Audacity Forum

I apologize if this is issue has been addressed elsewhere, I am new to Audacity and it's community.

I became interested in Audacity after having the idea of using it like FL Studio uses the Edison Wave Editor, recording on the fly and not as a playlist clip. I suppose the question is: Can I open an instance of Audacity while running Reaper, and record Reaper's output into Audacity, the way one can record using Edison in FL? If I, for instance, want to record some guitar noise, but I don't want it in Reaper's playlist, I want to record it and then mess with/edit the file, the way you can in Edison, and THEN, once I've sufficiently changed the recording, drop it into Reaper as just a standard audio file?

I make weird guitar noise soundscapes, I've used FL for years only because of Edison, but I've "outgrown" FL and started using Reaper exclusively, but I can't find a reasonable alternative to Edison (and don't want to drop $100 for the standalone version, which is more expensive than Reaper itself) or at least I couldn't until I found Audacity, but I'm not sure if it will do what I need. Obviously I can record in Reaper by itself, but for experimental purposes, I enjoy being able to just make some noise, record it quickly, then edit the track as it's own thing. I apologize if I haven't explained this properly, but thanks in advance for reading, as I said I'm very new to this forum.

I've no idea about "Edison" as I don't have it, have never used it, and it doesn't run on Linux. So let's talk about Audacity

kwoods wrote:Can I open an instance of Audacity while running Reaper

Yes.

kwoods wrote:and record Reaper's output into Audacity

Yes, but you probably don't need to.
If you want some audio from a Reaper project in Audacity, export from Reaper in WAV format, then import the WAV file into Audacity. Doing it that way avoids the sound quality loss that is inevitable from converting from digital to analog (playing through your sound card) then converting from analog to digital (recording from your sound card).

kwoods wrote:If I, for instance, want to record some guitar noise, but I don't want it in Reaper's playlist,

Then you can record it directly into Audacity, OR you can record it into Reaper, export as WAV and then import the WAV into Audacity for editing.

kwoods wrote:and THEN, once I've sufficiently changed the recording, drop it into Reaper as just a standard audio file?

After editing/processing in Audacity, "Export" as WAV. The WAV file can then be imported/loaded into Reaper.


Unfortunately, Audacity cannot work "directly" as a sample editor for Reaper. There is a certain amount of "fiddling about" Importing and Exporting, but it still works pretty well. I'm on Linux so I don't use Reaper - I use Ardour, but it's quite similar.

kwoods wrote:I make weird guitar noise soundscapes

Cool

kwoods wrote:and started using Reaper exclusively

Reaper is pretty cool too.

kwoods wrote:but I'm not sure if it will do what I need

It probably will, but you will need to keep an open mind. As I said, I've never used Edison, but it is very likely that the workflow using Audacity will be "different". That's not to say "worse" or "better", just not the same. Switching from a familiar program to an unfamiliar one will always seem awkward at times, so you should allow for that.

We're always here to help

Hey Steve, thanks for the great reply! Answered everything I needed to know! Exporting/importing does seem like the more efficient solution, I can't believe I didn't think of it myself, lol! That's what's so great about computers, there are so many different ways to do the same thing! I looked up Ardour after reading yr message, it looks great, but I suppose it doesn't run on Windows? Too bad because it looks very interesting!
After reading yr reply I installed Audacity and tried it out with a little fuzz/noise I had made real quick, and it works like a charm! Yr right it will take some getting used to since it's new and has many features, but I am excited to learn it's functionality! Thanks again for yr indispensable help!

Oh, and Edison Wave Editor is actually a really cool little program, it works like a plugin, just slap it on yr channel of choice, or the master bus, and it will record whatever signal is going through. Then once saved there are multiple tools/editing that can be done. You could even throw 4 Edison plugins on yr guitar channel, start recording on the first instance, then play that sample and yr guitar and record into the instance under it (sounds a lot more convoluted than it is I swear!) and on and on for super-layered and dense samples/tracks.