Ep 27 | Reaper DAW & Why I Record With It

hello everyone today I want to talk to you about the Reaper digital audio workstation and I'm also going to give you seven reasons why I record with it that's coming up on home music studio one hey everyone welcome back to the show this is Dave maxi the host of the home music studio one podcast it's what you're listening to right now and this is officially episode number 27 and I want to remind you right off the bat that this is the place where you can learn how to produce professional audio even on a limited budget if you are listening to us in iTunes you can also now find this in the YouTube channel you can see the video version of this same episode as well you can find us there by heading on over to youtube.com /h music studio one that's h music studio one well again as i said my name is david maxi and it's very good to be back with you again with another episode seems like it's been just a little while we are now headlong into the very first month of 2014 which is pretty cool hopefully your new year is going well and I really wanted to to sit down and do just a short episode or at least not an all-inclusive list of the repr DAW or digital audio workstation I'm gonna give you 7 of the reasons that I am currently using Reaper and I want to kind of preface this before we get there by saying just a couple things number one this episode is not about saying if you're not using Reaper then you've just got the wrong recording software I'm not saying that I'm not saying that Reaper is number one and everything else just pales in comparison that's not at all what I'm saying what I am doing is going to give you an affordable option and the reasons that I consider Reaper to be the number one affordable option for a full-featured non limited very affordable digital audio workstation I'm gonna give you seven of those they are not all the reasons by any means they're just some things that have more recently stood out to me as I'm working on a brand new project over the new year and then the second thing I want to point out is the number one most popular post that I did a while back on home music studio one calm was opposed to dealing with the best recording software the best software for you is really depending on a lot of things relative right it's the depending on your gear it's depending on several things and so there are three questions that I propose that will make you have the ability to decide am I using the right recording software the right doll or not and those three questions are this can you afford it number one number two is it something that is the software will do what you're trying to accomplish with the project goals that you have and the number three is the software the dog that you're recording with is something that you are able to learn how to use you can get over the learning curve of how to use it you know a $2,000 Pro Tools box with you know the whole kit and caboodle means and nothing if you don't know how to use it and so think of those things when I talk about Reaper and the things that I'm going to share with you because if you already have an answer to those questions and you're working with a digital audio workstation I'm not necessarily saying that you've got the wrong one however I'm really addressing today those of you that are you cut on the fence you're just not sure or maybe you're getting into this recording thing and you really would like a more affordable option a very flexible option both budget and features and then you really might want to consider the some of the things that I have to share with you so let's get into this talking about the Reaper DAW in seven reasons why I record with it reason number one I want to take you over to Reaper dot FM that's our EAP e r dot FM reason number one is this there is only one full version of Reaper that is downloadable you may wonder about a particular recording software think boy I wish I could just find someone that has that and I could try it out before I spend hundreds of dollars here's what I love about Reaper the number one thing you can download the full version of Reaper the only version of Reaper that is available absolutely free you can download it at Reaper fm it's available for both Mac and PC it is available we'll talk about this in a little bit it's available in both 32 and 64-bit versions of it as well as for the Mac as well so you can download it it will not cost you a thing and it is giving you the ability to evaluate the recommendation is for up to 60 days and it is not a limited version of the program okay when you download it and install it you're gonna be able to load the exact drivers you're using for whatever audio interface you're using and you're getting the full version of Reaper it's not a timed delay where you were just quits working after a certain amount of time it doesn't drop audio out every 30 seconds you have the full version of Reaper at your disposal to try you can run a whole entire project on it you're gonna get every bit of quality as those that paid and purchase the program it's the same program okay there's only one version of Reaper and that is awesome specially if you're on a limited budget and you want to make sure that you are maximizing where your money goes you don't have to spend money on something only to find out wow I really can't get over the learning curve or wow this just doesn't do what I need it to do you know and now you spent money in you just host okay for those you that are up north alright but the truth is you can download a fully version the only version of Reaper the fully functional version that there is you can download it try it for as long as you need before you make the decision to buy it which I'm convinced won't take very long if you have any interest at all in Reaper the number two reason that I love Reaper is the affordability of when you get to the point of deciding to buy it okay if you head over to Reaper comm you can look at the bottom left-hand side of the main homepage of there they give you a little information there's lots of stuff about Reaper that you can read I won't go into all of that but they have what they continue they consider a discounted license for small businesses and personal use and that means if you are not a commercial studio where you are making a complete living at recording projects and you're doing that commercially for you it would cost two hundred and twenty-five dollars which is hugely affordable but for the personal individual or maybe you've got a small studio in your home you're really recording personal demos and that kind of stuff in in or a small business you're doing some smaller version stuff you're helping some other people with some smaller demos for $60 you can buy repr $60 for a doll that is full-featured that is not limited that gives you all sorts of options that's expandable and I'll talk about some other things that I really love about Reaper in just a minute as well but the number two thing I love is it is amazingly affordable and affordabl matters when you're on a limited budget right so those are the first two things the third thing that I love about Reaper is the default array of plugins that come with Reaper now I've mentioned this before you can download the Reaper plugins individually they're called the reap lugs if you head on over to Reaper comm they are available and you can download I don't know if every version of the plug-in that comes with in Reaper is available as a separate package of VST I think there's a whole lot that isn't sure you could download just the Reaper plugins but if you're downloading the full version of Reaper and you're actually using the VST in Reaper I'm going to open a project here let me just show you some of the default plugins that are going to come in Reaper now Reaper has full support for DirectX and DirectX I VST and vsti or instrument that's what the I stands for there there's also a line of plugins that are essentially community-created alright the Jas version of plugins and there's a lot of great versions of plugins as well in there de-esser x' you know different midi options all sorts of you know auto-tune there's eq's in there there's some distortions and flange and the list just kind of goes on and on in the way of the Jas plugins but looking at the default plugins that come with Reaper that are made by not not just the community but those that that made the collaborative effort to create reaper those guys their co ckos and 100% sure how to pronounce that but if you look at the default plugins it comes with a compressor full band submitted control some delay EQ reefer which is a wonderful there's several options that it can do for some compression and gate but it also has some amazing noise reduction capability so the best in the business and in in the way of affordability for what you're getting as far as what it actually does there's all sorts of other there's some pitch plug-ins in there as well surround sound some other things you can do with that maybe you think of the ever-popular auto-tune that cher made popular there is a program in there as well that does the auto-tune and does a great job at it for a pitch correction okay you can use that on a vocal track does great it's again it's default it comes with Reaper another thing I love about Reaper is there is a impulse generated nice reverb that comes in and okay I love it impulse reverbs are WAV files that are basically modeled they're recorded from the actual real world environment and so an Impala to generation reverb tends to just be a little more realistic than something that is completely generated in a digital environment that's default with the default plugins with Reaper as well you also get a great multiband compressor I'm not really sure how many bands you're limited to let me see if I can add a bunch of them here it may not have a limitation I'm just clicking add ban ad ban and right now I'm up to like 34 bands of multiband compression you'll never use that many but hey you have it if you want it but it comes default with the program that's separate from the the full band version of just the the recom poke a which is the regular compressor the delay is great the EQ is excellent got the built-in graph right in it as well and again you can add as many bands as you want adjust the cue some of the most powerful ones I've seen all the plugins that come in Reaper are very efficient they sound great the compressor supports the main compressor supports the sidechain input which is extremely helpful I've done some demo stuff using that as well so Reaper is a little weak on the virtual instruments that come with it however my personal opinion I often find that my my virtual plugins when it comes to instruments I only need a few of those I use addictive drums the addicted Keys plugins a couple of those synth plugins and you may find as well that you know I've invested more money to getting something that was very realistic and they work great with Reaper they just don't come for that $60 but you're only spending $60 on the software to get the vast majority of what you need the core is all there you've got a little more money if you really want to zero in on some nice maybe a drum vsti or a good sense of vsti and then you're ready to roll so I love that that's the third thing I love about Reaper is the default plugins that it comes with the fourth thing that I'll say about Reaper which can get a little confusing for some people is the the version of 64 bit versus 32 bit now when we talk about 64 bit there's really two things we're referring to and sometimes people get them confused one is dealing with your operating system now I'm using Windows 7 right now I've not made the jump to Windows 8 for fear of the the efficiency that I'm gonna lose I have not heard good things about Windows 8 but I'm using Windows 7 and it is the 64 bit version of Windows 7 to give you some specs a little more about the machine i'm using that'll make sense here in a little bit I've got 8 gigs of ram here this is my laptop nothing fancy ok 15 inch monitor it's an Asus laptop I'm sorry it's a ya Asus laptop 8 gigs of ram 64 bit windows 7 Edition and it's the Home Premium Edition ok so it's not even the Pro Edition and it's cores and as far as the windows experience a 5.9 which is really not all that high it does have the i7 processor in it which is a quad core in this particular version and each of those cores are 2.7 gigs for you geeks out there that are following the specs of that machine so that's the Machine I'm dealing with and so one vein of 64-bit is this little line right here my operating system is 64 bit as opposed to 32 the bottom line with 64 bit vs. 32 is 64 bit allows you to use more of the RAM that's available in your machine and there many processes that it does basically double the speed not everything but there definitely are noticeable performance improvements now having said that I know that there's some of you out there that would look me square in the eye and call me a liar for saying that sixty four-bit makes a difference and so what I did in this last month while I was working on this project was I decided to just answer that question specifically for myself and here's what I did is project that you were looking at here in Reaper I'll I'll play for you in a moment but um I downloaded and installed both of the 32-bit and the 64-bit version of Reaper and then I took this project and I duplicated made sure all the plugins that I was using that I had downloaded or free versions or paid versions of my vsti that I had both of the 32-bit and the 64-bit versions of each of those plugins and I just did some real-world test of the project I played the project and did some editing in the 32-bit version and then I closed it out and I redid the same thing in the 64-bit version with the exact same project and when I ran it in 64-bit mode with full 64-bit plugins I was able to get about a fifteen percent decrease in the amount of CPU usage that was required for Reaper to process the project and so there was definitely a performance increase there the 64-bit version of it did slightly use a little bit more RAM it did not increase above what I believe is is the four gig limit with 32 but nevertheless the CPU increase was a use about 15 percent less at its peak CPU which means that's about 15 percent 10 to 15 percent more performance just by having a DAW that supports my 64-bit operating system that is one thing I love about Reaper that's important every little area you know area I can squeeze more performance all about it now the other area when we deal with 64-bit has to do with actual processing of what is going on when you put audio within Reaper and you pull that audio back out again was that audio processed at full 64 bit from end to end and that is dealing with this right down in here there's a little question if I look at Reaper dot FM where they answer that should I go with the 32-bit version or the 64-bit version and there's a little note in here that all the versions of Reaper have full resolution 64 bit internal audio signal path from end to end and that is regardless of whether you're using a 32-bit or 64-bit operating system what that means is the guts of what's going on inside Reaper it is processing your audio and plugins at a full 64 bit as well and that just simply means higher quality so not only can you get the 64 bit version of Mac or PC in Reaper and utilize your 64-bit operating system it is also processing your audio if you use 64 bit plugins or the default ones that come with it it's gonna process your audio from end to end at a full 64 bit which is higher quality all for 60 bucks that's an amazing deal ok let me give you a reason number let's see 5 I believe here of why I record with Reaper and so this is probably one of my most favorite things about Reaper I've heard it said a few times where I've suggested for people to inquire about Reaper and I've gotten this response that hey Dave you know I trust you but I have opened Reaper in man it just seems confusing and I'm not a computer nerd and so it really turned me off to even trying to get over the learning curve and I'll say two things about that number one you know anytime you try something new and you're used to something else and it's new it can be confusing that's that that's gonna happen no matter what doll you try number 2 I get it ok you know Pro Tools still the industry standard through this day has really kind of created the digital from the guys from avid created what we know is kind of the virtual digital audio workstation the world that we're normally working in that we're used to we really kind of stemmed out of everything ProTools okay to kind of set the pace for what it looks like and there's some things that are unique to reaper and it can be confusing a little bit if you're if you've not spent a little bit of time with it and i totally get that here's where the ability to actually change what reaper looks like not features but the interface or the theme to actually reskin it is an option and a feature that I love about Reaper I've got just the default theme that you're looking at here in front of me again this is the project that I've been working on brand-new for the the beginning part of this year I'll play it for you in a minute but here's the default theme of Reaper if you're watching the video version of this here's what I love I've downloaded a couple different options on themes maybe you want something that looks a little different and just a little different to get you know used to a little clearer maybe highlight some things that you don't normally not here's a theme called revolution that is one of my favorite themes about Reaper love it just has some clear things that looks a little different here's the with actual mixer portion of this looks like and so you can see the buttons are kind of cool-looking gives you access to your plugins up here and the panning the width all that but changing just this theme changes all of the look in the field it Reese kins exactly what Reaper looks like that is really cool because if you are confused that the default look there's a good chance you can find something that is not as confusing how about this theme right here this is one that I use a lot having been you know an avid Pro Tools user for years this is a theme that is modeled after I believe Pro Tools eight or nine something like that but check this out here we go if you're looking at the video version this is an excellent theme that I use often and it looks a lot like Pro Tools it's not identical but it's familiar it's a very familiar again let me let you look at the the mixer interface for this version very familiar it's clean looking you know and it's more maybe what some of you are used to and so if you're used to kind of what a dog should be in Pro Tools is your your comparison get Reaper spend 60 bucks most of these themes the two that I showed you are absolutely free most of the themes are free there are some paid versions that are even you don't have some other features as well but if you don't like the way it looks just change it you know how awesome is that I'll put a link to this in the show notes as well but in the way of themes and you're looking for more reaper themes you can head on over to stache dot reaper dot F M that is Stas H dot Reaper FM and in there you'll find a good repository of just different themes that are available there's lots of them that you know you can just go through and find out exactly which one that fits you best and you'll be able to find a theme that probably no doubt is less confusing for you and it is just something that looks sharper and maybe more tailored to your tastes there's lots of different theme options as well so that's another huge benefit that I love from Reaper okay two more two more reasons I want to give you to consider Reaper and the reasons some of the top reasons the seven top reasons that I record with it personally and reason number six is the routing capabilities of Reaper now I told you earlier that I've got a project here and if I open this project to look at the mixer view you're gonna see that I've got a ton of tracks well over fifty to be exact I've got all sorts of plugins and effects all over the place I'm using multiband compression I'm using some ducting I've got some aux and set up for my reverb I've got excuse me I've got some busses created as well I've got some master busses created where I'm doing some parallel compression before it even goes to the master fader I've got some different busses that I use a couple tracks that I'm using just for my reference mixes and within Reaper I have got all sorts of routing options pretty much anything that I would need to do by the way of routing I can do Reaper has got some amazing routing capabilities and by routing I mean where is the signal coming into each track and where is it going out I can there's just all the limits the sky's the limit honestly you can control the post-fader pre-fader pants and those - all your sins you can send and receive it's not limited to just eight the master buses or eight bus subgroups you can create unlimited amounts you can do all sorts of things by way of routing and without getting into all the things that's going on in this mix I can tell you by experience that I have yet to run into a brick wall when it comes to routing with Reaper I have never gotten to the place where I really needed to route something a very complex certain way and Reaper would not allow me to do that Reapers routing capabilities are just absolutely amazing and you know I feel like they should be paying me for using this you know when I think about only 60 bucks okay so great you know awesome options there now the last thing that I want to point out and the number seven reason that I that really shines to the top for me of why I use Reaper and also why you yourself may want to consider thinking about checking Reaper out is this it's performance okay now without rehashing it you know I just told you the specs to my computer I just told you everything that you know my laptop does I'm just using a laptop with a 15-inch monitor it's an Asus one of the thing that I need to mention is I am not using an external hard drive okay there's a 750 gig drive in this but it is the the internal drive that came with my you know my my laptop here I did not add an external drive if you can do that great if you can separate your operating system from an audio drive you know you tend to get a little performance boost that's awesome but I don't I don't have that option right now I didn't have the money for that just yet this project right now I am using the m-audio M track in interface it's a USB 2.0 and so that's what I'm running with right now and I want to do one thing here I'm gonna open up my performance meter and what this is gonna do is it's going to show you several things number one it's going to show you that in this project I have got 58 live tracks of both audio and some of those are MIDI I'm using the addictive drums plug-in that's MIDI in that I'm using also ask RB base which is a bass plug-in that is MIDI and so the bass guitar and drums that you're going to hear in this track are not audio they're MIDI okay it's a VST I will deal with what those are you know they're my favorite ones by the way but talk about those in a later episode but I've got 58 tracks going out okay and with all the routing and everything that's happening in the tracks I have got 65 Total Effects plugins that are that are happening okay and so what the performance meter is showing me is how much of each of those tracks and each of those plugins are using of my CPU and then I've also got this little meter down here in the bottom left that is going to show me that by percentage and it's going to show me how much RAM is being used for the project right now I'm not planning anything it's just kind of stored in RAM so I've got 17 roughly 14 15 percent of the CPU being used that includes the operating system and the programs that are running right now and so also keep in mind with all those things I am doing a screen capture using Camtasia as well and so I'm going to play to you what is the busiest part of this particular track and then we're gonna just take a brief look as you listen and play and watch through this track listen to all the things that are going on and then I want you to pay attention to the performance meter and specifically the CPU usage again don't forget I'm doing this on a laptop no external drive a $99 audio interface you know an i7 processor 8 gigs of ram 750 on the hard drive but no external and the the other thing that I'll point out before I play this is I'm running the audio at 48 kilohertz 24-bit and with this set up with audio default audio drivers right from M audio I'm getting a 7.4 round trip return on latency 7.4 milliseconds that is basically the time that it takes my audio interface to talk to the computer and back again anything under 10 seconds is is pretty doable I'm getting 7.4 which is pretty great for this setup ok again $99 audio interface so let me let you hear a portion of this track and then if you're watching the video pay attention to the bottom left-hand side and also the performance meter [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] dude okay go ahead that set the loop they're a little little tight and so okay as I played all that with all the things that are going on and believe me there's a lot that was happening in there from my AAG sense to the compression of the effects of the parallel compression the bus is all that my CPU usage along with the screen capture did not go above 35% stayed right around there at its peak several times it was much lower than that no dropouts audio is very clean and again this is a project that is in progress so it's not mastered or anything like that but you're listening to and watching literally the project as I'm kind of getting toward the end of finishing this out and then we'll talk about mastering but the performance that I'm getting from Reaper is nonetheless impressive in my opinion for a $99 interface and a lot of free vsts as well as the $60 Reaper with the default ones that came with it is very impressive and so the performance of Reaper is is definitely very something that can compete with with some of the best that are out there and that is the the seventh reason why I record with Reaper so that said hopefully this is giving you something to think about and if you're still kind of on the fence here you're not sure if you should use a different recording saw for you might want to give Reaper a try head on over to Reaper dot FM download the version of Reaper the only version that's available check it out give it a couple months do a project on it and you may find that it works great for you as well it's definitely something to consider in the future I'm gonna be doing a lot more tutorials using Reaper because I've been spending a lot of time on it again nothing against any other dog I love sonar I love Pro Tools I love there's a lot of different stuff out there no you guys use a logic a lot of you are just using different things nothing against any of that but I'm just finding Reaper to be in my opinion the number one most affordable full-featured DAW that is out there when we talk about creating professional audio on any size budget in my opinion Reaper is the number one option if budget is your concern versus getting a professional audio and so hopefully this has been helpful to you I'd love to hear your comments if you haven't subscribed to us in iTunes or in YouTube you can do that now make sure it hit subscribed and for you those that are listening in iTunes I'd invite you to do a search in iTunes in the iTunes Store for home music studio one and give me an honest review once you find our feed there love to hear back from you and then lastly if you haven't yet joined literally the hundreds per month of community members that are interacting and part of the the newsletter and part of just the community of downloads interacting with the forums and all that or the exclusive Facebook group as well if you're not part of that somewhere I would invite you to do that head on over to free recording tools.com you can throw your email into the list there and hit Send and you know what that'll get you on the free newsletter and that'll get exclusive information from me directly to you directly to your inbox that'll keep you up to date with all the things that are going on give you some tools to continue producing professional audio to learn how to do that regardless of your budget size and just as a thank you from me to you for signing up for the newsletter I'm also gonna send you a free ebook if you just put your email and in that list there and click send I'll get that out to you right away that is called understanding compression in the home music studio that's a question I get a lot and so I put an e-book together to answer that question it's kind of explained that I think that'll be really helpful to you again head on over to free recording tools.com and join us in the the exclusive newsletter I'd love to hear from you as well with that hopefully this has been helpful to you don't forget to subscribe to the channel and give us your honest feedback and review until next time this is David maxi with home music studio one you

Channel: Home Music Studio 1

Views: 191,525

Keywords: reaper daw, plugins, digital audio workstation, recording, home music studio, REAPER (Software)

Id: AmUET7Tmp1c

Length: 32min 38sec (1958 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 27 2014