Reaper or Audacity?

viz · June 2014

Going to buy it today, which is best?

Heartfeltdawn · June 2014

Audacity is free, Reaper is cheap. One is an audio editor, the other a fully fledged DAW. Very different things.

What do you want to do with the software?

Ianb62 · June 2014

I have both,

Reaper is far more complex, and far more adaptable (but as Audacity is free there is no harm in having both)
I also have Ntrack - which is paid for - and in some ways I prefer that to Reaper, I find its easier to manage plugins with Ntrack .

viz · June 2014

Audacity is the free one is it? I need to record a piano concert; I just bought an interface but the free software it came with keeps crashing my computer. But I'd also like to record guitar through it later. What is a daw again? I have an amp modeller already.

viz · June 2014

Which one is least likely to crash in a live situation? If it crashes, I will be slaughtered.

digitalscream · June 2014

If you're just recording (rather than editing) and you have an Android/iPhone with sufficient capacity, I may have a solution for you (I've got a condenser as mentioned in the other thread, and an iRig Pre to plug into the phone). It would involve you coming over to me to pick up some gear, though.

viz · June 2014

Hi - I was directed to this thread from the other one lol - interesting though I don't think I can trust my iphone to record 2 hours on the trot - it often drops out after 45 mins or so, so I'm deff going the mic and PC route.

digitalscream · June 2014

viz said:

Hi - I was directed to this thread from the other one lol - interesting though I don't think I can trust my iphone to record 2 hours on the trot - it often drops out after 45 mins or so, so I'm deff going the mic and PC route.

Fair enough...get yourself a real phone (or a tablet), and you won't have that problem

The mic offer still stands, if you can't get yourself sorted in time.

viz · June 2014

Cheers

Fazer · June 2014

if you are just recording basic mono/stereo track then audacity is (probably) fine.
as for recording 2 uninterrupted hours and crashes i havent tried it myself so i dont know.
do look at the free disk space and that the file system is happy with a single gigantic file.

reaper is also free to try, nagware, so give it a test as well

digitalscream · June 2014

Personally, I'd use Reaper. I've found Audacity to be a bit unstable on occasions.

viz · June 2014

Cheers chaps

JAYJO · June 2014

Just bought Reaper, works out about £36. bargain though you could live with the nag screen for minimum 60 days then decide.

digitalscream · June 2014

JAYJO said:

Just bought Reaper, works out about £36. bargain though you could live with the nag screen for minimum 60 days then decide.

Yeah, I bought it too - we've recorded our album with it. Frankly, it's an astonishing bit of software at almost any price comparable to other DAWs; at £36, it's ludicrous value for money.

The remote VST functionality is something else, by the way. If you use enough VSTs that your machine is struggling and you have a spare computer or two (and a decent wired network), you can spread the load across all the machines. I don't know of any other DAWs that can do that without expensive plugins and complicated setup..

ThePrettyDamned · June 2014

I love Reaper, it's pretty easy to use and I've found Rea EQ to be pretty powerful! It's actually quite useful.

Very easy to add plugins and the like, and it's cheap! It's nagware - technically, you need to pay for it after the trial but there is no software lock so you can just keep using it. Don't bother - it's £36 quid, which is cheaper than a Boss pedal.

ThePrettyDamned · June 2014

That said, definitely make sure the lappy is well ventilated! Mine gets mega hot.

It's a bit rubbish, though.

viz · June 2014

Ok. On Audacity how do I get my laptop's internal mic from picking up sound and adding it to my condenser mic's signal (which is coming via an interface through a usb port)?

Fazer · June 2014

ctrl-p / devices / recording?

Fazer · June 2014

or simply the recording dropdown at the top?

Danny1969 · June 2014

Reaper doesn't actually need you to buy it at all, I've been evaluating it for about 6 years now

viz · June 2014

Done it thanks. I was getting my knickers in a twist about the name of my internal mic, which bears striking resemblence to the name of my interface. cheers!

monquixote · June 2014

I've had a load of problems with Audacity doing weird stuff like distorting audio and dropping out.

Also Audacity doesn't work with multiple inputs or ASIO unless you recompile it from source.

Reaper is great and very inexpensive. You can try it out without paying.

PolarityMan · June 2014

Danny1969 said:

Reaper doesn't actually need you to buy it at all, I've been evaluating it for about 6 years now

Does the nag screen tell you how long youve been using it still? I remember I clocked up 7000 hours and then figured that they probably deserved my cash cash and bought a licence

ecc83 · June 2014

Hi Viz,

The fact that you did not know how to turn off the internal microphone in the laptop tells me that you have some work to do before you embark on this project!

First off it really does not matter what software you use for recording but I would go with Reaper.

Re the internal mic. If you have a proper Audio Interface properly setup in the software the mic would never show up!

As for getting your arse in a sling if this thing goes tits up? NO professional recording bod would trust to just ONE recording system! Especially for a one off, live event. Oh it CAN work! Some 6 months ago I just left my HP i3 lappy and NI KA6 interface running Samplitude Silver at a jam night (co-I pair of AKG P150s) and it grabbed 3hours+ with nary a flicker. But THAT was not mission critical!

A backup could be a Dolby cassette machine and bribe somebody to feed it C 90s (don't go cheap, don't flip them!) . Can you get hold of a hard drive video recorder? Feed the line inputs on that and you have hours of recording and zero chance of failure. Not PC quality, quite, I grant you but ANY recording is better than none.

For the actual PC setup you need to record at 24bits and 44.1kHz* and KEEP LEVELS LOW. Have the meters running at -20dBFS and absolute peaks no higher than -8dBFS.

And, FFS try all this out at home. Just set it all up recording the daily noises for a few hours, see if ***t'appen!

*If the recording might need to go with video, run at 48kHz.

Dave.

ThePrettyDamned · June 2014

Zoom do a handheld recorder, too. Perfect for capturing live events.

http://www.gear4music.com/Recording-and-Computers/Zoom-H1-Digital-Field-Recorder/E1F?origin=product-ads&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=&utm_campaign=PLA+Zoom&utm_content=gBBbf9aZ|dc_pcrid_37452899719_plid__kword__match__&gclid=CMKg5qSn4r4CFdShtAodLHQA5g

Okay, it's about the cost of reaper twice, but still, it might be perfect, especially if you will need it again.

viz · June 2014

Thanks! Yes Dave you are correct, I am totally rubbish when it comes to this! I will use the settings you suggest, thank you so much!

I've spent a whole day on it, I recorded and exported three 2-hour takes successfully with no problems, and I have experience of live mixing if not recording so I think the level-setting will not be a problem. I've got a long mic lead so will be able to sit at the back with the interface, laptop and headphones, I have an ipad and an iphone recording it too, so if my pc drops I will be able to restart it on the fly and patch in the ipad audio for a few seconds, i've disabled the laptop mic and the beeps and sounds, the ipad and phone will be on flight mode.

Any more tips? @ecc83, why do i have to go with 48khz if i'm going to add the video and sound together later? Cheers, Viz

ecc83 · June 2014

Video audio always runs at 48kHz (may have something to do with the integer value of 24 frames per sec? ) and so any imported audio should be the same rate for lipsync. That is probably not important for a music video but there is no harm in going for 48k so if video might be involved do it.

Which interface is it? You should not need to "patch in" a backup recorder, just run it from the line outputs of the AI but make sure the monitoring is set for "input", i.e. so called "zero latency" monitoring.

Dave.

viz · June 2014

Thanks - appreciated! Well I ended up having it at 44khz because I knew that had worked; i'll sync it to the video i took with the ipad, through 'mixpad' (which is really good and free by the way) and hopefully all will be a o k.

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