Recording in Reaper⌗

Create a new track and name it “voice”. Click the track record button to put the track into record mode. Now you should see the track input section. Change this to the input that you want to use. If you don’t have an interface plugged in it will be your build in inputs. This is usually “input 1”.

Set your recording levels so that your meters are hitting between -18 dB and -12 dB. You have to do this while playing sound. There’s no way of setting levels by just moving the input gain without looking at the meters.

Now you can record by clicking the record button on the transport. You can play back the sound now.

Monitoring modes⌗

The default is to monitor the input. You can turn it off and still record if you don’t want to hear it play back as you’re recording. Usually it’s good to just leave this on.

The other mode is useful for punching in, or re-recording a specific part of an item. This can be done by clicking “cmd+r” at the punch-in and punch-out places. Reaper will then create takes, so that you still have your previous take. You can choose which take you like then crop to active take once you deicide which take you want to keep.

One useful thing could be to autoselect your punch in and punch of points. You can do this using “Record mode: time selection auto punch”. Create a time selection then hit the record button. Reaper will only record in your time selections.

Finally you can choose “Record mode: auto-punch selected items”. Now you can make multiple selections of items and re-record the ones that re selected. To make different selections you need to slipt the item first. Do this with “s” to split at cursor.

Here’s a good summary of the different modes and what you should expect for each.