Reaper Audio

Click me: Reaper Audio

A good Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) is essential to making a decent recording, along with a computer that is able to handle the load. If your machine is relatively new then you're probably ok for the most part. I use a quad core with 4 gigs of ram and it seems to work pretty well. If your machine starts to slow down you can always "freeze" or "bounce" your tracks (this lets you work with a completed .wav file, effects included, without the effects taxing your cpu). I also use an external hard drive to store my sample libraries, project files and anything else that might be used a lot, or constantly pulled from the HDD. This allows the C: drive to concentrate on running the programs while the external drive takes care of the busywork.

My DAW of choice is Reaper and it works wonderfully. With most of the same options and features as really expensive workstations, Reaper works just as well at a fraction ($60 noncommercial license, with an unlimited trial) of the price. You can easily spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on software that is, and I hate this term, "industry standard". Brandon Drury over at Recordingreview.com wrote a wonderful article on the topic - Digidesign Pro Tools: Rethinking The Industry Standard Mentality


I've never had a problem from Reaper. It performs wonderfully, accepts just about every vst I feed it, is very light on cpu, and a whole list of features that make my life easier like: a virtual midi keyboard, built in high quality vst effects, track templates, and simple to figure out controls.

While there is a learning curve with any new DAW, especially if you don't really know your way around a studio to begin with, Reaper is actually one of the easier DAW's to learn. If you understand the principals behind a simple mixing console, it won't take you long to learn how to use Reaper. What makes this even better is that on the Reaper Audio website, there is a user forum. Can't figure it out? Just ask.

How I use Reaper: I have track templates setup for everything including my guitar amps, drum sets, bass, certain vocal settings, certain tracking settings, master track etc. When I start a new project I can simply load the templates I need, arm the track, and press record. It's so simple.

I like to get some scratch guitars down first tracked with a simple drum pattern just to keep time. I then go back and edit the drum parts (more on this in a later post). I re-track guitars, bass and anything else. At this point the recording is pretty close to finished. All I need to do is add on the master track effects and tweak the mix. Because I started with a template for just about everything, and the templates came from a project I completed, the song pretty much mixes itself - with some exceptions.

My master track template takes care of the "Mastering" phase of recording for the most part. I use Stillwell's 1973 eq for a little bit of a shelving boost hear and there, Stillwell's Event Horizon limiter, Bootsey's FerricTDS for some saturation, Density Mark II for compression and Recording Review/Aradaz's Panipulator.

Stillwell Audio
Density MarkII
FerricTDS
Panipulator