ROB WARMOWSKI: Hello again everybody. This is Rob for Gearwire, and welcome to another screencast showing the features of the REAPER digital audio workstation from Cockos.Com. REAPER has lots of interesting features and we are going to be taking a look at them on a regular basis. Right now, we are taking a look at what it means to arm and record specifically one track in REAPER. There are steps to go through and let’s just go through the correct steps.

First thing we’re going to do is we’re going to choose the options and record mode normal command, and we’re going to make sure that record mode is set to normal, so and it is. We can see that there are three total record modes. There’s loop auto selection for punching and there’s auto-punching but we’re just going to go normal in this screencast.

The next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to click the record arm button for the track, and here it is, and what that does is it causes the VU meter to be displayed. The VU meter is listening to the left channel, which is the normal setup for this particular PC. If we go over the left hand end of the VU meter and click the mouse, we can see that a -- there’s a menu of exact options that allows for input coming in from the sound card. So, we can say mono input left or mono input right or MIDI input or stereo input. So, we select the correct input and that will be the one that the microphone or line that you are using for the recording. That’s the one that is connected.

In this case, you would audition the sound while you adjust the volume on the audio -- on the actual mixer or the input device so as to get a good, strong signal without clipping. We do not have an audio source set up at this time, but one principle that you would probably be familiar with if you have been recording for a while is you want to aim to peak at about -10 dB, and here’s -12 right here, so -12 would be right about in this area. In other words, it’s about skating just south of the yellow range of the monitor. Then you press the record button on the transport in order to actually begin recording, or you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-R, and as you can see REAPER is off and running. It is actually recording a WAV file called “Foo”, and the reason that it’s doing that is because the WAV audio format has been selected as the default for this particular project.

So, that is the entirety of how you arm and record a single track in REAPER. I hope you enjoyed it. Keep your eyes on Gearwire.Com in the future for more screencasts. My name is Rob. Keep it on Gearwire.Com.