[Rwp] student, newbie... where to start.

[Chris Belle]

Hi blake?

First of all, welcome to the list.

Reaper is great, but it's sort of the linux of the recording world, if 
you aren't a self starter and used to digging a lot it can be frustrating.

There's no one book to buy to find out everything, you have to put a lot 
of pieces together.

When you first start doing this, and if you want to pursue it seriously, 
it can be very daunting.

I've been at this professionally for 35 years,
and it's still frustrating sometimes.

I primarily use sonar, and a number of screen-reading options to get my 
work done, and reaper is something I am learning and using more and more 
in my tool kit.

I also provide low priced tutoring from the perspective of all three 
major screen-readers.
dealing with recording technology,
so if all else fails, come see me, and we'll try and put some of those 
pieces together in a friendly relaxed manner.


I can tell you from experience, that if you want all the headaches taken 
out of the hardware side of things, then indeed, do save up and get a 
purpose built daw from someone like Jim Roseberry over at
studiocat.com
he has provided fine machines for many of my colleagues and students, 
and they are top knotch.

Audio machines are special, with the BIOS EUFI tweaked to give the 
lowest DPC latencies, and real time like performance.

yes, you will need more than jus your on board sound card to get good 
performance,
depending on what you are doing, you can get by with casual mixing 
sometimes on a generic device, but windows consumer level hardware will 
not give you the low latency performance you need for laying tracks, and 
you need a card which can do asio
these don't have to cost the earth, you can get an entry level device 
like the lexicon alpha for 60 dollars, which also has basic TRS line 
inputs, and a mic pre,
another reason to get a better audio device is the type of connections, 
as consumer level hardware usually only has the 3.5 mm unbalanced 
connectors, and they are prone to be noisy, and most pro gear is either 
TRS or XLR
so getting some basics right from jump street is a good idea.

You don't need a 10 million dollar studio to make music, but you do need 
some basic decent tools unless you want to be constantly stubbing your 
toe, as you've discovered,
reaper is a good bargain at 60 dollars,
sonar cost quite a bit more, but is a much more documented, and well 
trodden path for blindy's,
doing this professionally,
as there is caketalking from dancing dots, and the JSonar project, ct is 
paid and uses jaws screenreader while
Jsonar is free, donation ware, but sonar is several versions behind the 
latest, you can still buy it from Dancing dots,
Jamie one of the main developers
of NVDA screen-reader is developing a great new plug-in for reaper to 
replace the aging and abandoned reaccess plug many here are still using,
it is called Osara, but it is a work in progress,
there is no hand holding,
except on this list a little bit,
I
personally think reaper is more slanted toward audio editing than midi, 
where as sonar is the gold standard for midi and
maybe in time if enough people are using reaper, there will be an easier 
path to follow for new reaper users.

there are a couple of websites with some reaper info, will let someone 
else chime in with that, but the Osara stuff is at
https://github.com/jcsteh/osara#start-of-content

YOu can find jsonar at
jsonar.org

You can find ct at
dancingdots.com

happy learning 'smile'.

On 4/12/2015 11:25 AM, blake tracy via RWP wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> I have just joined the RWP list. I am a blind college student and I’m 
> very interested in audio production. I’m especially good at editing 
> audio. I feel like a detective when it comes to Daws, and I’ve been 
> uselessly buying a lot of things that I don’t need or can’t use unless 
> I have something else. I have a normal windows 8 computer, and a 
> Yamaha YPG235 keyboard that I use for midi. I’ve downloaded reaper 
> just to try, and am now afraid to buy because of all the misguided 
> buying I’ve done lately. So I’ve tried it, and have half second delays 
> in between what I play and what I hear. Google told me to get a 
> soundcard. True or false? And if so, I don’t want to buy the wrong 
> sound card. It’s a windows surface pro so it’ll have to be external. 
> Should I just give in and save up for a computer just for music? And 
> are there any books that will take the detective work out of this 
> field once and for all?
>
> Thanks for any feedback. Sorry to take a lot of people back to newbie 
> topics, but google stinks at telling me what I need instead of what 
> others need.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
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