Mastering support for REAPER

[Patrick Schoenbach]

Hi,

I am posting here, since I cannot post to the issue tracker for some weird reason.

At present, all major DAWs provide almost all features necessary for professional mastering. However, at the same time, all of them lack a few features, mostly workflow-oriented ones. This problem makes mastering engineers resort to separate mastering DAWs like Steinberg's WaveLab, which itself is not even particularly great, but just offers the missing features.

REAPER would be a fantastic candidate to finally close this gap, eliminating the need for buying another DAW just for mastering because almost all needed features are available already and are implemented very well.

Features that would need to be added in order to allow a convenient professional mastering workflow include:

• Importing several media files sequentially into one track, the clips being aligned one after the other.
• Convenient management of silence between the tracks of a CD (i.e. clips)
• Easy way to modify the order of CD tracks (clips)
• Sophisticated PQ editor compliant to all officiall standards, including ISRC, CD indexes, CD text, no pause between tracks, etc.
• Support for Bob Katz' K system metering (K-20, K-14, K-12)
• Offline statistics like peak, RMS value, loudness distribution. Absolutely perfect would be also an integrated dynamic range value (DR) calculation, see www.pleasurizemusic.com
• Import/Export of CD images (WAV file plus corresponding cue liist file)
• Generation of a fully customizable, formatted Audio CD Report (cue list), preferably in RTF format. This report is required by most CD duplication companies, and since the mastering studios usually have very tight schedules anyway, it should be possible to generate such a report that looks good and can be printed without the need for further editing. The report must be fully customizable and personilizable in order to include the logo and the address of the studio etc. Inspiration on how this customization could be possibly realized can be drawn from the WaveLab manual, which can be downloaded from steinberg.net
• A convenient way to do A/B comparisons (with and without effects) while at the same time keeping the loudness level of the track. Again, Wavelab's "intelligent bypass" feature could be an inspiration for the implementation.
• CD burning (at least standard audio CDs, support for DVD audio and hybrid CDs would be even better).
• Maybe some new plugins especially designed for mastering purposes.

[d.bop]

To my knowledge, all of this is already possible with the exception of these:

Originally Posted by Patrick Schoenbach

• Sophisticated PQ editor compliant to all officiall standards, including ISRC, CD indexes, CD text, no pause between tracks, etc.
• Offline statistics like peak, RMS value, loudness distribution. Absolutely perfect would be also an integrated dynamic range value (DR) calculation, see www.pleasurizemusic.com
• Import/Export of CD images (WAV file plus corresponding cue liist file)
• Generation of a fully customizable, formatted Audio CD Report (cue list), preferably in RTF format. This report is required by most CD duplication companies, and since the mastering studios usually have very tight schedules anyway, it should be possible to generate such a report that looks good and can be printed without the need for further editing. The report must be fully customizable and personilizable in order to include the logo and the address of the studio etc. Inspiration on how this customization could be possibly realized can be drawn from the WaveLab manual, which can be downloaded from steinberg.net
• A convenient way to do A/B comparisons (with and without effects) while at the same time keeping the loudness level of the track. Again, Wavelab's "intelligent bypass" feature could be an inspiration for the implementation.

*edit*
There is an included realtime Dynamic Range JS plugin, but I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for.

[Patrick Schoenbach]

Could someone please elaborate, how these things are possible?

Regarding dynamic range: Realtime measurement is nice and also important. However, the official DR value can only be calculated offline.

[d.bop]

I have to get going so I can't dive in right now, but there is A LOT of information in the free user guide. You can get it here: http://www.cockos.com/reaper/userguide.php

Here are the settings for the K-System: http://stash.reaper.fm/v/352/REAPER_K20%20project.zip
It includes a demo project, but you don't need to use it. Just use the pink noise file and the included image to change your settings.

For the others, look in the user manual for information on CD burning. Be sure to use the "cdrecord/cdrtools" option for gapless CDs (not the Native API option.)

And as for mastering plugins, I'm not sure what type of processing you need to do, but there are A LOT of included effects in REAPER (Cockos ReaPlugs + JS.) Don't underestimate them by the way they look. They're pretty powerful and are of amazing quality.

[dub3000]

Originally Posted by Patrick Schoenbach

Could someone please elaborate, how these things are possible?

> Importing several media files sequentially into one track, the clips being aligned one after the other.

just drag the files into a session, you'll get the option of one file per track or one-after-the-other.

[Patrick Schoenbach]

Originally Posted by d.bop

Here are the settings for the K-System: http://stash.reaper.fm/v/352/REAPER_K20%20project.zip
It includes a demo project, but you don't need to use it. Just use the pink noise file and the included image to change your settings.

It would be nice to be able to save different metering settings as presets which then can be chosen directly from the meter.

[shakey.oberon]

If you have issues you'll be better served by posting each one in a separate thread. You'll get a more detailed and helpful response that way, try posting each one in the q&a forum to see if you've overlooked anything. Sometimes the functionality is there, it just has a different term or is hidden in some way. The K system for example, is perfectly implementable, it just isn't mentioned in any documentation. If it doesn't exist then put it in the feature requests forum.

[cerberus]

i prefer k-11, although i am a mere k-9.

jeff dinces

[cerberus]

. .

[daal]

I'll gladly approve if you make a feature request concerning the offline RMS meter analysis, and "compensated" A/B comparison

[wakkaman]

Originally Posted by Patrick Schoenbach

Hi,
[*]A convenient way to do A/B comparisons (with and without effects) while at the same time keeping the loudness level of the track. Again, Wavelab's "intelligent bypass" feature could be an inspiration for the implementation.
[/LIST]

I would love this feature for mixing applications too!

[nfpotter]

Originally Posted by d.bop

For the others, look in the user manual for information on CD burning. Be sure to use the "cdrecord/cdrtools" option for gapless CDs (not the Native API option.)

Where do I find those, and what are they?

[d.bop]

Originally Posted by nfpotter

Where do I find those, and what are they?

After you render your project for CD Audio, a window will pop up allowing you to burn your CD straight from REAPER. It gives you the choice of using the native Windows CD burning, or the built-in cdrecord/cdrtools.