Preparing a Project in a DAW

Introduction

This is my second assignment for the Introduction to Music Production course. I am going to look at setting up a project in a Digital Audio Workstation for recording.

I am going to use Audacity and Reaper for this demonstration.

Audacity is a free and open source application that is available for Windows, Linux and the OSX environments. I am using the OSX version of Audacity, the other versions look almost the same.

Reaper is a commercial product for OSX, I am currently using the evaluation version of the software.

I was hoping that version 3.0 of Ardour would have been released for OSX in time to do a comparison over three packages, however currently only the Linux version was available.

Setting up a DAW Project

Preproduction Checklist

Before we start our project, we need to consider the following things:

• Where and What
• Digital Audio Preferences
• File Type
• Hardware Settings
• Buffer Size

Saving your files in suitable locations  and choosing appropriate filenames makes it much easier to locate, edit and backup your work. You do back it up, don't you?

Audacity

Audacity has a friendly feel to the interface and is very easy and simple to use.

Saving Work

Folders

You can see I am keeping materials for this course organised into folders by assignment.

Audio Preferences

Sample Rate and Size

I have set the sample rate to 44.1kHz and the sample size to 24-bit.

This is a higher rate and larger word size than used in CD quality recordings.

File Type

Audacity uses it's own default file type that keeps all data about the recording in a project file and folder.  It is possible to name individual tracks on the recording.

Hardware Settings

Recording hardware selected

I am recording from my mixing desk, it shows as USB Audio CODEC in the lists.

Buffer Size

Buffer Size

Audacity gives a buffer size in mS, not the number of samples and I am leaving at the default 100mS.

Reaper

Reaper has far more options than Audacity, and provides a more professional seeming interface, although not all of the options match up with the descriptions given in the lectures.

Saving Work

I have selected a 'ReaperRecordings' folder for saving the files produced by Reaper.

Audio Preferences

I have selected a 44.1 kHz sample rate with a 24 bit sample size for the recordings.

 

File Type

Project Save Settings

I have set Reaper to use a WAF format for saving, there are several other options available.

Hardware Settings

Hardware Settings

I am using the USB CODEC for my mixing desk.

Reaper has an option to request a sample rate, the default was 48,000.

Buffer Size

Buffering Options

Reaper does not seem to have an option for the buffer size in the same way as the lectures suggest. 

Reflections

As with everything involved with computers, there are many different ways of describing and doing the same tasks. Using a DAW is much the same with the two packages looked at having a different look and feel.

I'd like to thank the reviewers for taking the time to read through my resources, I hope you gain as much from the tasks as I have while preparing this.