Recording in REAPER on a PC - REAPER DAW Tutorial

hi there this is steven gonzalez how are you doing well we finally made it we're ready to record however there's still just a little more setup that needs to be taking place tracks and recording that's what's next on reaper for voice talent in this video we're going to be setting up tracks within reaper and then we're finally going to be recording in reaper now if this is your first time within this video or especially if this is your first time within reaper for voice talent do me a favor and like this video subscribe to the channel and and don't forget to turn on that notification bell sending it to all and watch this video all the way through so that you don't miss a thing and with that let's get started now here we have a brand new project within reaper and it's essentially a blank slate now you'll note the only track that we see inside the mcp is the master track there are no channel tracks or recording tracks whatever you want to call them so the very first thing that we need to do is to generate a track there's three ways that we can do this we can go to track and insert new track or we can do ctrl t but there's an even easier way simply double click in an empty space in the tcp and there it is a new track now before you record do me a favor and do yourself a favor label your tracks and there's a good reason for it the way that you would rename your track is by double clicking on this empty space here and you would label your track now that you've labeled your track it's time for me to introduce to you something that is really really weird it started with version six and this is what's known as the monitoring echo whenever i hit the record arm button which i'm gonna do now and i set this input to the microphone through which i'm speaking right now listen to what happens ready here we go okay how you like this this is the weirdness i was talking about the insanity this is monitoring echo and it's really really really weird this is not vo friendly at all what this is meant to do again remember reaper is a music production software package and monitoring is primarily meant for musical instruments like guitars and keyboards for those instrumentalists to be able to hear themselves play without an amp but for vo work it's absolutely atrocious so how do we turn this off well it has to do with this speaker here when we hover over it it says record monitoring on well we're going to press once and it still hasn't gone away right because it's now in auto mode when we press it again finally sanity ensues because the monitoring is not there now how do you turn this off permanently where whenever you hit the record arm on a new track it doesn't go into that wormhole well what you would do is you would go under options and preferences and again we're in reaper preferences and we're in the device area based on our connecting and configuring our interface and where we want to go is track and send defaults under project click on record config and right here record input you want to uncheck that you see how it's not checked now and then of course you hit apply and okay that will keep new tracks from going into monitoring echo now that we have solved this monitoring echo let's take another side trip and talk about gain staging for a second gain staging is perhaps one of the most important things that you can do for your recording there are two schools of thought one says that your peaks should never go above negative three and one says that peaks should be set somewhere between negative 12 and negative six db and that's the one we're going to be following is the negative 12 to negative 6. now the way that we do this is we speak in the mic but we turn our gain all the way down so that reaper can't hear anything and as you can see the vu meter is just dead right now i'm going to stretch this track a little bit by dragging the bottom of it so that we can get a really good idea as far as where we're going with this and my peaks i want somewhere in this area in a consistent way now some people will say you know negative three which is roughly about right here so you want your peaks between negative nine and negative three perhaps uh again we're going to be going between negative 12 and negative six so then the record arm is there of course and i start turning up the gain and eventually as you can see the vu meter hops and it hops and i find that ah the ah sound is the one like i ought to do this because i want to do this i ought to do this because i want to do this that's the one that really juices the peaks if you will and the number that i'm looking at is right here i'm looking at this and i'm also looking at the view meter here as well so then i raise it up even more and we go a little hotter and right there that seems to be cool right there i seem to be going and if if i go above negative six a little bit every once in a while then that's fine it's not a big deal as long as the majority of the peaks go between negative 12 and negative six then you're good i ought to do this because i want to do this now if for some reason you go beyond zero which is the worst thing to do you're going to find that the meters kind of do something funky and i'm going to snap my finger and show you that ready notice it went past zero but you'll note that the color has changed and everything to get rid of this you just click on the peak indicator and you're back in the normal realm of colors again now this is a peaks indicator here that says of course in this session this is the maximum that has spoken as far as amplitude is concerned now in reaper preferences there is a way to reset this every time we record or every time we stop the playback and playback again it resets itself and there's a cool way to do that again which we're going to get to and when we talk about the preferences sequence so anyway that's gain staging now now that we've got a good overall value now it's time to record this is why we're here right so what i'm going to do is i'm going to hit ctrl r which is the same thing as hitting this button right here and i'm going to do this in three two one testing one two three testing one two three the usual test of test one 123 and i hit the space bar i can't turn the record arm off while this modal window is here but this allows me to show you something remember what i said label your tracks before you record and this is why because it's incorporated in the wav file name here we have the track number the track name the date that was recorded and the time that was recorded now this window here we really don't need as voice talent to be honest never do we need this so let's uncheck on stop and then we click on the x and that window will never appear again in the next video we'll be looking at saving and rendering in reaper if you have any comments or questions please drop them in the comments section below and don't forget to like subscribe and hit that notification bell and don't forget that there is a windows centric playlist link in the description below this is steven gonzalez with steven gonzalez voiceovers wishing y'all all the best and you'll have a wonderful and wonderful day

Channel: REAPER for Voice Talent

Views: 301

Keywords: REAPER DAW Tutorial, REAPER DAW, REAPER Tutorial, How to, Digital Audio Workstation, DAW, Best DAW Software, Cockos REAPER, Steven Gonzales Voiceovers, SGVO, REAPER for Voice Talent, RFVT, Recording in a DAW, Recording Audio, Recording, recording vocals, Home Studio, Personal Studio, VO, voice Acting

Id: BTpkShgNr-I

Length: 8min 4sec (484 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 12 2020