REAPER: Adjustments after installing

After installing, we’re going to change a few things to avoid problems and improve your experience.

Let’s start by opening REAPER.

You will probably get a popup for ReaPack. Simply dismsiss it by clicking OK.

Audio

1. When opening REAPER after installing everything, you should get a popup asking you to pick an audio device or alerting you that it cannot open an audio device.
   Select Yes if you’re asked or.

   

   If you’re told there’s an error, select Audio device instead.

   

   If not, click on Options > Preferences and scroll down to Audio > Device.

   

Windows

2. Change Audio System to WASAPI.

   

   You can try DirectSound or WaveOut but they add a lot of latency!
   If you have a decent audio interface, you can use ASIO instead for minimal latency.

Linux

2. Change Audio System to whichever option works better for you. JACK is recommended as it’s the easiest.

   

   You can try also Pulse Audio or ALSA if JACK is incompatible or you simply want to use something different.

Backups

1. Scroll down to Project

2. Click on Backups

   • a. Enable Auto-save to timestamped file in project directory.

     

   This will let REAPER create backups of projects. Helpful in the rare case that it crashes.

Item Fade Defaults

1. Scroll down to Project

2. Click on Item Fade Defaults

   • a. Change Default fade-in/fadeout: to 0:00.000
   • b. Change Default crossfade to 0:00.035
   • c. Change the dropbox next to Split media items to Respect toolbar auto-crossfade button.
   • d. Change the dropbox below this section to Crossfade center
   • e. Change 'Trim content behind razor edits' enabled to Overlap and crossfade

   

Item Loop Defaults

1. Scroll down to Project

2. Click on Item Loop Defaults

3. Disable every option under Loop source for:

   

Track folder behavior

1. Scroll down to Appearance

2. Click on Track Control Panels

   • a. Change Track grouping indicators to Lines on edge
   • b. Change Folder collapse button cycles track heights to Normal, hidden or Normal, small, hidden

   

MIDI Settings

1. Scroll down to Media.

2. Click on MIDI.

   • a. Change Ticks per quarter note for new MIDI items to 480.
   • b. Change Character set for exported .MID text events to Latin-1.

   

   Rock Band relies on MIDI being set to 480 Ticks/PPQ. Without this, Rock Band and even tools made for charting will fail in weird ways.

Enabling Python

1. Scroll down to Plug-ins

2. Click on ReaScript

Windows

3. Enable Python for use with ReaScript.
   • a. If Python isn’t found automatically, it’s usually in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Programs\Python[Python Version]
   • b. The DLL will always be “Python[version].dll”, i.e. Python314.dll

   

Arch

3. Enable Python for use with ReaScript.
   • a. If Python isn’t found automatically, set the custom path to /usr/lib
   • b. Set Force ReaScript to use specific Python .so to /libpython3.so.

   

If this does not work, you will have to manually find Python3. The easiest way is to type this command into the terminal:

find /usr/lib -name "libpython3*.so"

This will find any Python3 library entries on your computer.

Fedora

3. Enable Python for use with ReaScript.
   • a. If Python isn’t found automatically, set the custom path to /lib64/
   • b. Set Force ReaScript to use specific Python .so to libpython3.so.

   

If this does not work, you will have to manually find Python3. The easiest way is to type this command into the terminal:

ldconfig -p | grep python3

This will find any Python3 library entries on your computer.

Debian

3. Enable Python for use with ReaScript.
   • a. If Python isn’t found automatically, set the custom path to /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpeas-1.0/loaders/
   • b. Set Force ReaScript to use specific Python .so to libpython3loader.so.

   

If this does not work, you will have to manually find Python3. The easiest way is to type this command into the terminal:

find /usr/lib -name "libpython3*.so"

This will find any Python3 library entries on your computer.