Hey guys, in this video we’re going to cover the track setup and signal routing in Reaper.
This is something we’ll need to know before we can get to recording audio, adding effects
and making edits.
Before watching this video, make sure you check out the previous videos in this series
where we covered getting Reaper setup and the layout of the software.
To be able to record audio, we’ll need to add an audio track.
Right click on the blank track area, or add a track from the Tracks menu at the top.
Now let’s go through the buttons that we have on the track.
The first button at the top left is the arm record button.
When we press this and press record for the project, it will record on this track.
Only the armed tracks will record.
To the right, we have the track name.
This is blank by default, but we can double click it to rename the track.
Next to the track name is the track volume, drag it around to change the volume, hover
over it to see the volume level, and double click it to reset the level to 0.
To the right is the button that opens the signal routing menu.
The signal routing menu is what controls where our tracks get sent, and how we can create
sends and receives.
At the top left is the master send check box.
If this is selected the track will be sent directly to the master channel.
We need to keep this as Parent channels 1-2 for it to work.
We’ll also keep the track channels as 2.
I usually won’t touch the levels, panning or width from the signal routing menu but
it does the same as the other controls on the track.
Now we’ll cover how to create a send and a bus, or track group.
For a send, we’ll need to create another track first.
I’ll call this track reverb.
It’s common to have a reverb send on larger projects, and it allows you to send multiple
tracks to the same reverb plugin to be processed together.
When using a send, the track is sent to the send, but the dry signal also goes to the
master channel.
We’ll also have signal routing options on the receive track.
Here we’ll see what tracks it’s receiving a signal from.
We can add tracks or delete them, and doing this will affect the signal routing settings
from the window from those other tracks.
We’ll get the options to change the levels, panning, mute, invert phase, make the track
mono, set it to post or pre fader, adjust the track inputs, and even some MIDI controls
and automation.
We’ll get individual controls for every receive added to that track.
If we just want to group tracks so they can be edited together, before they go to the
master channel, we can also do that.
First, send all those tracks to a send like we did previously.
The only difference here is that we’ll uncheck the Master send box on each channel’s signal
routing panel that way it’s going through the other send track first.
If we need a quick view of where a track is going, we can look at the three dots from
the signal routing icon.
The dot on the left tells us the track is going to the master channel.
The middle dot tells us it’s receiving a signal from another track, and the right dot
tells us it’s sending a signal to another track.
A send should have the left and right dots illuminated, and a receive should have the
left and middle dots.
A track that is sent to a group should only have the right dot lit up.
At the bottom of the signal routing menu is the dropdown for a hardware output.
You can use this for something like line outputs on an audio interface, so that it can be sent
to an external hardware processor, but this is usually only found on some of the higher
end audio interfaces with a lot more inputs and outputs.
The right side of the signal routing has options for MIDI channels, since MIDI can be routed
to multiple tracks.
That’s actually how you control something like an autotune plugin in Reaper, by sending
a MIDI signal that controls what note to snap to.
We looked at that previously in the video on free autotune plugins.
The next option is for the panning.
We can drag it left and right to adjust the stereo position of the track, hover over it
to see the position, and double click it to reset the track to center.
Next we have the mute and solo buttons.
When a track is muted, it won’t be played.
If we mute a receive, none of the tracks that play through that receive will be heard with
the plugin on the receive, but the dry signal will still go to the master channel if that
box is checked off on the signal routing.
The solo button causes only the soloed tracks to play.
If we solo more than one track, they will all play, but the unsoloed tracks will not.
On the far right, there’s the button to open up the plugins window.
This is where we can add different plugins and instruments to our track.
When it opens, the plugin browser comes up and we can double click a plugin to add it.
It will then appear in the signal chain on the left side of the plugins browser.
If we need to delete it, we can click on it to highlight that plugin and press the remove
button at the bottom.
We can also add another plugin, and pressing the add button brings up the plugin browser
again.
Plugins in the chain on the left can be selected to bring up the plugins view.
You can also click and drag them to reorder the plugins, because the sound is processed
from top to bottom in that chain.
If you click the box to the left of the plugin you can bypass it.
The plugin and its settings will stay the same, but it won’t be applied to that track.
This is good to switch back and forth to see how a plugin is affecting your sound.
Many of the included plugins have presets we can start with, and they’ll be available
from the dropdown that says No preset when you open the plugin.
When a track has plugins that are enabled on it, the plugins button will be green for
that track.
If we click this, it will bring up the plugin window again to make more edits.
If we click the power button to the right, we can bypass or enable all the plugins at
once.
Let’s cover some of the rest of the controls on the track.
The next button is to invert the phase of the track.
You can do this if you used multiple microphones and one is out of phase to get rid of that
interference that creates a very thin sound.
The next button brings up the envelope window that we’ll use later for automation.
Then there’s the record selection dropdown.
This will usually be left as audio or MIDI, but you can set it to record the stereo output.
When it’s set to Record: Output (stereo), it will record the output of that track, with
the effects on it.
You can use this to bounce other tracks to this track, but you’ll need to have this
track set to receive those tracks as well.
The next button we have is the input monitoring button.
This allows us to hear the microphone input on that track through our headphones.
Keep in mind this can introduce some latency compared to using the direct hardware monitoring
a lot of audio interfaces use, but this can be minimized by setting the audio interface
to ASIO mode.
The advantage of using input monitoring is that it allows us to hear the tracks with
the plugins applied in real time, but the more plugins we use, the more latency there
will be.
The input monitoring can be set to Off, On, or Auto.
In On mode, the input monitoring is on all the time regardless of if the track is armed
to record.
In Auto mode, input monitoring is only enabled when the track is armed to record.
The last thing we need to cover on the track is the input.
We’ll usually have this set to a Mono or Stereo audio input, or to a MIDI input, but
we’ll cover MIDI in another video.
One last thing we can do on the far right is create a folder of tracks.
This is done with the button in the bottom of the color marker on the right.
If we click it, it will create a folder.
Click the little button for that track.
If we click it, it will create a folder containing the tracks underneath it.
To set a track as the last in folder, click the little button for that track.
That will cycle between it being a track, folder, or the last track in the folder.
Any plugins, volume changes, or panning made at the top levels of the folder will be applied
to all the tracks within that folder and we can edit them as a unit.
This also applied to mute and solo.
This basically does the same thing as the track grouping we did earlier with the signal
routing, but it’s easier to see this visually and you can set it up easier as well.
It just depends which way you would prefer to work with the tracks.
The last thing we need to look at is the mixing panel that’s shown at the bottom.
This has the same controls as the individual tracks, but it’s laid out differently.
We’ll also find the master track here if we didn’t have it enabled for the track.
This allows us to change the level, make it mono, which is great to test your mix, and
add plugins to the master channel.
If we click and drag the line at the top of the mixer section, we can expand it upwards,
and this will show us our plugins that are on the tracks.
We can click on blank slots to add plugins, right click on plugins to get more options
like deleting, bypassing, and replacing, or click on them to bring up their window to
change the controls.
Thanks for checking out this video on track setup and signal routing in Reaper.
If this video helped you out, don’t forget to give it a like, subscribe to the channel,
and press the bell icon to get notifications whenever a new video is released.
You can also check the video description for links to social media accounts so you can
stay up to date on all our new content.