reaper sound editor interview Asbjoern Andersen


Excitement for the REAPER DAW continues to build, and in this special two-part guide, Anne-Sophie Mongeau shares her insights on how to make the most of it as a sound design tool – based on years of working with it for sound design:


Written by Anne-Sophie Mongeau



 

Over the last few years, Reaper has gained exponential popularity among audio professionals. It is indeed a powerful sound design tool which allows great flexibility and rapid workflow, provided that you familiarize yourself with some of its atypical functionalities and develop good habits from the start.

I have put together a series of workflow tips which I have come to develop over some years of working with Reaper. They are meant to provide some insight on how to get started, developing good habits and taking advantage of Reaper’s unique features. In this first article of a two parts series, I will go through the setting up process. In the second article, I will explore the Reaper workflow as well as some useful features.

There is of course more than one way to work with this DAW, and more than one set of shortcuts. If you already work with Reaper, you may take some of these tips as suggestions rather than instructions. However if you are just getting started, I strongly recommend following these simple guidelines.

Getting started

Set the Reaper Project Settings

Setting up the Reaper Project Settings (File > Project Settings or alt+ENTER) to your liking at an early stage will allow you to save a considerable amount of time. By clicking ‘Save as default project settings’, you will only need to this step once. Given the use I make of Reaper (mostly for sound design), this is how I usually like those settings:
Reaper project settings

Under the Project Settings tab
• Project sample rate: 48000 Hz
• BPM: 120
• Time signature: 4/4
• Timebase for items/envelopes/markers & Timebase for tempo/time signature envelope:

This is relevant mostly if you are working with tempo changes (for example if you are composing music and/or working with video). It determines how those different elements will behave when you change the BPM (overall or per section). It also matters if you are working with sound files or MIDI. You usually wouldn’t want to stretch your sound files when changing the project tempo, as this might generate unwanted artifacts. However, MIDI files can be stretched in order to match your tempo change and the virtual instrument will adapt accordingly without affecting the quality. Hence, I usually leave the Timebase for items/envelopes/markers to Beats (position only) and the Timebase for tempo/time signature envelope to Beats.

However, I strongly suggest setting the appropriate timebase for each relevant track when/if necessary. (Right-click on a track > Set track timebase > Time. This is very useful if you have both midi and audio files within your project, or if some items/tracks are beat sensitive and some others aren’t.
 

Reaper project media settings

Under the Media Tab
• WAV bit depth set to 24 bit PCM
• Set a Path to save media files.

This will create a subdirectory within your project directory to store media files. It is very useful to keep project directories clean, especially when working with hundreds of files. I name this path ‘Audio’, it could also be named ‘MediaFiles’ or something equivalent.

I usually leave the Video and Advanced tabs options to their default state, and change them per project when/if necessary.

The Notes tab can actually be quite useful when sharing sessions. For instance, you can write something about your latest changes or incomplete tasks to let your coworker(s) know, and tick the Show notes on project load box to make sure it appears when the session is opened.

When you are happy with your settings, click the Save as default project settings button to make sure these are remembered for every subsequently created Reaper session. You can always go back and modify them per project.
 

Need more help with REAPER? Get it here:
 
Looking for more help with REAPER, or do you want to read or share tips, ideas and resources? Visit the new REAPER channel on the Sound Community Discord server here

Set the Reaper Preferences

In addition to the Project Settings, you can use the Reaper Preferences window to set various paths, device and appearance settings, and so on. One of Reaper’s great strengths is its customisability; the Preferences give you a tremendous amount of options to personalize your workflow. It would be impossible to go through the entire Preferences in one article, but the following are some of my favored settings:

General > Paths
Tick Store all peak caches (.reapeaks) in alternate path and set path.
This will save all the reapeaks files in an alternate directory which will leave your project directory much cleaner.

Project
Tick Prompt to save on new project.
I find it extremely useful to be prompted to save when creating a new session: it avoids ending up with sessions saved in the wrong places, or work in an unsaved project for a while (which is risky). I find it’s a disciplined way of keeping my Reaper sessions neatly organised.

Audio > Device
Select appropriate audio drivers & system
This is where you set which Audio system and drivers you wish to use, according to the equipment you are working with (audio interface). It is as straightforward as it is important: not setting the Audio system properly will result in errors when trying to playback or record audio.

Audio > MIDI Devices
If a MIDI device is not detected automatically, this is where you should see any connected device and be able to right-click it and select ‘enable input’.

Appearance > Media
I like to personalise the Media item buttons displayed on the items within the project. I find that the most useful ones are

Locked, Not locked (will allow you to quickly be able to click that button whenever an item needs to be locked);
Muted, Not muted (same with Mute button);
Per-take FX (will only show if an effect is present on the item);
Automation Envelopes (same with envelopes);
Notes (same with notes);
Item Properties only if resampled media;
Pooled MIDI;
Grouped items.

Plug-ins > VST
You can set one or more VST plug-in paths here and simply hit ‘Re-scan’ if you acquire new plug-ins and VSTs to update your database.

There are many other features you can customise, such as the scroll and zoom functionalities and anything appearance related, but I find that at least with those quick additions you are in a good place for an efficient workflow. Those settings will be remembered for all subsequently created Reaper projects.


Popular on A Sound Effect right now - article continues below:


Trending right now:

  • The Seagulls sfx library includes 28 tracks of both single, isolated seagull screams, and bigger flocks of nesting seagulls, calling out to each other and their chicks. There are plenty of classic call sounds, but also some weird throaty and raspy screaming, and what could sound like seagull laughing sounds.

    All tracks are recorded with the very useful zoom function of the Telinga microphone and dish.
    Library includes both untreated tracks, and noise reduction processed tracks in two separate folders. Noise reduction processed tracks have carefully been cleaned up with a CEDAR NR system.

    Though these birds are in an abundance around most harbours and industry around here, they are not always easy to record. You mostly hear them from a distance, or from places not easy to access. When you try to get close to them, they will usually fly away.

    Many hours have been spent on rooftops, gardens, backyards, a junkyard, and different harbours to get this material.

  • This is a unique bicycle library that captures road surfaces from the perspective of super quiet bicycle. These are clean, quiet, nicely performed true exterior rides. Including multiple perspectives, speeds and actions. From fast passbys on asphalt to slow onboard recordings and smooth stops.

    The Extra Surfaces library provides 162 sounds captured on the following road types Large Bricks, Gravel, Grit, Icy Asphalt.

    The four additional ‘onboard road’ surfaces are the perfect extension for your other ‘City Bicycle’ library of taste. Just add it as a layer, mix it and voila your bicycle can move from gravel to bricks to grit or from large bricks to slippery icy asphalt roads.

    Speeds and actions:

    Three speeds. Departures from slow, medium to fast getaways. Arrivals from slow stops with gently brakes to smooth departures.

    Five perspectives:
    1. Onboard Front: captures the whirring tire and surface sound.
    2. Onboard Pedal: nice overall combination of pedaling, crank creaks, chain rattle, tire and surface sounds.
    3. Onboard Rear: close up sound of the rear axle, with chain, sprocket and switching of gear.
    4. Tracking shot: mono recording of the passby, keeping the bike in focus while passing by.
    5. Static XY shot: stereo recording of the passby that emphasizes speed.

    Overview of perspectives and mic placement:

    Onboard recordings are 2-3 minutes long depending on speed. Higher speeds > shorter duration.
    All 3 onboard mics are edited in sync with one another to make layering easy.
    All Passbys, Arrivals and Departures move from Left to Right.

    Metadata & Markers:

    FREE UPDATE to City Bicycles: now conforms to UCS with new metadata to quickly find your sounds.

    Because we know how important metadata is for your sound libraries we have created a consistent and intuitive description method that adheres to the Universal Category System. This allows you to find the sound you need easily, whether you work in a database like Soundminer/Basehead/PT Workspace work, or a Exporer/Finder window. We made a video that helps you navigate the library ans find your best bicycle sounds faster and easier.

    CategoryFull
    A quick way to filter out sounds you don’t need: like handling sounds or vice versa bicycle onboards.

    UserCategory
    Fastest way to find the type of action you need for all bicycles. Passby needed, just click and voila.

    OpenTier

    Once you’ve selected the bike you can open up OpenTier and audition and select the perspective you want to use.

    Scene &  Performer
    This field contains the type of bicycle or other sound. So you can find the bike you like fast.

    iXMLTrackLayout
    This is a neat little identifier you will find in the Waveform displays and you can see in a glance what Listening position you are.

    MicPerspective

    We have another way to find perspectives but it is more limited to distance to the recorded subject.
    So passbys are MED – EXT and handling are CU – EXT. Exterior? Of course: we recorded everything outside!

    UserComments
    We used this field to create the UserData and give you the minimal set of information about the recording in the filename.

    Additionally, we added Markers to some wave files, so specific sound events are easy to spot in Soundminer and other apps.

    If you have any questions about this, please contact us info@frickandtraa.com!

    Need more?
    The GoodBike library is a part of the ‘City Bicycles – Complete Bundle‘ available here in the A Sound Effect store. It consists of all 4 bicycles and includes additional surfaces and extras ranging from one-off  bicycle passes captured in the city and bounces and rattles. If you buy the complete bundle you get 1 package for free!

    Here’s a handy comparison table:

     

    'City Bicycles'  Sound Library by Frick & Traa
    Responses:

    344 AUDIO:City Bicycles has a plethora of content, for a great price. The perfect balance between a great concept, great presentation and outstanding execution, lands them an almost perfect score of 4.9..

    The Audio Spotlight: City Bicycles is worth getting if you are in need of great sounding and well edited bicycle sounds.

    Watch a video created by Zdravko Djordjevic.

    City Bicycles sound examples

     

  • This is a unique bicycle library that captures this characteristic bike in clean, quiet, nicely performed true exterior rides. Including multiple perspectives, speeds and actions. From fast passbys on asphalt to slow onboard recordings and smooth stops.

    The GoodBike is a smooth sounding retro bike that doesn’t rattle or squeak, it has a really nice tire sound for a subtle presence in the mix.

    Speeds and actions:
    Three speeds. Departures from slow, medium to fast getaways. Arrivals from slow stops with gently squeaking handbrakes to heavy stuttering skids.

    Five perspectives:
    1. Onboard Front: captures the whirring tire and surface sound.
    2. Onboard Pedal: nice overall combination of pedaling, crank creaks, chain rattle, tire and surface sounds.
    3. Onboard Rear: close up sound of the rear axle, with chain, sprocket and switching of gear.
    4. Tracking shot: mono recording of the passby, keeping the bike in focus while passing by.
    5. Static XY shot: stereo recording of the passby that emphasizes speed.

    Overview of perspectives and mic placement:

    Onboard recordings are 2-3 minutes long depending on speed. Higher speeds > shorter duration.
    All 3 onboard mics are edited in sync with one another to make layering easy.
    All Passbys, Arrivals and Departures move from Left to Right.

    Metadata & Markers:

    FREE UPDATE to City Bicycles: now conforms to UCS with new metadata to quickly find your sounds.

    Because we know how important metadata is for your sound libraries we have created a consistent and intuitive description method that adheres to the Universal Category System. This allows you to find the sound you need easily, whether you work in a database like Soundminer/Basehead/PT Workspace work, or a Exporer/Finder window. We made a video that helps you navigate the library ans find your best bicycle sounds faster and easier.

    CategoryFull
    A quick way to filter out sounds you don’t need: like handling sounds or vice versa bicycle onboards.

    UserCategory
    Fastest way to find the type of action you need for all bicycles. Passby needed, just click and voila.

    OpenTier

    Once you’ve selected the bike you can open up OpenTier and audition and select the perspective you want to use.

    Scene &  Performer
    This field contains the type of bicycle or other sound. So you can find the bike you like fast.

    iXMLTrackLayout
    This is a neat little identifier you will find in the Waveform displays and you can see in a glance what Listening position you are.

    MicPerspective

    We have another way to find perspectives but it is more limited to distance to the recorded subject.
    So passbys are MED – EXT and handling are CU – EXT. Exterior? Of course: we recorded everything outside!

    UserComments
    We used this field to create the UserData and give you the minimal set of information about the recording in the filename.

    Additionally, we added Markers to some wave files, so specific sound events are easy to spot in Soundminer and other apps.

    If you have any questions about this, please contact us info@frickandtraa.com!

    Need more?
    The GoodBike library is a part of the ‘City Bicycles – Complete Bundle‘ available here in the A Sound Effect store. It consists of all 4 bicycles and includes additional surfaces and extras ranging from one-off  bicycle passes captured in the city and bounces and rattles. If you buy the complete bundle you get 1 package for free!

    Here’s a handy comparison table:

    'City Bicycles'  Sound Library by Frick & Traa

     

    Here’s a handy comparison table:

    'City Bicycles'  Sound Library by Frick & Traa
    Responses:

    344 AUDIO:City Bicycles has a plethora of content, for a great price. The perfect balance between a great concept, great presentation and outstanding execution, lands them an almost perfect score of 4.9..

    The Audio Spotlight: City Bicycles is worth getting if you are in need of great sounding and well edited bicycle sounds.

    Watch a video created by Zdravko Djordjevic.

    City Bicycles sound examples

     

  • Strident and Demonic

    Expand the timbre of your horror violins and cellos with CIRCUS, a sinister sample pack featuring 180 WAV sounds of screeching or high-pitched string noises, perfect for horror music and dark sound design.

    Creative Tension

    This collection offers a curated selection of screeches, high-tension tremolo, heavy jeté strokes, dark demonic textures, finger patterns, chaotic string elements, clock loops and bow accents.

    Haunting and Experimental

    Create haunting atmospheres, perfect for horror, thriller or experimental soundtracks. Every element has been designed to unsettle and disturb, blurring the line between music and noise.

    80 %
    OFF
    Ends 1760911199

Latest releases:

  • Woodpile Chaos is a gritty collection of 82 wooden hits, creaks, and scrapes — a wild mix of organic textures born from raw timber and controlled destruction.

  • This is big set of scary sound effects, that will make your game, or any other project performance much more impressive!

    Dark, evil ambient loops, ambient noises, scary sounds, heavy rumbles, moans, metal squeaks, scratches, cracks, debris sounds, sub bass sound FX, background white noises, thunder strikes, electric sounds, engine loops, electric sparks and many, many more!…

    40 %
    OFF
  • Car Sound Effects Ford Puma 1997 sports car Play Track 206 sounds included, 48 mins total $65

    All files are recorded 32bit, 192 kHz, with RØDE NTG1, Line Audio Omni1 and FEL Clippy XLR EM272 microphones, Sound Devices MixPre-6 II recorder. Library contains wav files of driving, interior and exterior foley, mechanical and electrical sounds. It is only available in UCS.

  • Ambisonic Sound Effects Red Deer Play Track 13+ sounds included $80

    A small collection of High quality, close up red deer recordings.

    Red Deer Roars and Moans and other vocalisations from different habitats. (mountainous areas and forest)

    Recorded over the years during the rutting season, varying distances but mostly up close and face to face with this loud and scary mammal.

    20 %
    OFF
  • Take full control of your interface sound design with the Ultimate UI Click & Select SFX Bundle — a massive collection of 1,054 professional-grade UI sound effects across seven expertly crafted libraries by RawAmbience.

    From crisp button clicks and smooth menu transitions to RPG-style selects, denies, and toggles, this all-in-one bundle gives you everything needed to design intuitive and immersive UI audio for games, apps, web, or interactive media.


    Your complete UI sound design toolkit.

    The Ultimate UI Click & Select SFX Bundle delivers a polished collection of responsive interface sounds, including:

    • Click & Select UI RPG SFX 1 & 2 – Over 456 sounds tailored for RPG and interactive UI: selects, hovers, alerts, cancels, access-denied, and more.
    • Click Menu Sound Effects 1 & 2 – 281 high-quality menu interaction sounds for toggles, clicks, opens, closes, and confirmations.
    • Click Sound Effects – 110 versatile UI clicks designed for modern app and game interfaces.
    • Essential Menu Click Sounds – 107 precise and minimal click sounds, ideal for clean, modern UIs.
    • Essential Menu Select Sounds – 100 select-focused sound effects, delivering clean, modern UI feedback for toggles, confirms, menu navigation, and precise user selections.

    Perfect For:

    • Game menus and HUDs (RPGs, mobile, indie, AAA)
    • Web and app UI feedback
    • Interactive experiences (VR, AR, touchscreen)
    • UI prototyping and UX testing
    • Accessibility-focused sound design
Need specific sound effects? Try a search below:


Saving a Reaper session

When saving a new Reaper session, you should always:
• tick Create subdirectory for project
Copy all media into project directory.

reaper file names
This allows the Reaper session to be completely independent and non destructive to original files. It will create a folder containing the Reaper session file along with copied media files. The ‘Audio’ Path to save media files created earlier in the Project Settings will create a subfolder within the directory for all media files. If you don’t do these steps, you will encounter issues when moving the project and could be modifying original files.
 

More reads on REAPER
Want to know more about REAPER? Here are some more A Sound Effect stories about it:

The Rise of REAPER – with Justin Frankel
5 useful tips for making the most of REAPER – by Jon Tidey

 

Set and use shortcuts

In Reaper (as in any DAW really), keyboard shortcuts are your friends. Many of them will be set by default, you may like them or want to change them according to what you are used to from a previous DAW workflow, or simply adjust them to what makes more sense to you. You can access all actions and shortcuts through the Action list window: Actions > Show actions list…
reaper shortcuts

• To find an action (per type or per name), use the Filter (for instance split, glue, nudge, etc);
• To find out what actions are performed by specific shortcuts, use the Find Shortcut button;
• To set custom shortcuts for existing actions, use the Shortcuts for select action section at the bottom left. Simply select the action in the action list, click the Add… button and enter the desired shortcut. If the shortcut is already used, Reaper will prompt you to decide if you wish to override it or keep the original one.
• To create custom actions click on Custom actions: New > drag desired actions. You can then assign a shortcut to your custom action. This is very handy and can greatly increase your workflow speed when you need to perform some repetitive task.
 

Get the SWS extensions

They can be downloaded here

The SWS extensions are a collection of features which integrate directly and seamlessly into Reaper as additional functionalities. It is entirely free and extremely simple to install, you can find a full list of their actions here.

This concludes how to get set up using Reaper. Keep an eye out for the second article of this two part series to know more about the Reaper workflow and some of its useful and unique features.
 

A big thanks to Anne-Sophie Mongeau for her REAPER insights! Part two of this guide – covering workflow and some of the unique REAPER features – is here

 

Please share this:


 

 

About Anne-Sophie Mongeau
Anne-Sophie Mongeau is a game audio engineer at DIGIT Game Studios, and has a great blog about sound here. You can also meet her on Twitter here.

 



 
 
THE WORLD’S EASIEST WAY TO GET INDEPENDENT SOUND EFFECTS:
 
A Sound Effect gives you easy access to an absolutely huge sound effects catalog from a myriad of independent sound creators, all covered by one license agreement - a few highlights:

  • The Seagulls sfx library includes 28 tracks of both single, isolated seagull screams, and bigger flocks of nesting seagulls, calling out to each other and their chicks. There are plenty of classic call sounds, but also some weird throaty and raspy screaming, and what could sound like seagull laughing sounds.

    All tracks are recorded with the very useful zoom function of the Telinga microphone and dish.
    Library includes both untreated tracks, and noise reduction processed tracks in two separate folders. Noise reduction processed tracks have carefully been cleaned up with a CEDAR NR system.

    Though these birds are in an abundance around most harbours and industry around here, they are not always easy to record. You mostly hear them from a distance, or from places not easy to access. When you try to get close to them, they will usually fly away.

    Many hours have been spent on rooftops, gardens, backyards, a junkyard, and different harbours to get this material.

  • This foley collection features the unique sounds of “Animal Footsteps” across diverse terrains. From the soft padding of paws and the scuttling of insects to the rhythmic clop of hooves and the delicate patter of birds, you’ll find every sound you need to bring your wildlife scenes to life.

    Each sound has been captured in studio and divided into specialised categories including Paws With Claws, Paws Without Claws, Reptiles, Rodents, Crustaceans, Arachnids, and more.

  • Materials & Texture Sound Effects Glacier Ice Play Track 300+ sounds included $40

    Glacier Ice is a library containing over 300 high quality sounds of ice cracking, breaking, shattering in various sizes of blocks – recorded entirely in the Italian Alps over the course of two winters.

    The library contains sounds of all dimensions, from ice cubes being dropped in a drink to a designed iceberg collapsing.

    The majority of the material was recorded at 192 KHz with a Sanken CO100K and a stereo pair of Sennheiser MKH8040, making this library greatly flexible for pitch shifting and all sorts of heavy processing.

    A small section recorded at 96KHz features sounds recorded exclusively with contact microphones placed directly on the surface of a frozen water stream.

    Bonus: Two extra libraries included for free:
    This library also includes two additional releases from Mattia Cellotto - for free: Crunch Mode delivers 230 crunchy sounds made with a variety of vegetables, fresh bread, pizza crust and a selection of frozen goods. The Borax Experiment gets you 158 squishy, gory, slimy and gooey sounds.
Explore the full, unique collection here

Latest sound effects libraries:
 
  • Woodpile Chaos is a gritty collection of 82 wooden hits, creaks, and scrapes — a wild mix of organic textures born from raw timber and controlled destruction.

  • This is big set of scary sound effects, that will make your game, or any other project performance much more impressive!

    Dark, evil ambient loops, ambient noises, scary sounds, heavy rumbles, moans, metal squeaks, scratches, cracks, debris sounds, sub bass sound FX, background white noises, thunder strikes, electric sounds, engine loops, electric sparks and many, many more!…

    40 %
    OFF
  • Car Sound Effects Ford Puma 1997 sports car Play Track 206 sounds included, 48 mins total $65

    All files are recorded 32bit, 192 kHz, with RØDE NTG1, Line Audio Omni1 and FEL Clippy XLR EM272 microphones, Sound Devices MixPre-6 II recorder. Library contains wav files of driving, interior and exterior foley, mechanical and electrical sounds. It is only available in UCS.

  • Ambisonic Sound Effects Red Deer Play Track 13+ sounds included $80

    A small collection of High quality, close up red deer recordings.

    Red Deer Roars and Moans and other vocalisations from different habitats. (mountainous areas and forest)

    Recorded over the years during the rutting season, varying distances but mostly up close and face to face with this loud and scary mammal.

    20 %
    OFF
  • Take full control of your interface sound design with the Ultimate UI Click & Select SFX Bundle — a massive collection of 1,054 professional-grade UI sound effects across seven expertly crafted libraries by RawAmbience.

    From crisp button clicks and smooth menu transitions to RPG-style selects, denies, and toggles, this all-in-one bundle gives you everything needed to design intuitive and immersive UI audio for games, apps, web, or interactive media.


    Your complete UI sound design toolkit.

    The Ultimate UI Click & Select SFX Bundle delivers a polished collection of responsive interface sounds, including:

    • Click & Select UI RPG SFX 1 & 2 – Over 456 sounds tailored for RPG and interactive UI: selects, hovers, alerts, cancels, access-denied, and more.
    • Click Menu Sound Effects 1 & 2 – 281 high-quality menu interaction sounds for toggles, clicks, opens, closes, and confirmations.
    • Click Sound Effects – 110 versatile UI clicks designed for modern app and game interfaces.
    • Essential Menu Click Sounds – 107 precise and minimal click sounds, ideal for clean, modern UIs.
    • Essential Menu Select Sounds – 100 select-focused sound effects, delivering clean, modern UI feedback for toggles, confirms, menu navigation, and precise user selections.

    Perfect For:

    • Game menus and HUDs (RPGs, mobile, indie, AAA)
    • Web and app UI feedback
    • Interactive experiences (VR, AR, touchscreen)
    • UI prototyping and UX testing
    • Accessibility-focused sound design

   

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