DAW News: Reaper has swipe comping

[Chipotle]

Not new news, but news to me: Reaper v7 has swipe comping! The feature was released about a year ago, but I missed it at the time.

I'm not sure how exactly it compares to Logic's similar feature, but compared to the old Reaper "takes" system, swipe comping is so much easier and more powerful. If you are considering various DAWs, this is a huge ease-of-use feature that isn't found in all of them. Swipe comping has been discussed here in the forum before, so I thought I'd point this out.

[KevWind]

That is such a great feature for comping
It looks to be very similar to how Logic does it Having the swipe itself promote it to the "Comp lane"

We have that also in PT (except the lanes are called "Playlists" ) but in PT you have to swipe and then hit the promote arrow or a key command so it takes and extra second or two which is not a big deal but not quite as handy as promotion from the swipe .. so kudos to Reaper

Reaper has come a very long way since I demoed it years ago in version 4 I think it was

With the one exception of it's particular nomenclature still often being a bit un-intuitive.

For example Had I not watched the video first,, it might be hard to intuit that "New Recording that overlaps existing items " is how to get to the "Comping with lanes and swipe" option

Also I saw a "loop recording with takes" option, but did see a loop recording with lanes ???

[Chipotle]

Originally Posted by KevWind

For example Had I not watched the video first,, it might be hard to intuit that "New Recording that overlaps existing items " is how to get to the "Comping with lanes and swipe" option

Also I saw a "loop recording with takes" option, but did see a loop recording with lanes ???

"New recording overlaps existing items" isn't how to turn on swipe comping; it's just a recording mode setting that controls what happens if you overlap something in a lane (you can add a new lane, add another take within that lane, or replace what's already there). You can either set Reaper to have lanes in all new tracks by default in the Preferences, or turn lanes on/off with a quick right-click.

I just tried loop recording with lanes and it works just as expected-each loop ends up in its own lane. Seems like recording in a loop with Reaper respects whatever recording configuration you have currently set.

I'm still figuring it out, but I am working on a project where I have a track with 13 different takes that I had done as Reaper "takes" originally. I converted that to fixed lanes and was using swipe comping and getting better and easier results in no time.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by Chipotle

"New recording overlaps existing items" isn't how to turn on swipe comping; it's just a recording mode setting that controls what happens if you overlap something in a lane (you can add a new lane, add another take within that lane, or replace what's already there). You can either set Reaper to have lanes in all new tracks by default in the Preferences, or turn lanes on/off with a quick right-click.

I see I guess was confused since that appeared to be the way he arrived at being able to set up Add lanes and thus be able to swipe comp in the lanes . So to be clear you can get ready to record in lanes by right clicking in the track and select lanes ?

I just tried loop recording with lanes and it works just as expected-each loop ends up in its own lane. Seems like recording in a loop with Reaper respects whatever recording configuration you have currently set.

Thats good makes it very efficient. And can you set it up to automatically create new lanes when loop recording ? So all you have to do is select the length of the loop select loop recording, hit record, do as many takes as feel you want and the go directly to comping ?

[Chipotle]

Originally Posted by KevWind

I see I guess was confused since that appeared to be the way he arrived at being able to set up Add lanes and thus be able to swipe comp in the lanes . So to be clear you can get ready to record in lanes by right clicking in the track and select lanes ?

Exactly, "Fixed item lanes", which lets you swipe comp, can be activated for a track either by default, by the right-click menu, or in the "Track" menu at the top of the program.

Thats good makes it very efficient. And can you set it up to automatically create new lanes when loop recording ? So all you have to do is select the length of the loop select loop recording, hit record, do as many takes as feel you want and the go directly to comping ?

Yep, it works exactly like you think it would. If you have a track in the old "takes" format, looping creates a new take each pass, and if the track is in fixed lanes, it creates a new lane each pass; when you're done, create a new empty lane for comping with a right-click and off you go!

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by Chipotle

Exactly, "Fixed item lanes", which lets you swipe comp, can be activated for a track either by default, by the right-click menu, or in the "Track" menu at the top of the program.



Yep, it works exactly like you think it would. If you have a track in the old "takes" format, looping creates a new take each pass, and if the track is in fixed lanes, it creates a new lane each pass; when you're done, create a new empty lane for comping with a right-click and off you go!

Excellent as I noted it has come a long way since version 4 in 2015 when I tried the 60 day trial

And I suppose my difficulty with Reapers GUI and nomenclature and why it seems unintuitive to me , has more to do with my having been comfortable with Pro Tools GUI naming and workflow since 2003. So 12 years of PT likely was one reason I could not decipher a lot of the menus and could not figure out how customize it to my liking. Had it not been for the Kenny Gioia videos I would have likely not even tried to use it at all

[b1j]

Is this how Studio One does comping?

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by b1j

Is this how Studio One does comping?

I have not yet done any comping in S1 BUT
Yes more or less and however like all DAWs the feature set improvements depends somewhat on which version of Studio One

But First the additional takes are put into what it calls "Layers" as opposed to "Lanes " but is the same function, where you have the basic track and then the associated sub tracks

It does now have select and swipe to promote to the Comp (or top ) layer (not sure which version that came in though)
S1 (like Pro Tools )has solo buttons for each layer and as of version 6.2 you can now edit in each lane individually or in the Comp (top) layer

Here is a pretty good video on S1 comping