Big thump at the beginning of tracks with Reaper?

G

gitlvr

New member
Hi, new here.
I've been using Cakewalk Home Studio 2004 for a long time, but it is fairly old, so after reading a lot of reviews, downloaded Reaper for trial. I like it a lot, think it sounds great, easy to use, etc.
But I notice when playing back the tracks, there is a distinct "thump" as the audio begins. Will this disappear once the tracks are rendered to a stereo wave file? Does anyone know what I'm talking about here?
My Home Studio 2004 software does not do this, and I'm doing nothing different in Reaper. This is an artifact of the software, not a noise I am making at the beginning of the recording. I would really like to switch to Reaper, as I think it sounds much better. But not if every song begins with a thump, like someone dropped the arm on an LP.
Any help or answers appreciated.
 
gitlvr said:
Hi, new here.
I've been using Cakewalk Home Studio 2004 for a long time, but it is fairly old, so after reading a lot of reviews, downloaded Reaper for trial. I like it a lot, think it sounds great, easy to use, etc.
But I notice when playing back the tracks, there is a distinct "thump" as the audio begins. Will this disappear once the tracks are rendered to a stereo wave file? Does anyone know what I'm talking about here?
My Home Studio 2004 software does not do this, and I'm doing nothing different in Reaper. This is an artifact of the software, not a noise I am making at the beginning of the recording. I would really like to switch to Reaper, as I think it sounds much better. But not if every song begins with a thump, like someone dropped the arm on an LP.
Any help or answers appreciated.
Click to expand...

I am just going to guess you need to place a 'fade in' on the beginning of the track.

Post a sample and I bet you will get a definitive answer quickly. :)
 
I get this from time to time and its usually a reverb or some other plugin that does it. Can also have it happen when stopping a track. As it doesn't render to file, I just ignore it. Doesn't bother me now as I'm used to it.

:thumbs up:
 
I'll get noise (not a thump) when I stop a track while playing, but nothing at the start of a track. Do you have any silence before the music begins or is it starting right at 0.00?
 
I have never had this issue. I'm pretty sure that Reaper automatically puts a very short fade at the beginning and end of every audio item for exactly this reason. That would definitely be an optional setting somewhere, though. Maybe you've got it turned off for some reason? Anyway, I'm sure it's not actually Reaper causing it, though Sonar may have been hiding it better somehow.

I can't imagine that Reaper actually sounds better than Sonar (given comparable settings), but I guess whatever it takes to bring you over... Reaper is better than Sonar in a number of ways, but I'm not buying the idea of an actual audible difference in sound.
 
Some instrument plug-ins occasionally give spurious signals when starting or stopping, probably because of confused note-on or note-off commands. But I've not had the problem described.

Is your audio track butted right up at the start, i.e. at time 0:00.000 or Bar 1.1.00?

If so, try putting your audio on the next bar (2.1.00). If you have lots of tracks starting at 0, just highlight a bar's width, right click and go "insert empty space into selection".
 
Thanks for all the replies. Thump is gone now. Just disappeared. Track is nice and clean from the beginning. Don't know what it was, but thinking per advice on another forum that it may have something to do with not having an interface. I'm going straight into my computer's onboard sound card. It may be having trouble digitally dealing with all the recorded audio, though I never experienced this with Cakewalk.
I have a Lexicon Alpha on it's way from Sweetwater, so I can take that possibility out of the equation.
Thanks to all of you for your very generous and friendly advice. I think I'm gonna like it here. :)
 
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