Introduction to Home Recording!
By popular demand, we will explore the very first steps of home recording together! 🎙 We will look at recording with a smartphone and actually get that recording up on YouTube in order to share it on the forum, but also will be looking to record directly onto your computer with the free digital audio workstation Reaper, an audio interface and a microphone! 🔊
We are going to be using this thread to gather suggestions and questions!
- What questions do you have on this topic?
- Any particular area you would like me to focus on?
Forum questions will be answered first!
83 replies
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Martin
I've two questions:
1) Is there any advantage of recording directly with the ZOOM H4N acting as a sound card via Reaper or recording first with the H4N and then loading the wav file on Reaper?
2) Can better results be obtained by simultaneously recording with H4N and Tascam MK100Dr and then with Reaper to treat the files one as right channel and the other as left channel, adding the recordings? -
This is the test upload I did during the stream!
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I was I'll and could not attend. Was this recorded somewhere, so that I could yet see it? I am completely lost and a true beginner at home recording (I've only my Android smartphone), so this would be a huge help!
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Hi Martin,
Quick question. What is the difference between normalizing a track at -1db true peak verses using a limiter like FabFile L2 to bring up the overall level? I'm trying to figure out what is the best practice: normalize and then use limiter if needed, or limiter only?
Rick
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Martin, My day job is getting in the way with the time, I just got the Scarlett 212 and some mics. No headphones as of yet. We will be able to watch later?
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Just a quick note that you can also edit video in Reaper, so to synchronize you can import the video file into the Reaper session and drag it till the sound waves match. No need for shortcut/DaVinci.
Not only that but you import multiple sources (say you use a few cameras) and edit, or even automatically create those grid videos. Like this thing below is all Reaper.
I know, Reaper is awesome! :)
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kito Oh Reaper is absolutely fantastic! But I always hesitated to do video in Reaper, I watched a tutorial on that once and I figured that I would be just much quicker in a dedicated piece of software! How are your experiences compared to other video software solutions?
Did you produce that video?? 🧙♂️
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kito wow that's great Kito! thanks for sharing this 👍
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Martin I can't compare as I have no experience with video editing (iMovie on the phone doesn't count), the UI just looks too intimidating. So finding that I can reuse Reaper for simple tasks was perfect.
I produced that video if you can call this producing. Attaching screenshot of the session. All videos go under the VIDEO folder. The ability to slice video just like audio tracks is just perfect. So I sync the audio and video (by moving video media items in time) and then turn the volume of the video down (muting is not the same, it just doesn't display the video).
Then there's a "Video processor" plugin you add just like any old plugin. See second screenshot. The video processor has only 20-30 things it can do and one of these things is "Grid of videos". It automatically draws the grid with the video items that exist at any time. In my case you can see how it starts with 1 video, then split screen, then 2x2 screens and so on. Magic :)
So yeah, drawbacks... not as powerful as specialized video software I'm sure. But benefits... simple, reusing your editing skills, free, stable (I've not experienced any crashes) and keeping things together in one project. I hope others find it as useful as I did :)
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Just another example of what's possible in Reaper: I added images of the score as the video goes on using the "Image overlay" option in the Video processor plugin
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