New Reaper user... questions???

uncle sixer

Member
So my only real daw experience is about 10 days with reaper. I have it running on a laptop with windows 10, i5, 12GB RAM and SSD. My AI is Behringer UMC 404HD.

I am (slowly) working my way through the REAPER manual and watching videos... I am having a lot of fun, but also feeling a little bit overwhelmed.

Right now, my first question is this... out of the box, everything just defaulted to 41000 hz and I left it there. Sometime in the last 24 hours, it changed to 48000 and the songs I am working on say the previous tracks have been resampled to 48000. No big deal since I am still just messing around, but in the future I want it to stay set at one rate (right?).

So did I change a setting (without realizing), or did it switch to 48000 automatically for some reason I am too dumb to understand yet? I think I would rather have it at 41000 and just STAY THERE.

Second, given my computer, what buffer size should I be using for A: recording and B: mixing, etc? Just a starting point would be helpful.

Third... when the Behringer is connected, I can set audio preferences to Audio System:ASIO, then I have choices of Realtek ASIO or UMC ASIO Drivers.... I assume I should use UMC ASIO, right? When the Behringer is not connected, ASIO doesn't work and I am left with choices: WDM Kernel Streaming, DirectSound, WaveOut, Dummy Audio, and WASAPI.... which one is best to use if I want to listen to playback on computer speakers or headphones? I have noticed that playback through computer speakers sometimes has a moment of drop-out so I am wondering what is optimum for listening to my mixes.

Finally, is switching my Audio System in reaper possibly the reason my previously recorded items got resampled (back to first question)?

Anything else to watch out for as I am trying to get things sorted-out here?

I am going to go back and go over the relevant sections of the manual again when I have time, but my eyes are tired and I thought I would check-in here, too.

Thanks for any help!
 
Did you watch youtube videos using the computer speakers, that could explain the switch to 48K.

Yes, use the Behringer UMC ASIO driver.
You should be able to have a low buffer setting, but you'll need to experiment, its all about your processor and SSD speeds.
 
yeah, definitely been on youtube and spotify with the computer speakers. At one point I was listening to spotify through the behringer, too.

Do I need to re-check every time I start reaper to see if it is set to 41 or 48 Khz??? Every time I open a project???
 
You should see the Bit Rate and Depth, along with your sample buffer in the upper right corner of the screen. Its easy to check before you hit record. If you are bouncing between using the interface and using the internal sound card, your settings might occasionally change. I find that my Windows drivers seem to default to 48K, maybe because that is the standard for video.

One nice thing about Reaper is that it will merge files in at varying bit rates with no problem. I just did a comparison in another thread using 3 different recording platforms. One was 44.1K/24bit, one was 48K/24bit, and the last was 88.2K/24bit. I simply drug all three wave files into Reaper seamlessly.
 
So did I change a setting (without realizing), or did it switch to 48000 automatically for some reason I am too dumb to understand yet? I think I would rather have it at 41000 and just STAY THERE.

Whether you use 44 or 48 doesn't really matter. You should be able to open Reaper, go to File/Project Settings, select your preferred sample rate, then tick the box that says "Save as default project settings".

Second, given my computer, what buffer size should I be using for A: recording and B: mixing, etc? Just a starting point would be helpful.
Start off by using whatever it defaults to. If you want to reduce latency, make the buffer smaller. But if you make it too small, you may clicks and other symptoms of the machine not being able to keep up. However, since about 2003 I've used default settings for recording and playback without issue.

Third... when the Behringer is connected, I can set audio preferences to Audio System:ASIO, then I have choices of Realtek ASIO or UMC ASIO Drivers.... I assume I should use UMC ASIO, right?
Correct. UMC are the Behringer drivers .


When the Behringer is not connected, ASIO doesn't work and I am left with choices: WDM Kernel Streaming, DirectSound, WaveOut, Dummy Audio, and WASAPI.... which one is best to use if I want to listen to playback on computer speakers or headphones? I have noticed that playback through computer speakers sometimes has a moment of drop-out so I am wondering what is optimum for listening to my mixes.

I don't know which is the best to use. Maybe DirectSound. Try them all out to see which works best. I don't know which is best because I don't disconnect the interface. I record, monitor and playback through the interface. The broad idea is that the interface replaces the onboard sound of the computer, and everything goes through it.
 
Thanks, guys....

Yes, I saw last night where to set default project settings and now that all seems back to normal.

I am still on default buffer, will stay there until I have a need to play with it.

My laptop is for a home studio as well as reading the news, checking email, watching youtube, netflix, etc, etc... so it gets disconnected from the AI daily. Everything else just works when disconnected, but reaper needs to have the audio settings changed if I want to listen to a playback. Annoying, but I can live with it.

Follow-up question....

WOW, that is a lot of plugins. And then there is a library of extra presets I haven't even looked at yet! Where does a noob start? ReaEQ is obviously very powerful/useful.

I will want something for compression, reverb, delay, prob analog tape emulation eventually..... Any favorites or plugins that are especially easy to use?

A search turned up Klanghelm IVGI as a possible free analog tape plugin with good reviews, but I feel like I should check out what is already included before adding more.
 
I've been using ReaFIR for compression lately and like it. It is a multiband compressor, so you can compress the bass at a different threshold than treble, or vice verse. ReaEQ is fine for EQ changes.

For reverb, I use ReaVERB with the Samplicity Bricasti M7 IR files that were available some years ago. They don't seem to be as widely posted anymore, but the Internet Archive has them on some page captures. They sound better to me than mores plain reverbs. I like the plate and Sunset settings.

I don't use any tape emulation plugins. It seems like a step backwards to me.
 
Back
Top