Using REAPER or ADOBE AUDITION for recordings

Dec 03, 2012

Hi,

Looking at Reaper or Adobe Audition as a next step-up from Audacity.

What are the learning curves like?

I'm never really going to want vast capabilities, and wondered if these are easy to learn?

Perhaps I should just stick with Audacity?

Just beginning to think about it a bit....

Anyone got any views?

Thanks

Bruce

16 Replies
Bruce Graham

Hi Dave,

It's not really a question of functionality per se - Audacity has all I need.

I just find it a little "clunky" sometimes. I used to use NCH which I liked, but moved to Audacity when it fell over, as it seemed that talking to a real person was impossible when you ran into trouble.

It was much more friendly to use than Audacity, just wondering about upping the "pro-ness" of my game.

Not even sure it is needed - just playing with ideas.

Bruce

Steve Flowers

I use Reaper and I love it. However, there's a lot of functionality in Reaper I'm not using. It's a digital sound processor made for music professionals. Great value for the price. This extra stuff might be seen as complexity that you just don't need. 

I used to really like SoundForge for the section batching. I think Audition offers this feature. Adding a cuepoint / section marker then processing the whole thing out to individual named files was fast and easy. 

Karyn Lemberg

I'm still using both. Audicity for quick cutups but have started slowly using Audition when a little more tweaking needed... picking up the basics isn't too much of a stretch, and of course the help files are just a click away for whatever tool/filter/effect you have open.

Most recently for example - I received audio files from a contractor for a 200+ slide project where the volume was inconsistent between batchs - it was very quick to pick one file with correct volume and then use 'Match Volume"  to Batch process the entire folder of files to the same aprox volume levels..in under a minute. So it will be a time-saver. 

Still learning it - but seems much easier for slicing - oh and layering & joining in the Multitrack section is nice too.

Steve Flowers

I'm liking Garage Band on the iPad as well. The new Apogee MiC I picked up has expanded opportunities for quality capture. Have been experimenting with conversation capture between practitioners. I've been testing a variety of capture utilities. I like GarageBand for direct capture but get better visual feedback and some limited processing controls using TwistedWave. Have also used Cohdoo Highlight for longer interviews where I want to mark specific sections. 

There's some advantage to the simplicity offered by a tool that lets you capture, edit, and export using a single portable gizmo. "New fangled back to basics".

Rich Johnstun

Steve Flowers said:

I'm liking Garage Band on the iPad as well. The new Apogee MiC I picked up has expanded opportunities for quality capture. Have been experimenting with conversation capture between practitioners. I've been testing a variety of capture utilities. I like GarageBand for direct capture but get better visual feedback and some limited processing controls using TwistedWave. Have also used Cohdoo Highlight for longer interviews where I want to mark specific sections. 

There's some advantage to the simplicity offered by a tool that lets you capture, edit, and export using a single portable gizmo. "New fangled back to basics".


I've just been messing with an inexpensive lav mic that I have and so far its worked pretty well. My next step is to try coming out of a mixer for doing multi-mic setups.

Adrien Duval

As a casual electro musician, I tested various DAW and all I can say is that it depends first on your needs. All the DAW are capable to do anything, but some times they can do anything except the very little special thing you were expecting it to do. Also, some times you could be looking for "a way to do it", I mean how complicated it could be to do the actions you want to do. 

From my experience, for eLearning use, I would check first Audacity. Yes, the ol'good OpenSource software...

I also use another software : Ableton Live 8 Lite (an exceptionnal giveaway) and when I wanted to record with it, even if I already know how to use it properly, I got bugs on tracks that I did not have on Audacity. o.0

Don't go too fast with buying a software licence. Try Audacity first.

Many softwares out there are proposing a pletory of features which you would not use or even understand (I know it). Audacity is easier to use. Now, I only use it for recording and Ableton for sequencing and post-prod works (fade-in and out, filtering for phone effects, mixing with field captures...). Audacity is a rock solid piece of audio software. 

I heard Reaper is a good one too, but I never tried it.

Yet.

Bruce Graham

Thanks Adrien/everyone for replies.

The ONE thing I would like to do with Audacity is to be able to customise buttons. I get VERY tired of constantly selecting Noise Reduction and then applying it via the menu, I would LOVE to have the ability to set buttons at the top of the page.

I agree, it is rock solid, however, I am always on the lookout for simpler GUIs, which NCH did (IMHO) offer.

Bruce

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