Editing in REAPER just like in Adobe Audition

Voice Over recording and editing with REAPER just like one would do in Edit Mode of Adobe Audition is not only possible, it’s easy and more powerful. Admittedly, I looked at Reaper several times in the past and it seemed too complicated, and I couldn’t figure out how to make quick time selection edits which are crucial for VO editing. But then I found a hack by that makes it just like editing in Edit mode in Adobe Audition. The video on how to do it is here at The Booth Junkies YouTube Channel. You just set up a Action command key to do four steps at once. It takes one minute to set it up. Okay, maybe two or three with a good cup of tea or coffee.

1.) Go to the Actions menu

2.) Choose “Show Actions List”

3.) Then drag and drop the following actions into the custom actions section:

1.) “Set Ripple Editing Per Track” 2.) “Item: Split Items at Time Selection” 3.) “Time Selection: Remove contents of time selection (moving later items)” 4.) “Go to end of time selection”

4.) Set a key shortcut and name for these Custom Actions (I chose “Delete”). I also then set “0” for deleting sections of track Items so I could do that as well.

Yes, there is a learning curve with REAPER, but I got it up to speed in three days and I’m doing e-learning editing, etc. with it. In principle, I’m not paying Adobe a likely $3k over the next decade in their quest to replace human voices with digital ones. You know that Audition is not going to be $19.99 a month ten years from now, right? But you get so much more with using REAPER over Adobe Audition, and for only a $225 one-time payment, which also covers upgrades through version 6.99. That should leave you set for about a decade. There is a 60-day free trial period, and if you are making less than $20,000 with REAPER, the non-commercial license is $60. Another nice bonus over Audition is according to the terms,  “If you own multiple computers, you may install the same license key on all of them, as long as you only use REAPER on one computer at a time.”

Doing More with REAPER than with Audition

Once you’ve worked out how to do voice over recording and editing with REAPER, you will soon see that it’s incredibly powerful, similar to DAWs like Cubase. There is fully customizable punch and roll capabilities. In Audition, there is only a nice but limited free Add-On to do so. REAPER also has spectral editing, but what I love is the Spectral Peaks capability, so you can really see what the words are in the wavelengths. Here’s an example below. Different peak frequencies appear in different colors. Perfect for unicorn-lovers and chasing away the drab interface of Audition.

Note two other things in the screenshot above. You can drop in markers as you record (the red lines), and the grey/gray separation lines are for the ‘items’ that are automatically created when you make an edit. No more confusion as in Audition as to what you actually just cut, especially since REAPER is ‘non-destructive’ editing. I added in the little track icon for the shotgun mic, one of the nice features for labeling tracks.

You can apply effects, such as noise reduction, to the whole track or selections. Honestly find the built in dynamic processing in REAPER to be superior in quality and speed to that of Audition. As for VST plug-in use, I noticed that running Izotope RX6 Elements Noise Reduction had better latency and quicker rendering with REAPER.

Another nice feature is that you don’t “Save” keeper takes/files. You “Render” them. So, when I’m done with a voice over I select the time parameters with the cursor and Render the time selection to a computer Directory. On Adobe, it just shows you the time it will take to Save. In REAPER it pops up a window with a live-generated waveform and metering levels of the audio. So you can see ahead of time if the exported levels are correct, and if there’s any clipping. Sweet!

Time-Stretching Audio and Video Editing with REAPER

One of my biggest beefs with Adobe Audition is their gimmicky pre-sets without the power to do substantial things. For example, you can play-back at 2x speed with Audition. That’s helpful for editing long narration, but with even the latest Audition CC 2018 any hard consonants come across as popped plosives. And 2x is a bit too fast for intelligible playback. Even basic Sound Forge lets one play back at custom speeds and the playback is flawless. With REAPER, the playback at higher slider-selected speed it excellent. Just remember to set it back to 1.0 when you Render your files, otherwise it will save it at the fast speed! When I first made this mistake I realized something: REAPER’s time-stretching/compressing power. You can shorten or lengthen audio and it sounds perfect. Just press ALT and move the cursor to the edge of an Item. You can pull it out or in. It will re-set to the new speed to fill in the space. You can make a :30 a :20 and it doesn’t sound artificial like it does in Audition. Whenever I tried to make time changes of more than 8% there would be all kinds of staggered sounds. Not so with REAPER! Here’s a :12 clip followed by it again sped waaaay up to :09. And this edit was done using an mp3, not even a loss-less file!

And yes, when you make these changes when working with a video file, it will change the video timing too! You can make simple video edits within REAPER. If you copy, delete, or paste a section of the audio, it will do the same to the video. Pretty cool stuff. If you are working on Windows, in order to work with video in REAPER you will need to download the free VLC Media Player available here.

So far so good – after using Audition for much of my voice over career I’ve switched to REAPER and I’m doing more with it than I ever did with Audition. I’ll post more as I learn new tricks and tips. For now, there’s a great amount of YouTube videos on voice over recording and editing with REAPER that are extremely helpful. I encourage you to go check them out as I will be doing when I have the time!

All the very best,
Lance