1. Enable secondary click in Mouse Preferences
2. Disable Natural scrolling direction in Mouse Preferences
3. Set scrolling to without inertia in Universal Access>Mouse>Mouse Options
4. Change show spotlight from CMD+Space to Option+Space in Keyboard>Keyboard Shortcuts
5. Disable Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible in Energy Saver preferences

These are just some of my own suggestions.

My friend Randy Coppinger posted on ProTools and Spotlight Indexing today, advising to disable the Indexing service because it could interrupt long recordings.
I personally use spotlight more than the dock or desktop shortcuts so I don’t think I could live without that. I’m not a Pro Tools user anymore and I have not had any issues with spotlight. If Pro Tools is your DAW, why not test your system with and without spotlight.

This reminded me of  back when I was using Pro Tools and while doing long test records it would often stop after an hour of recording. It turned out to be that Time Machine was trying to backup the files that were still recording.
Switching Time Machine to OFF and doing manual backups after recording solved the problem. This was a few years ago.

On my new iMac I use Gobbler to backup my audio projects off my external firewire drive and Time Machine to backup my important files on my system drive. Both of these require minimal thought or effort.

I highly recommend taking some time to set up your Time Machine options to keep the backup from filling up with unnecessary files. Things like Melodyne transfer files, temp files, the trash, dropbox (since it is already backed up to the cloud). Details below.

Excluded folders:

• Recording Drive (backed up separately)
• ~Trash (this is a hidden file)
• ~/Library/Audio/Apple Loops (that overused junk that comes with Garageband and iMovie)
• ~/Library/Caches (system and application temp files)
• ~/Music/Celemony (Files generated by Melodyne)
• ~/Downloads (usually this is recently downloaded installers and unsorted documents)
• ~/Dropbox (duh, this is already in the cloud)
• ~/Music/Garageband (don’t exclude if you actually use Garageband)
• ~/Music/iTunes (don’t exclude if you actually use iTunes)
• ~/Desktop/TEMP (I use this folder for REAPER’s peak files and auto backups, this is emptied monthly)

Sign up by December 7th and get 25GB FREE for a Year!
http://www.gobbler.com/i/YggCH2

Note-Gobbler is Mac only right now, sign up and you can use your extra storage when the Windows version comes out.

I have Pro Tools M-Powered 8 and Music Production Toolkit 2 on an iLok for sale. Retail = $750+

I’m selling the whole ilok, not individual assets to reduce transfer fees.

Ilok assets included:
Pro Tools M-Powered 8
Music Production Toolkit
Structure LE
Structure LE Content
Hybrid
Smack LE
Eleven LE
TL Space Native
MP3 option
Bonus! Nomad Factory BlueTubes Analog Trackbox

Now accepting offers.

Jon

The aim of the partnership is to bring together their expertise and influence for the benefit of the Pro Tools Community in both music and post and to offer manufactures and distributors a single point of access to the huge community this will create.

The new site will launch soon, at the moment it is just a portal to the 3 partner sites. Keep an eye on that site, when it launches its going to be a HUGE asset to the Pro Tools user community.

There is also a rumor that a former AVID support guru is also involved.

Day 1

#REAPER tip: My custom theme is based on RADO 4 with transport moved to tophttp://trunc.it/iqn6y Get RADO: http://ow.ly/6YyYu

#REAPER tip: User themes can be further customized using the track and mixer layout options (bottom of options menu) in Reaper 4.

#REAPER tip: User themes can be further customized using the track and mixer layout options (bottom of options menu) in Reaper 4.

#REAPER tip: 1 of my most used mouse modifiers is for Media Item Dbl click. I assign cmd+opt+ctrl to “open media item in external editor”

#REAPER tip: The external editor I find most useful is iZotope RX2. Assign any program from “External Editor” tab of preferences

#REAPER tip: You can drag a plugin from the FX browser onto a media item to process just that file.

#REAPER tip: Enable the “FX” and “No FX” view option for media items for easy access to item fx inserts. (prefs>appearance>media)

#REAPER tip: got a p-pop in dialog? Split the audio before and after the pop, insert ReaEQ on the item with HPF at 150Hz. No pop!

#REAPER tip: “Overlap items and crossfade items when splitting” in the Media Item Defaults preferences is essential for fast editing.

#REAPER tip: tweak “Media item peaks edge highlight” colors in the theme editor to improve visibility for editing.

#REAPER tip: (continued) I use neon green/pink or black/white (saved as different themes) depending on what I’m editing.

#REAPER tip: The esc key will close whichever floating window is active. Way faster than the mouse.

#REAPER tip: Track Folders handles subgroup routing and organization in one click.

#REAPER tip: Use the ReaInsert VST to integrate external hardware effects just like plugins, with delay compensation.

Day 2

#REAPER tip: REAPER is actually an acronym. Rapid Environment for Audio Production, Engineering, and Recording.

#REAPER tip: Most VST3 plugins will work in Reaper except for their special sidechain function. Waves C6 and VocalRider for example.

#REAPER tip: You can CMD+OPT+Drag a media item to quickly render it as a copy, even to your desktop!

#REAPER tip: Cockos gave us a ton of powerful customizable options. The SWS extensions take it even further. http://ow.ly/6YB5t

#REAPER tip: “Elastic Audio” style editing is accomplished by splitting (with crossfade) and alt-dragging media item edges.

#REAPER tip: Pro Tools users wish they had our visible waveforms while dragging.

#REAPER Tip: To keep a window on top of everything else, click the little pushpin in the top right of that window.

#REAPER tip: Want to delete extra time from project? You need the “remove contents of selection (moving later items)” action.

#REAPER tip: (continued) You need a time selection for that to work. I assign the action to option+delete

#REAPER tip: The quickest way to create a send is to drag from the sends section from one track to another. Setup your defaults in the prefs

#REAPER tip: It’s easy to navigate the hundreds of preferences in REAPER using the find box in the bottom left of the preference window.

#REAPER tip: If you use Steven Slate Drums, this track template I made will save you a bunch of time http://ow.ly/6YBKV

#REAPER tip: You know that text display at the bottom of the TCP? Right-click for hidden view options. I find “CPU/RAM usage” most helpful

#REAPER tip: Use Padre’s LFO Generator (SWS Ext) for instant complex wavy automation. I <3 this thing. http://ow.ly/i/jhm3

Day 3

#REAPER tip: Not sure of the tempo of some audio you imported? Here’s an accurate way to find out: http://ow.ly/6YBQM

#REAPER tip: The file management defaults aren’t very good. Follow this tutorial for Pro Tools style session folders http://ow.ly/6YC0F

#REAPER tip: You can automate pitch changes in media items by enabling the take envelope for pitch in the item properties.

#REAPER tip: The Dynamic Split function can be used to chop up media at transients, remove silence and turn audio to MIDI

#REAPER tip: When editing my left hand is always on the keyboard, but there’s no delete on that side so I use Cut instead (assigned to X).

#REAPER tip: (Part 1) When dragging in multiple audio files you will be asked this question: http://ow.ly/i/jqES

#REAPER tip: (Part 2) Selecting YES will drop the files Vertically, creating new tracks is needed. It looks like this: http://ow.ly/i/jqFm

#REAPER tip: (part 3) If you choose NO, all the files will be spread out Horizontally on the same track. Like this: http://ow.ly/i/jqFG

#REAPER tip: I’ve found screensets assigned to numeric keys to be the fastest way to jump from editing to mixing or any other view layout.

#REAPER tip: Rt click Snap button for snap settings-They’re more advanced than you might expect-Here’s how I like mine http://ow.ly/i/jqJO

#REAPER tip: Every media item has a volume trim you can grab at the top edge. Hold Shift to increase gain. I absolutely LOVE this feature.

#REAPER tip: If you hold alt and drag on an item you will slip the waveform without changing the item boundaries or fades. So awesome!

#REAPER tip: Sort your VST plugins into folders in the FX browser so you can more quickly access your favorites.

#REAPER tip: (Part 1) Use Regions to quickly copy large chunks of your project, try out new arrangements and more.

#REAPER tip: (Part 2) To create a region: Make a time selection where you need it, right click and choose “Create region from selection”

#REAPER tip: I use regions for marking each song when Mastering. It makes batch exporting and naming ($region wildcard) very easy.

Day 4 – @PetersonGoodwyn took over this day

#REAPER tip: Need to convert bit rate or file type for a bunch of files? File -> Batch File Converter has you covered.

#REAPER tip: If you’ve got a control surface, bounce live (Ctrl+Alt+B), ride levels by hand. That’s old school mixing by the seat of your pants!

#REAPER tip: Use Track Channels for parallel processing without ballooning your track count.

#REAPER tip: You can do SO MUCH with track channels. I you haven’t delved yet, do so now!

#REAPER tip: Ex: Ducking with ReaComp: send key track to channels 3/4 of track being compressed. Set detector input to “Auxiliary L+R” in ReaComp

#REAPER tip: Changing the RMS Size in ReaComp will get you from “1176″ to “LA2A” in a jif.

#REAPER tip: Set up a keyboard shortcut to bypass all FX. Use it to reference where you started.

#REAPER tip: The stock plugin “ReaFir” is a great noise reduction tool. Check out “Automatically build noise profile” in Subtract mode.

#REAPER tip: A poem: Never start a tracking date / Without a new Project Template

#REAPER tip: I would be lost without track markers. Shift + M makes a new one at your current position.

#REAPER tip: “Apollo” http://j.mp/qTiSA2 is my favorite #REAPER theme

#REAPER tip: “CTRL+P”=Preferences / “CTRL+T”=New Track / “F”=insert FX to selected track. Simple but so useful.

#REAPER tip: Don’t forget you can make your own shortcuts in Preferences->Keyboard->Show actions window

#REAPER tip: Appending one project to another in #REAPER http://j.mp/ppjKoH

Day 5 – @PetersonGoodwynp took over this day

#REAPER tip: “MajorTom” is one nasty stock compressor.

#REAPER tip: Apply different effects, eq settings, etc to one track with different Track Channels and mix to taste with the Mixer_8XM-1S plugin.

#REAPER tip: Navigate to the extremes of your project instantly with the “Home” and “End” keys.

#REAPER tip: Use the “Resolution” slider in ReaDelay to bit crunch the wet signal or emulate old digital delays.

#REAPER tip: ReaTune doubles nicely as a guitar tuner. Just make sure Record Monitoring is on.

#REAPER tip: ReaComp: Use the “Pre-Comp” slider and a fast attack to totally destroy transients. Fun 2 b had there.

#REAPER tip: Likewise, use the “Pre-open” slider in ReaGate to preserve transients.

#REAPER tip: ReaVerb will render numerous impulses at the same time. What does a stadium sound like inside a church?

#REAPER tip: Build simple synth textures from scratch with ReaSynth

#REAPER tip: My favorite plugin for drum samples: “MIDI/drumtrigger” turns any audio signal into a velocity sensitive MIDI trigger.

#REAPER tip: “LOSER/TransientController” is a very capable Transient Designer-type stock plugin.

#REAPER tip: Use the multi-band “stereoEnhancer” to increase the width of your mix while keeping the lows tight

#REAPER tip: You can set the click sound to anything you want in Options->Metronome and pre-roll settings.

#REAPER tip: Track icons are often overlooked in the rush to get the session started. Set up a one-key shortcut to add them.

Day 6

#REAPER tip: To quickly get to the REAPER resource folder: open REAPER-go to Options -find “Show REAPER resource path in Explorer/finder”

#REAPER tip: The ‘Performance Meter’ view shows CPU use, FX count and latency per track for all tracks among other things.-

#REAPER tip: REAPER 4.10 added Freeze and Unfreeze options to tracks (right-click on TCP). A fast way to save CPU and not compromise the mix

#REAPER tip: Drag a VSTi from the FX browser to an empty part of the TCP to instantly setup the instrument. (input, rec & mon enabled 4 you)

#REAPER tip: Did you know you can have multiple projects open at the same time? You can even copy and paste between projects!

#REAPER tip: use File>Clean Current Project Directory… To trash unused audio files from your project.

#REAPER tip: Use the track Manager to hide extra tracks you don’t want to delete yet, or just to organize the project.

#REAPER tip: Rt-clicking on insert slot or fx button will bring up the shortcut list for FX. This is why you sort plugs into folders

#REAPER tip: hold shift and you can move the position of a fade. Rt-click where the fade icon appears to show different fade shapes.

#REAPER tip: every plugin hosted in REAPER has a mix control between the UI (show/hide graphics) and bypass buttons in the top right.

#REAPER tip: Sometimes (fairly rarely actually) plugins have hidden controls-Click the UI button to see them all.

#REAPER tip: the “jump to” function will let you skip to a specific time, marker or region by typing. I assign this to * on numpad

Day 7

#REAPER tip: The default pianoroll toolbar doesn’t give you much to work with. Here’s how I customized mine: http://ow.ly/i/jh9a

#REAPER tip: The fastest way to adjust MIDI velocity is to assign “Adjust value for events” to Cmd+mousewheel

#REAPER tip: in piano roll, CMD+Opt Drag will paint a line of MIDI notes instead of one long note. The notes will match the grid

#REAPER tip: Humanizing aka randomizing hi-hats and rides 10-15% for timing + velocity makes your programmed drums a helluva lot more real

#REAPER tip: to keep my external hardware delay in sync with my project tempo I send it MIDI clock (MIDI Out>device>Enable+Clock)

#REAPER tip: the MIDI “Filter Events” function can be a great way to clean up fumbled notes in a MIDI recording or to hide unwanted notes

#REAPER tip: The REAPER Wiki has loads of helpful info and tips. http://ow.ly/74d7N

#REAPER tip: Kenny Gioia’s “Reaper 4 Explained” is 7.5hrs of fantastic in-depth coverage of REAPER basics http://ow.ly/6YBtK

#REAPER tip: Geoffrey Francis does an amazing job keeping the official User Guide up to date http://ow.ly/6YBvz

#REAPER tip: Johnny Ginese’s Tutorials For Reaper site is a great resource of video tutorials. http://ow.ly/6YBjN

#REAPER tip: The Cockos REAPER user forum is the place to go to learn, report bugs and request new features. http://ow.ly/6YBA8

#REAPER tip: The Sound On Sound website has several of their great Reaper articles http://ow.ly/74d1W

#REAPER tip: I’m going to be taking over http://Reaper-Blog.com very soon. Go here for the latest REAPER news and tips.

My article is below, you can read the rest of the 31 Days to Better Sounding Drums series on Travis’ blog.

The article is not meant to be a tutorial on drum editing, but an overview of the concepts and methods, reasons why you’d want to edit your drum tracks or outsource the work to a pro editor. I also go over why I prefer editing manually in REAPER rather than with the ‘industry standard’ Beat Detective in Pro Tools.

Drum Editing

Drum editing has become an absolutely necessary part of the record production process. Out of time drums are one of those things that prevents a recording project from sounding as good as it can. Along with off tune vocals and too much reverb, it is one of the things that keeps home studio productions from sounding like pro recordings. For the past 3 years I’ve been offering drum editing services to home and pro studios worldwide and today I’ll explain a little of what goes on behind the scenes. This isn’t a tutorial.

Why edit drums?

A lot of people might think this is some cost-cutting or time saving part of recording. It’s absolutely not! Proper drum editing actually takes a lot of time and as the ancient saying goes “time is money”. Editing comes after the drummer has given the best performance possible and the best parts of each take are combined to a composite.

Engineers edit drums to achieve the following:

• Consistent timing and groove
• Replace missed or bad hits
• Create a solid foundation for the rhythm section

I have a lot of respect for drummers. The ones I work with get their parts 80-95% perfect. They get me to help with the rest. Drummers have a lot to think about, that hand and foot independence thing, plus keeping time, plus hitting the right drums in the right place, plus remembering the pattern and which ones come next… well that’s a hell of a lot of work, and is physically exhausting. The typical drum recording session for an album is two 8-10 hour days. This definitely demands some respect.

But I don’t want to sound like a robot!

To the drummers: If it’s done right, I guarantee you won’t sound like a robot! The performance will be consistent and powerful and will never fall out of time with the other instruments. All of the natural nuances of the playing are still there. It’s not about making you sound like a drum machine. We have other ways of achieving that. Beyond that, the bass, guitar, keyboards and other instruments will have a solid foundation for laying down their parts.

Phase accuracy

One of the primary concerns with editing a multi-track drum recording is phase accuracy. If you edit just the kick or snare mic tracks individually, it will be out of time with the overheads and room mics and bleed in other mics. This would be a huge problem, but is easily avoided by using the edit group function in the DAW. An edit group will ensure that when you slice it will apply to all tracks with sample accuracy.

What tracks should be edited

With the tracks grouped, the close miked kick and snare tracks are the primary concerns to get tight. The next important are the toms, after that the ride cymbal. Depending on the project I’ll do all of these to a 16th note grid.

Quantizing methods

Quantizing like with MIDI, means aligning to a grid. There are 3 methods of quantizing drums:

• Time stretching and snapping to grid
• Automatic slicing and snap to grid
• Manual slicing and aligning to grid

I’ve listed these in order of sound quality from worst to best and is also from least time required to most.

Time stretching

When I started out drum editing I was in love with Elastic Audio, a feature of Pro Tools 7.4. I could quantize drums quickly without a lot of effort. What was cool was that the audio would stretch proportionally between each edit. But often there would be glitches or things would sound weird. A bunch of time was required to fine tune. Sometimes it was good enough, sometimes it was immediately obvious that the quality just wasn’t there, and it didn’t get any better in Pro Tools 8. The same thing applies to Logic’s “Flex Time.”

Automatic slicing and quantizing

The world standard tool for drum editing is Beat Detective in Pro Tools and for good reason. It is a powerful editing tool that can analyze the transients on all or individual tracks, slice before all transients simultaneously, lock the transients to the gridline, fill gaps and crossfade all edits in just a few clicks. Some editors do the whole song at once, some do a section or a few bars at a time. Sounds like a great thing, well it’s far from perfect. My primary complaint was that Pro Tools is extremely hard on your system due to their ‘fade files’ which are tiny wave files for every single edit. With my drum editing sessions having 8,000 to 15,000 fade files, the hard drive just can’t keep up. After the bulk of the editing was finished making the fine tuning edits would take a long time because the system becomes very unresponsive trying to keep track of all these files. I dealt with this for a few years before moving to REAPER for drum editing.

Manual slicing and aligning

Manual slicing and alignment is my preference and it has been absolutely worth the extra time and effort. In a lot of cases I’ve found it to be faster that using Beat Detective. There is far less error correction required because I ensure every edit is correct from the start. The downside to this method is that it it’s entirely editing with your eyes and mouse, listening as you go slows you down by a significant amount and I’ve found it best to save the listening to the end. The key reasons I prefer the manual method is that, I select where to cut, I decide what the transient is, and I decide where the transient should be. By doing this by eye and ear rather than via algorithm I get the edits exactly how I like the first time.

Why I edit with REAPER now

After several years of editing with Beat Detective in Pro Tools I got fed up with the inefficiency. I saw a colleague editing drums in REAPER and once I tried it I was hooked. REAPER is a super light-weight but full featured DAW. Some of the editing specific advantages are:

1. No fade files. No slowdown from making tens of thousands of edits
2. Automatic cross fade for every edit.
3. The mouse can be armed to split the regions on every click.
4. Audio within the regions can be moved without changing the region boundaries.
5. Customizable key commands and build-your-own actions

Drum editing isn’t for everyone

Honestly, drum editing is pretty boring and monotonous. It can also take a pretty big time commitment. Learning to do it well certainly was. Its not a skill you can pickup in a weekend, you can’t read a book or watch a video and learn all you need to know. It takes months, and you may hate every grueling hour of it. If you try it, hate it, or would just rather focus on other aspects of music making, you can outsource this work to an editor like me for less than the cost of an hour in a pro studio. I also guarantee my work is better than that of a typical pro studio which usually delegates drum editing to unpaid interns with little to no experience.

Photo Credit

So far I’m impressed. It’s very simple to use and seems to be fast enough for what I need it for. Gobbler is different from Dropbox or other backup and sharing services, it’s just audio,

I’m very impressed by their support. I asked a few questions on Twitter and they responded immediately. They assured me that unlike Time Machine and other backup software, Gobbler doesn’t get in the way of your DAW. Backups happen in the background but only when your DAW is inactive or if Gobbler is the active window.  Smart.

Compatible with most major DAW software and file types

• AVID PRO TOOLS
• APPLE LOGIC
• ABLETON LIVE
• STEINBERG NUENDO
• STEINBERG CUBASE
• PROPELLERHEAD REASON
• PROPELLERHEAD RECORD
• PRESONUS STUDIO ONE
• COCKOS REAPER
• APPLE GARAGEBAND

If you sign up now you get 50GB free. It’s very easy to get an extra 10GB just by using Gobbler. After June 27th the new signups will only get 25GB free (which is still very generous). When the beta program ends you get to keep your 50GB and affordable paid subscriptions for much more space will be available.

Use this link to sign up which will get me more space. http://www.gobbler.com/i/YggCH2

It’s Mac only at the moment but the PC version is coming soon. Sign up now to ensure your 50GB. Give it a try, you will like it.

Which one sounds the best or has the least artifacts?

The source is a MIDI pattern played through Steven Slate Drums. 24 bit, 44.1kHz. A different limiter plugin was applied with both threshold and ceiling set to -6.5dBFS.  Note that Ozone does not allow a ceiling below -5dBFS.

You can download the files. Images can be enlarged.

ADDED JUNE 7

Created by Dan Comerchero and distributed by Audiofile Engineering, the Quiztones app is a frequency identification ear training app for amateur and professional audio engineers and musicians. Quiztones uses frequency-altered tones, noise and musical loops to train your ears and help develop more acute listening and frequency recognition skills.

Quiztones costs only $2.99. If you work with audio or would like to improve your hearing, check this out!

Quiztones will…

• Sharpen your ears & frequency recognition skills
• Improve your mixing and EQ chops
• Prevent noise buildup in your mixes & recordings
• Eliminate the need to sweep for frequencies

Included with Line 6 POD Farm Free

• Guitar Amps
  • 1964 Blackface ‘Lux
  • Brit J 800
  • Power Amp
• Bass Amps
  • 1989 Eighties
  • 1968 Flip Top
• Cabinets
  • 1×12 Blackface ‘Lux
  • 4×12 Brit Celest T-75s
  • 1×15 Flip Top
  • 4×10 Silvercone
• Preamps
  • American Classic
  • Console
• Distortions
  • Facial Fuzz
  • Screamer
• Dynamics
  • Compressor
  • Noise Gate
  • Vetta Comp
  • Volume Pedal
• Filters
  • Sub Octaves
• Modulations
  • Opto Tremolo
  • Phaser
• Delays
  • Analog Delay w/Modulation
  • Digital Delay
• Reverbs
  • Cavernous
  • Standard Spring
• Wahs
  • Vetta Wah
  • Weeper

As you can see, you get a lot to play with. Additionally, you can insert these effects in any order in the chain as well as multiples of most up to 20 fx. When you buy POD Farm or POD Farm Platinum you get a ton more toys to play with.

Get POD Farm 2.5 Free Version

Formats: Mac/PC, VST, RTAS, AU, Standalone