Re: Accessible Sound Design Course - Set up Reaper Now, Before the Course
This sounds interesting to me as well, though I feel a little out of place because I already know a lot of techy stuff about sound design. I've done alot of editing in a program called Gold Wave. I am also a math and audio nerd, so a lot of relationships I can't explain very well can still come together well in my head. For instance I can navigate the world of frequency and musical notes and things far better than I can talk about it. However using Gold Wave has its downsides if you want to do serious sound design.
I really want to get away from using it for sound design because A, it's not meant for big projects, it's main purpose is to edit voice and music recordings (apply some effects, split tracks, maybe do some mixing, but it's destructive so it's far from a DAW). B, half of its effects are not very good, and its VST support is odd. It works but it works the way it wants to. For instance I don't think standard VST FXP dumps are supportede, they're instead stored as Gold Wave presets (unless I'm missing something). And C, because it's not a DAW, there are no projects or sessions or anything like that. you load and save audio files only. Again, fine for the stuff it's meant for, but not ideal for other things.
With Reaper, I am really pleased with how I can chain and adjust effects with Osara in realtime. I also know how to do basic routing for sidechaining and stuff. Only on the software side, though. I needed help to get there, but now I understand how it works. I used to have all my VSTs in Gold Wave, and when I wanted to apply effects, I'd apply them one-at-a-time. It'd basically be the equivalent of processing each effect offline to a new item in Reaper (I forget the term). However I'm so pleased with Reaper's online realtime way of doing things that I often just save an initial recording with Gold Wave, process it with a Reaper FX chain, tweak parameters and render, and continue editing with Gold Wave. It makes me cringe every time I do it, but it makes me really want to use Reaper full time, or at least, any time I need to do professional things. I need to get that SWS extension because I've heard about a dozen times that it has stuff I would find interesting and useful!
Editing in Reaper is something I struggle with because I have trouble getting the audio feedback I like, and to get the program to respond in a way I can instinctively follow. I can't really explain it because it's hard to describe and I'd almost have to show it. But I'll try to explain one example. .
Let's say I want to delete part of a sound on a track. In Gold Wave I can place my markers with left and right brackets. Then I can press shift J to slow the playback rate down by a huge amount if needed, and a combination of Gold Wave playback and preview features to hear precisely where my selection is, and I can pretty much turn it into a surgical operation to move my markers precisely where I want them before I cut.
In Reaper, I often do it by splitting items and deleting the item I no longer need, while changing the ripple editing setting if I need to change it. Problem is, when I split items, I am sort of blindly splitting them as the file plays. I haven't yet really looked into whether you can move item splits around, nor have I looked into ways to get surgical. This is partially because I am wondering if splitting items is even what I should be doing in the first place. I've played around with time selections but they apply to all tracks to my knowledge. Reaper is such a beast that every time I try something new, I always wonder if this is the right way or most efficient way I could be doing this. And I don't want to teach myself bad habits. Gold Wave has spoiled me a great deal, so I know the transition to Reaper is going to be just as tough as it is rewarding. The best thing I can do is try to learn good practices from the outset.
I'm really hopeful that I will learn a lot about Reaper from this course. Though how much I should participate is something I don't really know, since I think my background is different from a lot of people who will be coming.
I once was looking at a course that taught Gold Wave as a starting point, and then moved on to Reaper. I think it was a 12-week course. I'm not sure. One of my friends sent an archive of it to me, and the first 6 weeks were talking about things which I knew well, with only the occasional piece of information that was new to me, and the other 6 were, I felt, falling on diminishing returns because the instructors were still dealing with how to teach people who were true beginners in sound editing. For instance, they were trying to compare Gold Wave to Reaper, saying that x in Gold Wave was Y in Reaper, and so forth, which is exceedingly helpful for me. But I think the comparisons were lost on a lot of the students, or at least it was just information overload. I imagine most of them were just barely comfortable with Gold Wave basics. Some of them were still struggling to get their audio devices set up.
I think audio stuff like this is hard to teach especially to people who are new to it all. But it's a little weird if you're like me and self taught yourself a lot of stuff. My so-called studies have been guided by interests rather than what is generally accepted as the need-to-know. I've caught some of the need-to-know as I've come along, but I don't think it's enough to get by yet. I know more about the things I don't know than the things I do, if that makes any kind of sense lol
In any case, I'm still really excited for this course, but I'm not sure what to do. I'm appreciative of any insight you have to offer!
-- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
