ken

[Steve Conner]

The only way to do it is to have Reaper use the computer's onboard audio interface instead of the Delta 44. Then you won't be able to use the inputs on the Delta 44 either.

That's just the way it works, nobody uses the onboard audio any more once they get a pro soundcard. I lost a lot of hair in the 90s trying to sync multiple consumer-grade soundcards together, and your problem is a special case of that. It just isn't worth the effort.

I think Mac users can do it by creating an "aggregate interface" in CoreAudio, but I'm wary of trying, and the interface I use with my Mac (a M-Audio Audiophile Firewire) has its own headphone output jack anyway.

[Steve A.]

The Delta 44 is definitely "old school"- the copyright date on the PCI board is 1999. Yes, it goes back to the previous millennium. It does what it does well, but it has its limitations.

Many or most of the modern digital audio interfaces do not require a proprietary interface card but are connected to the computer through USB or Firewire and usually have their own headphone jacks but not exactly for the reason you mention. If you are adding tracks using a microphone you do not want to monitor the recorded tracks with speakers- you really need to use headphones.

As for the issue you mentioned concerning your wife you might try adding the vocal tracks last after all of the instrumental tracks have been recorded.

Steve Ahola

P.S. On the PC's I've used you can use both the digital audio card (DAC) and the on-board sound- but not at the same time. I'll keep the on-board sound set as the default and the computer will switch over to the DAC when you run your DAW software. I think that was even recommended so that Windows would send its sounds to the internal sound card and not to your DAC.

BTW- it was always a pain in the ass to get everything configured properly so that you wouldn't get pops and clicks when recording! There was a whole forum devoted to configuring your system to get those damn M-Audio cards working right. :lol: (I had both the Roland Studio Pack and the Roland Studio Package Pro which used the same card as the Delta 44.)

[John_H]

If it helps, I found Reaper easier to work than the other recording software I've tried.

It is basically a multitrack tape recorder. To go further, you need to find some content to record, as there are no pre-made backing tracks or the like. Maybe try overdubbing a bunch of guitar parts.

Then you need to make sure your audio interface is set up correctly, create some tracks, assign them to the appropriate inputs on your interface, record-enable the ones you want to record on, and you're good to go. The latter two things are done by clicking on little buttons in the control area to the left of each track.

To add a backing track, Main toolbar > Insert > Media File. It will let you add almost any backing track you want. It supports many file types

[J M Fahey]

Do you think you'll sell a lot of magnets here?
You spambots *always* "agree" with something .
Oh well..