REAPER: recording audio on computer into track

Gear
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You may have a song you want to play along with. Maybe even a song that has no bass track… and you want to record that into a Reaper project so that you can add your bass noise to it.

Here’s how to go about:
In Reaper, go to Options/Preferences, and configure the Audio Device Settings as follows:
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Now, create a new track. IMMEDIATELY MUTE THE TRACK OR DIE
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When you’ve muted the track, you can arm it for recording.
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Under IN FX, choose Input Stereo/Input 1 + Input 2:
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If you now start to play what you want to record, you should see action in the VU meter for that track:
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If that happens, you’re all set to record.
Make sure all other apps that could generate noise are shut down. Mail, Facebook, calendars…

If, on starting your music, !!!YOU HEAR A TERRIBLE NOISE!!! you have initiated a feedback loop – this is because you did not mute the track, and the track is looping back onto itself. MUTE THE TRACK NOW OR DIE! :wink:

When you are done, MAKE SURE YOU RECONFIGURE your audio device settings to no longer use the Shared loopback device!

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Thanks for posting this @peterhuppertz. You should also post it in the thread “Reaper Questions”

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I’d rather link to this from there. Which has now been accomplished.

As a Certified Document Infrastructure Architect (yes, that is a thing, and yes, I have been officially certified!), I am firmly opposed to multiple versions of the same document.

Moreover, I created a new thread for this because I reckoned that, if I post this inside a thread that has all Reaper questions, it’ll be next to impossible to find it back later (yes, Centified Document Infrastructure Architects also worry about document indexing and retrieval, not just about storage).

:grin:

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Why would you record the song as opposed to just adding the media into a track? I’m as confused as a dying giraffe…

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… from utoob?

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Ah okay. I hadn’t thought of that. Thanks for clarifying :smiley_cat:

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I just tried this with a YouTube video and it worked. Thanks for the tip @peterhuppertz. The playback sound quality wasn’t the best, but I’ll experiment some more and see what tweaks I need to apply to improve the quality.

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Well, I was reckoning, if it’s just for playalong purposes, to track your progress, sound quality shouldn’t be your primary concern.
It might also be dependent on the quality of your sound card; I’m not sure. Mine isn’t stodio quality, but it’s not exactly the bottom end of the market either.

Having said that, if you have a DAI, you might be able to use that – I saw a couple mentions when I was Googling.

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I’ve done that (both of these actually). Playing stereo audio into a DAI stereo input works fine. If you don’t have a stereo in on your DAI, it’s going to sound super shitty unless you have a way to properly mix to mono first.

Using the loop audio out to Reaper input method works much, much better.

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