REAPER Basic Recording Setup
Hello noobsters, welcome to 7th tutorial of audio editing basics with Reaper. In which we will set up Reaper ready to start recording audio into it. because each user will have a different hardware setup, I will try address common situations for different typical users.
First of all make sure you have connected on the equipment you will use. Microphone, sound card, headphone, etc. Then open Reaper and get started. The first thing you need to do is to create a new track to record audio into it, There are several ways to do that :
1. Go to the menu bar > track > insert new truck.
2. Place your mouse over the dark area on the left, the track control panel, right click and select insert new track
3. Double click on the same area
4. Or just press Ctrl+T to create a new track.
Now that you have your new audio track ready to start recording let's take the input of the audio into this track, with the button you can arm or disarm the recording on this track, but it is also useful because it starts the monitoring of the inputs signal. As you can see I can see here my own voice, if you cannot see your audio getting into the track you have to make some changes. Click on the right of the menu bar where you see the information about your audio settings here and select audio device settings in here you must properly select input device but it depends on your personal hardware configuration.
First case would be when you are recording directly using the built-in mic of your laptop or PC or you have connected a microphone to the mini jack microphone input over your computer. This is the worst possible configuration because the audio quality you will get is not very good, you will be using in this case the internal sound card of your computer. In a Windows PC select the right input and click OK, in a Mac computer you have to open the audio MIDI setup panel and select the built-in microphone option as recording device, by re-clicking on it and selecting "use this device for audio input", now click on the red button on your empty track and you should be getting audio into this track.
Second case you have a USB microphone connected to your computer, this will give you a better sound good enough for many purposes like voice narrations and music themes certainly better than the first case but still not very professional, in this configuration the analog audio signal produced by the microphone is digitalize in a small analog to digital converter. Usually built inside the Mac's hardware so you don't have to worry about it. It works as a small sound card and its name is what you must select in the audio device settings panel.
If you are in Windows or the audio MIDI setup in Mac as an example I am using a Sennheiser USB mic to record this tutorials now click on the red button in the track control panel to enable recording and monitoring and you are ready to go to. If you cannot see your input there again as we did before try to find your device your USB device if this is not working try WASAPI or waveout, waveout is not very good because it designed for old computers.
Third case you have a more professional set up and you are using an external USB sound card where you can connect dynamic or condenser microphone via XLR cable and can also record Instruments via jack inputs. In this case you should select also the name of your sound card as audio device but also the range of input and output available.
The name of the sound card in here input and output device also if you install drivers in the computer to be used with your sound card you should select this special drivers here and also the number of input channels and output channels usually 2 for stereo but depending of your configuration this should changed and just click OK. when you are ready to start recording just click on this button to prepare the track to receive the audio and start the general recording with this is big button here. So now are you should be getting into my track as you can see this is the recording of my own voice. And I can edit this recording exactly the same as I did before.
So that's all for today, if you found this tutorial about the basics of recording audio in Reaper useful please subscribe. I tried to make it simple so could start recording as soon as possible, in the next tutorial I will go deeper into some configuration aspect and give you also some tips that can make your work with the Reaper easier and faster.
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Uncle Noobee
Uncle Noobee - Editor of Noobsquare.com , loves science and technology specially internet. Sees internet as the largest university with millions of students. Every students have rights to learn their own subject and to master it.
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