A Reaper Newbie Guide

Introduction

Welcome to this Reaper Newbie Guide!
The guide is aimed at you who are new to Reaper and maybe DAWs in general.
There are three  main sections:

Part I
a) The Reaper essentials.
  What you need and how to get started.
b) The Reaper add-ons.
  Themes, control-surfaces and handy stuff.

Part II 
A ReaBundle
  Instruments and effects to make music (may be refereed to as G-Suns ReaBundle)

The Reaper essentials

1) If you haven't done so already. Download Reaper ( 64bit ) and install.
2) Download the User Guide by Geoffrey Francis
3) Download and install the SWS-extension
(Tip! You may find various manuals. Grab 'm all and save into Reapers home directory e.g. "C:\Users\'YourName'\AppData\Roaming\REAPER\Docs"(win). They'll then show up in Reapers help-menu )

Getting started
Now, when you start Reaper, the minimum you'll have to do is to set up in/out audio and midi (at least audio out). Read manual 1.12 and 1.15.
The next thing is telling Reaper where you have your vst-plugins. Read manual 1.16
Then reading the whole manual is an excellent idea. But let's admit it: That's a lot of pages..
You'll maybe find Geoffreys QuickStartManual shorter and very handy :)
 

  The Reaper add-ons

• Reaper Themes
• Control Surfaces
• For your specific midi-controller, please search here with the name of your device.
• Klinke's Mackie Control Plugin 
• Geoff Waddington's Mackie Control Plugin
• Alpha Track (PRO)
• Faderport XT
• For your iOS-device:
• AC-7
• TouchOSC
• V-Control
• Line Lemur 
• TouchDAW
• For Android:
• TouchDAW

Some links

Video Tutorials

• Groove3
• Tutorial For Reaper

Next >>

A project home studio

So,
I've been trying out many design-ideas for my new project home studio. ( eg. 1 2 )

And, finally, I reached out to get some help. John H. Brandt is now the designer
( http://www.jhbrandt.net ) and together we've come rather close to final design.

Things are looking good, but I don't have the money to build it, yet :)

Double garage to studio - Original drawings and graphics

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2D Groundplan:

Here are the original drawings for the garage:

Double garage to studio - #1 Overview

I'm planning to convert our double garage into a sound studio.

This is my second attempt to get a functional room for recording and mixing (last attempt here)

Links and TOC

• Design and build, John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum
• Discussion, Reaper Forums
• Starting point
• Images
• Original drawings and graphics (2D)

Goal

My  goal is to have a good place for recording and mixing music, mostly for myself, one instrument at a time -e.g vocal, ac.guitar, percussion. But it should also work for a band with drums, or several people doing voice-over. Sound-isolation aim is 60db. It should also be a nice room to be in.

..edits to come :)

Double garage to studio - Pictures1

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Here's some pictures from before the conversion into studio.

From East

Garage door and second door

Second door

Expanded clay 8cm

Expanded cley, 8cm and 13cm

Outer door

Drain

3rd door (for inner wall)

Building a small studio - The big halt

So, I've been planning my new sound-studio, converting part of our shed into a functional one room recording and mixing room. Then, realizing what needed to be done, things have come to a big halt - a musical G.P. (General Pause).

In order to get a good small studio-room in our shed I would have to:

• Redo the floor completely, making it concrete, leveled and with insulation and heating.
• Redo the outer wall completely.
• Build a room in the room (inner room)
• Redu most of the rafter-structure, possibly two new ridge beams.
• Replacing 90% of all studs
• Redo the roof with heavier sub-roof
• Redo the electrical completely
• And then all the inside-room acoustic taming and tweaking.

So, then it seems like less work to tear it all down and start from the bottom. And then, I might as well build something from scratch on another spot on our property.

So it's time to rethink the whole project..

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Building a small studio - Part 3: Floor, walls and roof

In Part 2 I layed out the overall plan for my sound-studio.
In this post I'll go into the details for walls, roof and floor.

Floor

As it is, the floor is a divided in a section with concrete-slab (no: betong-såle) and a wooden construction on concrete poles.

Concrete-slab and wood

 My plan is this:

The acoustic underlay of 20mm is high-density floor-insulation (no: trinnlydsplater), like this.

Question: The plan for the floor is creating some treaple-leaf-effect. Is it good enough? Any other way to do this?
Qustion: Any alternatives for using the asphalt-plates? 
Isssue: It's not much space below the studs: I don't know how well I can stuff in the insulation, not to mention to put the asphalt-plates on.

Edit: I need to give the studio-floor a second thouht. Maybe it should be reflective and wood-based. Plywood maybe.

Update: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17820

Walls

Walls are currently studs with "barn-clothing" (no: låvekledning).

My plan is this:

For the walls with door and window (east and west) I plan 2x4" studs with 10cm insulation for the inner walls. That's for easier installation of door and window.
For the two other walls I'm using 1,5x3" studs and 7cm insulation.

Update: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17826

Roof

My plan for the walls applies for the inner roof as well (1,5x3" / 7cm) .

Before

 Like this:

Updated plan:

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