My main issue with Reaper is the difficulty, for me anyway, of adjusting the time ruler to a free time performance. So I’m entertaining the idea of recording all the audio in Reaper then fly it over to Ardour to fit the time ruler so to program MIDI parts [drums, bass, keybs]
In Ardour you put a tempo marker on the ruler then you can hold some key combo while click dragging the time ruler to the right of it to contract or expand the ruler.
So it’s good if you’re not time/pitch stretching the audio, Reaper uses the Elastique algorithm which does that better.
I’ve rehearsed my latest track all the way through several times so I figured it would be nice to record vocal and guitar simultaneously without bothered with the click. I like the feel of vocal and guitar performed at the same time if the gtr work isn’t too detailed.
The combo of Reaper’s timebase and stretch settings have confused many people over the years (aye). If I haven’t used that stuff in a while, still to this day it can take me a bit of time to get re-oriented to what is what. I think the timebase terms aren’t clear in how the timebase options behave. And apparently the confusion caused by it was to the degree that there was actually an action added called ‘timebase help’. And the timebase settings are scattered between project settings, track settings, item settings, and then stretch settings in the transport and item settings. Maybe someone by now has made a dialogue window via a script that brings it all together in a clear way. A custom actions toolbar could be used here as another option. Or just a reminder note about what is what might be good enough, which could be stored in the default project settings via the Note tab. Anyway, the contents of the action ‘timebase help’ with added personal notes for each timebase option in bold:
So I would work out clearly in your head what is what, write it down in a note, and then figure out what might be the best solution for it. Maybe I could be of some help with it if needed. And maybe tempo markers adds to the confusion too. But I would think that working out some solution in Reaper would be a better option than juggling things back and forth between Reaper and Ardour. Just need to find some solution that is clear now and then will be clear later after it isn’t so fresh in the mind.
One of the main problems I recall was getting MIDI to stay synced with audio when altering the time ruler or duplicating regions in another tempo or time signature zone. I seem to recall that some operations require all the MIDI files split at the border of an altered section and the MIDI had to have the correct settings etc.
I might workshop it again though, using your post as a concise guide [thanks for that] The workaround I’d been using was empty MIDI file blocks representing the beats. I’d mark out e.g a four bar section, do a count of the ticks on the time ruler without altering it, calculate the required division in ticks, then create a 16th or 1/8th note MIDI item, set it to loop and then drag that to the end of the section. If it reached the far end of the section neatly enough then it was good enough [not always easy to get accurate even when using high resolution increments]
Very analog method but once finely calculated usually worked reasonably well.
I really like the way it’s possible to edit in Reaper when it’s playing the track, and it never crashes, it’s so reliable I have to remind myself to ‘save project’ sometimes in case an extremely rare crash might occur from editing a buggy plugin or something.
I’d finally found a MIDI note Mapper vst that solved some drum routing issues for certain drum vst’s, excellent vst but it’s one of two I know of, the other a MIDI chord selector vst, that crashes Reaper [5.983] when messing about with it in real time when Reaper is playing.
So such a crash is extremely rare and avoidable; I often edit with Reaper set to not screen scroll, while listening ahead and then chasing up the next edit location. The rock solid reliability of that is there even on projects with loads of tracks, vst’s, automation. I usually don’t freeze or render individual tracks for a recording which has three to six gtr tracks, bass, drums, keys, vocs and several bking voc tracks e.g yet edit on the fly all the time, never crashes. That’s workflow gold, can’t over emphasise the value of that.
Reaper is pretty great at most things, but some things can be so annoying. This issue is one of those things for me. And the routing matrix, takes, lack of an audio editor view, some MIDI note behaviors when splitting, RS5K round-robin. I guess the best we can do is study the behaviors for what they are and work out workarounds that are less annoying.
On items staying aligned (audio or MIDI), I guess the main thing is knowing which timebase your items are set for and how the timebase options behave. And of course, item timebase settings override track and project timebase settings, and multiple items can be selected across multiple tracks to change their timebases in item settings in one go. And track timebase settings are saved in track templates, so that could be of help.
Thanks, I haven’t yet reinstalled SWS since I replaced me old crashed and burned rig, so I’ll do that soonish. And some of me old custom actions don’t work anymore either so my attempts at becoming a ‘power user’ took a bit of a nosedive recently lol
The user friendly flexible timeline thing seems to be one of Ardour’s superpowers, though I’ve not thoroughly tested it.
Reaper’s superpowers are many but a project can get problematical really quick when messing around in the minefield of timeline alterations. One wrong move and Boom, get to experience a day in the life of a reconstructive surgeon. I figure it would be cool if there was a separate superficial time ruler that avoids changing the timeline at all, but rather just superimposes over it, merely a visual representation of a given section of the timeline that can then be divided evenly.
Snookoda mentioned Presearch.org a couple of times on the forum. I have been using it for a while now on my laptop and phone, and it has been the best search experience I have seen in a long time. I do still use Duckduckgo for image searches, but general searches all go to Presearch. Also still Waterfox on my laptop. Too bad it isn’t available for phone. Still reluctantly using Firefox there.
I still use Firefox and Duck Duck Go, but I did notice awhile back that a Google logo was appearing on the page where the little duck used to be.
Not seeing that anymore and I never noticed it in Safari on my iPad.
I saw the previous posts here where DDG started using Google search, probably still are, they’re just not showing the logo anymore.
When I search something, I still scroll past the first couple of pages to get past what Google wants me to see and look for the links to sites that aren’t your typical commercial websites. When I stumble across something interesting, I’ll search things within the article or story to get more info, but still scroll past the first pages.
Not that much different than going to the library back in the day, just a lot more convenient and faster.
Still take most of what I read with a grain of salt though, but again, that’s no different than it was back before the internet.
Yeah, Presearch has been my go to for a while. It’s good that you can set up other search engines to quickly search again with. Nice to see people without the control freakery that normally would prevent this kind of thing.
@Toleolu: there’s been a bit of an exodus from DuckDuckGo lately because they have started to manipulate search results a la Google etc. I have Presearch set up with Qwant and Yandex on the side for the best of all worlds.
I remember Snookoda mentioning running Lineage OS. Anyone else running it? Just got a new (old) phone going with it last night. Stoked to have a non-googled phone that will soon be my daily. Still might need to do the twrp and magisk stuff, get f-droid on there, and maybe microg for a few play store dependent apps. Being able to ssh between phone and laptop will be nice, but the real win is kicking google out. My girl’s phone is the same model, and after testing some apps that she uses maybe I’ll be able to talk her into switching too. The amount of advertising crap that we end up seeing relative to our text conversations is probably enough to get her there.
It does feel good not providing the Sith with tracking and other data. Remember the apkpure site for apps not on f-droid. Apparently they verify hashes against original packages so is kind of safe although the play store itself can be riddled with crapware anyhoo.
Speaking of googleware, apps like Fairmail and Signal get around not dependencies for push notifications by having a small background process enabled. It means there’s a permanent notification when you swipe down, either for actual messages or a placeholder to say a background process is running if there are none. A small price to pay for google not hearing about every single time you get a message from anybody.
I’m right there with you on the social retardation. But having access to the net on the go has become a must for me these days, even though I’m not a heavy mobile user. I can definitely live without it, but the convenience is very nice. My only real hang up with it has been data privacy. Getting off of a googled up phone addresses a big part of that, and most of the rest is down to using apps made by developers who respect privacy and use encryption, such as the apps that Snookoda recommended above.
I joked recently that I should just get home phone service and ditch the cell. But I thought about how much I talk to a few people throughout the day through text, listen to streaming music, look up info on the fly, check where an item is in a store aisle so that I’m not wandering around forever, lookup addresses, use the calendar for reminders, clock for alarm, text editor for quick notes, camera for reminding myself how things go back together. I guess I have become more dependent on the thing than I thought.
It’s safe to assume data trackers have managed to ‘profile’ everyone over recent years but at what point do you just figure “Fuck it, they can know who I am and where I stand, I don’t care, I’ve only opposed the illegal, and not proposed any illegality”
Going offline probably not gonna change anyone’s existing profile at the NSA [love you guys]
Very true. t find it all very creepy and don’t like having the red knob on my tracker set to 11, so having it at 3 or 4 is a bit better. I also hate the idea of billions of people all separately thinking that resistance is futile when they can all collectively change things by acting individually in the right direction.
But yeah, we’ve all been fingerprinted! We can change that if we wanted, not the past but the present and future fingerprints.
