Recording levels

itaughttremonti

itaughttremonti

Paul McCartney died?
Ok, I know....a seriously noob question, but how do you set the levels for recording on each track? I click on the top of the track when in the mixer, and it throws out some random number. Is that the level that it was at when I clicked it? Sorry if this is really dumb, but I have no recording experience at all.
 
itaughttremonti said:
Ok, I know....a seriously noob question, but how do you set the levels for recording on each track? I click on the top of the track when in the mixer, and it throws out some random number. Is that the level that it was at when I clicked it? Sorry if this is really dumb, but I have no recording experience at all.
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The top of the track, as in the meter? The green to red thing that lights up? If you click on the top of the meter, it resets the peak history. The peak history tells you what the loudest moment of the entire track played since the last reset was, in decibels.
 
you set the levels via the gain knobs on your audio interface or mic preamps. the meters and faders in reaper are for monitoring levels and track playback, not for recording levels. it works the same way as on a hardware mixer. the gain knob on a mixer channel sets the incoming audio level, while the fader sets the level going to the bus. btw, err on the side of much too low, rather than maybe too high when setting your recording levels.

there's no reason to feel dumb. we've all been new to this stuff, and there's nothing wrong with asking questions.
 
Makes sense. Right now, I don't even have an interface...Im just recording ideas through my computer mic. But, that clears up some things I was wondering about for when I do get an interface and such. Thanks again man.
 
itaughttremonti said:
Makes sense. Right now, I don't even have an interface...Im just recording ideas through my computer mic. But, that clears up some things I was wondering about for when I do get an interface and such. Thanks again man.
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for what you're currently doing, think of the windows mixer recording level as your gain control.
 
Gotcha. Any good books you reccomend for the simplest of simple stuff like this? In fact, does reaper have an online instruction manual?
 
itaughttremonti said:
Gotcha. Any good books you reccomend for the simplest of simple stuff like this? In fact, does reaper have an online instruction manual?
Click to expand...

there is the wiki (not recommended in it's current state), and a member at the cockos forum has written a user manual. you can download the pdf, or buy a hard copy. i've taken a couple of peeks at the manual, and it is well written, appears to be better than many i've read, but i haven't really read it as i learned my way around in another daw before switching to reaper. http://reaper.fm/userguide.php
 
Try not to record over -6db for best sound. A/D converters rarely do their best work over this level, so even if you're not getting distortion on the peaks you're still mucking up the sound by pushing the converters too hard. You just do not need levels that high with 24 bit recording.
 
Try not to record over -6db for best sound. A/D converters rarely do their best work over this level, so even if you're not getting distortion on the peaks you're still mucking up the sound by pushing the converters too hard. You just do not need levels that high with 24 bit recording.
 
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