Setting up Reaper 101.

[dudermn]

Gotta cut out 1103 characters... Wish me luck.

You could get yourself this (Reaper Explained by Kenny Gioia) and skip my whole rant. Google will yield plenty of useful information. But I am doing a lazy sum-up for lazy people
(I read that R.R. members do not really like to use manuals).

1. Take a look at what is going on. You will have to hover your mouse over everything to figure um out (repeatedly)....Here is some stuff I find useful.


Find the play button. To the left is go to start. To the right the pause than stop than go to end of project the record the repeat and the global automation over-ride.
Further down on this bar a play-back rate thingy. A tap to set bpm doo-hicky (and the rest of the time control perks).

Now that we took care of the little introduction there is the technical part.
Reaper is going to ask if you want to configure your audio card on its first start-up.
This part is really chill. Just select Asio and you can figure out the rest.

Hit ctrl+p to get to the preferences.

To get a comfortable set-up here are some tips.
"General" section.
1. In advanced set-up you might want to load ur studios logo as the custom splash.
2. Remember. Set a big enough size for your undo buffer (I gots 256) and the clear projects button is here.
3. Click on "paths" will set up where everything is saved (recordings and "cut to new clip" etc).

4. Clicking on "keyboard" and "assign keyboard short-cuts" link. Gets you into hell (for me any-ways...I prefer learning keyboard short-cuts over re-programming em). You can also tweak the multi-touch stuff here.
You will have to assign a short-cut to "insert virtual instrument on new track" amongst a few other little nippy things (transport-go to next section).


5. If you are the kind of person that always has a template open up with audio tracks and midi stuff already to go. Than when you close the preference menu and hit ctrl+T until you have as many tracks as you like to have ready to go (count midi tracks as well and buses as well). Save the project as something kinky (My whole heart.reaper) and save it some-place very safe (My nuclear fall-out vault on the secret hard-drive in your computer).
Than go back to preference (ctrl+p) make sure the "load template when not ..." check mark is clicked and browse that happy project.

6. Check out the "Media item" defaults sub-section of the "Project" section. Take a look at the cross-fades (pick the one that is best for ya).
7. In the "Audio" section look out for "Close audio device when stopped" and "Close audio device when stopped and active. Why the hell do companies dish out software with this feature on ?!

Eight. If your a midi kind of person. Go to the "Midi" sub-section and run you midi ports. Any-one try using a Joystick midi ? ?

9. Note the "Buffer" sub-menu. If you have play-back problems this is the first place to take a peek.

10. In the "Playback" sub-menu un-check "Flush Fx when looping" (it will drive you loopy). And also make up your mind about flushing fx now... Later it might just end up being annoying or comforting...depends how you think.

11. This is very useful. In the "Recording" subsection of "Audio take a look at the "When recording and looped add recorded media to project". I just saw the option to set the "At each loop (creates new files good for recording multiple audio layers on the fly etc)." While writing this. Thanks guys !
I find myself recording stuff and saying to people "Crap I forgot to unloop it. Do it again."
People are nice though. No-one has killed me yet

12. If you have time to play around with the "Appearance" section do it.
Having a "meter update frequency" of over 70 really makes things look so responsive (one is embarrassingly slow and could scare people).
Adding in the "meter decay" to a figure like 250 will make it extremely jittery. A figure like 20 would make it staggered. I like 170 as it reminds me of a fox.

(This is starting to become cumbersome...and annoying....thank god I am watching Seinfeld)

13. I am experimenting with this idea. Under "Editing behavior." I clicked "treat media item edges as transients" and adjusted the settings (Sensitivity to 71.5 threshold to -eighteen.6) and "Use zero crossings". In a good 2-3 weeks I will now if I did things right. Though it worked just fine the way it was default.

14. If you like your mouse wheel to tinker with the window in focus and not the one under it. Go take a look at the "Mouse" subsection of "Editing Behaviors".

15. Holy crap is the mouse modifiers section crazy ! Who came up with this thing!! And why ?!!

16. A few things I found pleasing with-in the "Media" section are to un-click "Set media items offline"
I set my cache resolution to 700 samples/sec. And stored all the "peak caches to another path".

Last few tips for the preference menu !

17. Plug-ins work pretty fine right off the bat.
Setting your plug-in folder is done at the "Vst" sub-section of "Plug-ins". It is very simple (not like in acid where the bloody thing is hidden under a rock in a bush).

Eighteen. No eighteen that is every-thing ya need to have a comfy rig running.

Now than. "Ctrl+T" adds new tracks. These also show up in the mixer (like on every DAW). But if you hit "ctrl+shift+m" you open up the track manager. This will clear up tracks from the mixer (and give you a groovy little index of everything). Use-ful fact number 200000and1

Go over to the options menu and go all the way to Lay-outs go to the mixer panel and than select the "width control pan on top" option.
The width bit is a nice little thing to automate. If you have 2 tracks coming into this you can move their pan around to help create dynamics. If this thing is not here though. You might forget it even exists. Lets not get into it yet. Just open your mind "bra".

Head over to the View menu. Toggle every one of those options. Get an idea what they do. Do not be scared. Alt+f4 will close reaper. And if you do not hit save. You default on open (I think).
Most of the time you will just want a mixer a transport and a media explorer though.

Things such as the "dynamic split" are not for new-comers and the techniques involved for using that one are a tad bid complicated. So is the "track routing matrix". Though the big clock is one reason to buy a new monitor and set that clock as a big as it can get on the screen (my plan for the near future).

So get to your media explorer !
If you do not see it at the bottom of the screen. There are tabs all the way down on the left (if you followed my instruction there are 2 "Mixer" and "Media Explorer" unless you have a track opened up with a couple hundred preloaded tracks).

This little baby is something that resembles Able-ton but is just so much more simple.
The first thing to do is head out to your loops folders or loop folder and right click and add to favorites (that way it pops up on the menu).
Take a note of the groovy options.

1. Play. Pause. Stop. Repeat. Input-output. Auto-play (it plays when you click it). Start on bar. Tempo match (you might want it on) and pitch followed by volume (horizontal bar).

Ya it is a standard browser.
Now than. Propping your mouse up on the wave-form of the selected file allows you to select sections. But clicking anywhere starts play-back (so hit space-bar often and randomly).
After you have a section selected you can drop that whole thing into the sequence part of the DAW.
(Yes you can cut out a hi-hat and post it up just like that).

If you have no tracks practice a little with the import bits of loops feature. Prop things up just to add a new track.

Hop on the mixer tab now.
And hit ctrl+T
So that there are at least 2 tracks now. Anyways.

Section B-52 piloted by a bloody Mary = Sends.

The first time I saw the whole send menu. I got scared (I closed reaper and ran back home to acid.)
This is the send properties.


I figured it out pretty quick though. Just had to play with the menus.


Click on the track sends portion of the bus. It opens "send properties".
Send control is pretty straight-forward. Click "add new send" select track 2 and track 1 is going to track 2 (though what you do to track one will afflict the send..might be fixed by now).
There is control over phase, volume, pan, output automation, on the individual send properties....Just run your compressor and get it over with already.
I think this might be the most complicated send I ever seen.

Section 69 (good number) = Fx.
Click either the "fx inserts" on top of the bus (from the mixer) or "fx" on the stacked tracks to open the effects chain. It is very simple interface no need to explain. Even monkey could do (given time enough).

Hitting the "env" button gives you the option to edit envelopes. Though these show up as additional tracks and it takes some getting used to. It is a god-send.

The last 2 bits.

1. Recording.. Hit "Ar" and a button that says "In 1" with a drop down menu lets you select the right input. Hitting the little speaker on the left gets you monitoring. Even though in Reaper recording could get complicated. For now leave it at that. (And hit the pretty red button when your ready for your first take).

2. Rendering.. In the file menu there is a button that says render. End of story (almost).
Starting from the top. (Though you do not have to adhere to these specs)
-Render the master mix.
-Than entire project (unless you have some-thing going on).
-Directory
-Name it
-Always use 192000 when you can.
-Use 8 channels.
-Online render
-Def. use the Best resample mode.
-Avoid mp3 (encoder by lame)
And hit render.

Cheers!

[dudermn]

Holy crap am I good at making cutting down.

[dudermn]

After writing the first bit I ran my first serious session in Reaper.
First I noticed some things.
1. Alt+L brings up the snap-to grid properties...Have to use it because reaper 4.02 does not do zooming in adjust grid lines.
2. Selecting multiple tracks in the editor is done via right-click...gotta remember that.
3. It is better to use the time tracking at the top than to scramble around in the editor for timing.
4. Reaper is set-up for parallel busing not separate.
5. Zoom bar is mis-leading. It gets to a size and than using the mouse wheel to zoom out... and than using the bar to zoom out a little bit works in the way that the zoom bar zooms everything out to the zoom magnification before using the mouse wheel.
6. Some plugs revert to default while running in Reaper.
7. Remember RENDER TO NEW CLIP
Eight. If a track is imported. And it plays back to quick or to slow select the track and strike f2. Change item playback rate to 1.0 (This actually took a good 30 minutes of my time to figure out).
9. Remember that new projects are opened up as new tabs and the old one is right there in the top left.
10. When you render to new clip you get to select between the original and the renders.
11. Trimming files when you have others selected does not select the file being trimmed (Yay! )
Even though some of the things mentioned may not be similar in current versions of Reaper. Some stuff is worth mentioning.

[garageband]

Always use 192000 when you can.

Tell me more about this.

[dudermn]

It was a joke.... few people ever really mix in anything above 44.1.
I read an interesting article about using Eighty-eight point 2 for mixing though which stated that you get better sound quality and performance because the sample-rate is doubled where-as using 96khz is foolish because it is not a straight exponential of the standard for recording.

[m24p]

It was a joke.... few people ever really mix in anything above 44.1.
I read an interesting article about using Eighty-eight point 2 for mixing though which stated that you get better sound quality and performance because the sample-rate is doubled where-as using 96khz is foolish because it is not a straight exponential of the standard for recording.

Interpolation has already been figured out by the DSP math geeks. Don't fear it.

[dudermn]

So has anti-aliases.

[dudermn]

So now that I am more comfy with reaper....
There are a few little bits I would like to add about using it.
1. Double clicking an item opens up the F2 option menu as well... go figure
2. It is a world easier to split items and than move the split into the time frame of where you wanted something copied from a track and than trimming the split. I have the problem that when ctrl+v gets hit things wander around instead of actually being placed where they need to be.

So far the funnest thing about reaper is the ability to actually play the mix with your mouse.
Just click on the arrow above the time-line and drag it. Make sure snap to grid is off though.