dnafe

Are you referencing mastering as - taking the stereo two track and tweaking it with EQ and compression? Or are you looking for a multitrack DAW (digital audio workstation) like Audacity to address individual tracks and mix them into a 2 track stereo mix. Sorry if this seems self evident but the term mastering has been misused a lot lately? or are you looking for a plugin to use to do mastering (as in the first option)

Just goes to show you learn something hew every day..."show last touched parameter"...thanks

The only real thing missing from Reaper is Beat Detective ala ProTools but there is a simple solution albeit it takes a couple of more steps. The other is pretty looking plugins...no fancy graphics, just what you need to do the job. That said Reaper is certainly not ready for prime time when if comes to midi implementation, it's functional and relatively easy to get around but it t'ain't no Cubase or Sonar. If you have any questions, the forum is pretty good at getting back to you ASAP or you can PM me and I'll do what I can to explain, provide you with a tutorial or point you in the right direction.

Actually I used to use Logic for a bit until they went strictly Mac. Too bad as it was and is a good program. I'm not so much anti-Mac as anti-poor. The price point to enter the game on a Mac, way back when I started wasn't even close to what I could get a smokin' PC for...ergo PC won.

To the OP There are several reasons but these are the two biggies in my opinion 1) volume of the vocals in the mix 2) how many competing frequencies there are in the center area of a mix

Hey TapperMike Digital distortion is hard clipping creating a scratch sound. Now over loading your analog preamp (mic or line) inputs (as you said) will create the effect you mention. The change in bit rate from high to low really only applies to MP3s...most bit rate / sampling rate reduction software for wav files is pretty darn good. Dither is noise added to a track mainly to allow fade outs to appear seamless Just wanted to clarify the terminology so we're all on the same page

It is very unlikely that the sound card would be causing the problem, more often than not it's the mic, mic placement and the recording environment that have the biggest impact on the quality of the recording.that are the issue.

I'm going to go out on a limb here a say you're recording guitar and vocals in one take with one mic. Now without knowing your set up I'm just going to throw out an idea or two that might be easy to integrate...might not. Now because you seem to be using one mic I'm guessing you're having to place it a fair distance away (2 feet, maybe more) from the sound sources so that you can capture the guitar and voice in a nice balanced manner. Unfortunately because the mic is so far away from the sound sources it is picking up a lot of the natural sound of the room you're recording in. In many cases you might want this, in this particular case you don't because the mic is picking up a lot of mid range from the room which is adding to this muffled sound. Re: the mic - if this is a dynamic mic it is really designed to pick up one sound source and generally pretty close to that source as they are generally quite directional (focused). So I might suggest getting a second mic and using a mixer, record the voice with one mic and the guitar with the other. If that isn't an option you might want to try recording the guitar first then overdub the vocals. Now unless you have the ability to record with two mics or do the over dub thing you can try... 1) record in a room that isn't so mid range sounding 2) try recording in a corner of the room 3) create a temporary isolation booth - try hanging a quilt or really heavy blanket in front of the performer but behind the mic and another quilt behind the performer - hopefully this will reduce the mid range sound reflecting off the walls and ceiling reaching the mic. Alternately you could buy one of these products from RealTraps or GIK Acoustics or make your own if your handy with tools and have an hour or so to kill (I can help you with this) 4) all of the above hope this helps

a couple of questions 1) what kind of mic are you using 2) are you recording guitar and vocals at the same time with this one mic 3) what is the interface to your computer 4) where are you positioning the mic Once I know what your doing I might be able to help Don ps. if you could post a picture of you recording the guitar that would help a lot

Too bad I'm late to the party. I could have pointed you in the direction of some excellent Reaper resources that would have answered all your questions and probably made your experience a lot more user friendly. I tried Mixcraft and found it to be a good DAW...not crazy about the GUI, a little too amateurish looking for me but what the hell do I know, I worked with PARIS for nearly a decade before moving on to Reaper (over Pro Tools) Glad you found something that works for you!

I'd be very hesitant to record and mix on headphones but it can be done and is done all the time by home recordists Please understand that I'm coming at this from the point of view of someone who works in a small studio and records and mixes for a living and has on occasion mixed on headphones out of necessity but they were Grado RS1 headphones and even then I had to be very careful with the low end. I'd also be leery of using any speaker that hypes any frequency as my primary set of speakers. I know exactly where JDR is coming from and he is absolutely correct about hyped mid range and your recordings sounding good on ear buds and 90% of computer speakers. As JDR said if you can make your mixes sound good on them they'll sound good anywhere...true but not entirely honest. the thing with small mid hyped speakers like the Auratones, Mixcubes, NS10s is, you really need to learn these speakers and how music mixed on them translates onto other speakers. They are not accurate by any stretch of the imagination and there are so many more honest speakers out there to choose from. Just remember that when you go to check out speakers, go first thing in the morning (no other customers around) and bring 4 or 5 CDs you're really familiar with and start comparing speakers - take your time, take some notes and then do it again a few days later and see what you think. After all they are going to be the single most important piece of equipment you're going to be buying because everything you record and mix is going to be referenced through these speakers. Trust me, if you do your homework, take your time and stick to your budget you can find good speakers for the job.

Moved this over to the advertisement section

Damn smart woman you married there. Another highly overlooked aspect of recording by the majority of home recordists is room treatment...taming those reflections and low end in you room. For the the price of a decent set of low price range monitors you could build 12 acoustic panels that when placed correctly in your room will smooth out the frequency response and tame a lot of the reverb (early reflections) of the room not to mention significantly tighten up the stereo image of your recordings. I can't stress this enough...after you monitors you need to address your room. You'll thank me later hehehe

I'm assuming you are tracking this at home as you didn't mention tracking in your reply. May I ask what you're recording on and with...mics, pres, converters etc. Are you using live drums or a drum machine/plugin? As for the mix / mastering question I'd leave that to someone other than the recording and.or mix engineer mainly because very few of them have a dedicated facility / room and gear to do the job and secondly, most don't have a clue what they're doing when it comes to mastering but there are exceptions. You might want to contact Kenny Gioia - he's on facebook and in your neck of the planet and would be a wealth of info regarding both mixing and mastering. I can introduce you if and when you're ready. If I can help in any way don't hesitate to ask

Hi Rob...are you saying it will cost you a total of $3 - $3.5K to get your CD Mixed Mastered and Pressed or just Pressed?

I realise I'm late to the game here but unless you're prepared to take the time to learn the craft don't bother. I have a couple of guys I work with who do good work for very reasonable rates (around a $100 an individual song - less for a full CD) My first choice, Brad Blackwood out of Euphonics is excellent but a tad expensive now that he's become a go to ME My second choice and lately my primary go to guy is Bob Ohllson - got a pedegree like you wouldn't believe (Motown) and does beautiful work My third choice is a local guy and friend Jason Fee at Conduction Mastering does really nice work and is one of the designers behind Empress guitar pedals and soon to be released 500 series boxes

One thing about Reaper vs MixCraft (can't comment on Studio One2 as I am unfamiliar with it but I do know of it) is the free version of Reaper is full blown, ready for prime time right out of the box whereas MixCraft's fee version is severely limited (as in there is none) in it's routing capability. I'd download Reaper (free) , go to Groove3 and get the tutorials ($30), load up some tracks and have some fun. It's not a diffcult DAW to learn as it's quite intuitive. Can't get much cheaper than that

Industry compatability is an issue for sure and only you can determine if that is important to you. Truth is unless you're going to NEED to bring full projects to another studio I'd really go for what you're comfortable working with. You can always render your tracks to 0:00.000 time as a wav file and take them to any studio on the planet. As an aside many of the top guys guys I know are using Logic which is also a killer DAW. I've worked with it but the downside is you need to be on a MAC and even now there are some issues with the latest MAC OS and Logic...or at least that's what I've heard from a couple of guys so I reserve the right to be wrong.

When we were building our humble litle shop we debated the merits of going to Pro Tools...we chose Reaper because of its flexibility and it was easy to learn and use. Add to that the fact that to buy into the "PT Machine" was significantly more expensive than the cost to swap out our older DAWs and start using Reaper. Had we been in a bigger market I have no doubts we would have gone with Pro Tools - industry standard and all.

If you're doing a lot of midi work I'd go with Cubase. If audio is you gig then you can't go wrong with Reaper...solid as a rock, incredibly versatile and very easy to learn and work with. And the price is stupid cheap. Kenny Gioia has a series of video tutorials at Groove3 ($30.00 I think) which will help you immensly in maximizing Reaper's potential. I've been on it for three years now and I'm still finding new things...I sometimes feel like I'm just scrathing the surface with this beast. We're using RADAR as our front end into an RME 9652 via light pipe into Reaper and then back out to RADAR to monitor...virtually no latency in the round trip. Another DAW you might want to look at is MixCraft - a good songwriting friend of mine is now using it as his mainstay for writing and swears buy it and he's quite familiar with Reaper as I've recorded a couple dozen of his tunes with it...check it out

I have tons of plugins, mostly Wave and UAD and for most things I use a handful - the go to plugs so to speak and if they don't do the trick then I'll start experimenting with others. And I agree with the cheaper is sometimes better comment - ya just never know until you try them.

www.channelk.ca for some pics and sound bites and my facebook page "Don Nafe" has an album on the build plus my mix room at home...at least you'll get to see this ugly mug of mine and put a face to the name

I'll second Reaper...killer DAW I have a couple of questions? So just to clarify are you going to record a real piano (or is this a keyboard) first then add vocals and stuff? What are you using for a microphone ? How are you going to connect the mic to the computer? i.e. Direct to USB, Direct to the mic input on your sound card or through a mixer to USB input from a mixer to the line input on your sound card etc. This info will help us know how to help you out because as you can see there are a few ways to go about doing this...each a little more involved and expensive than the other...of course the difference will be very noticable and really the cost is not that bad - a couple hundred bucks and you're good to go. Caio for now