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Installing Reaper on 64 Studio

Reaper

REAPER is reasonably priced Windows software for multi-track audio production.
It requires no dongle, has no copy protection, and can be evaluated with full functionality.

This is a quick How To instruction to get it going in 64 Studio with full Jack support

While Reaper is not free, nor Open Source, it taps into some of the Open source communities greatest strengths, Trust and Community. This makes Reaper one of the fastest developing proprietary DAWs at the moment. While I still prefer Ardour as my main DAW, I collaborate with musicians that have not seen the light yet, and are still stuck on MS-based machines, but running Reaper.

Make sure the following repositories are active in Synaptic:

Also add the following repository (for 64bit):

If you are not able to install wine 1.0.0 after activating the above repositories, add the following repository:

Press reload, and then mark the following packages for installation:

wine, wineasio

and apply.

In a terminal, enter the following:

tux@64studio:~$ regsvr32 wineasio.dll
tux@64studio:~$ winecfg

After Wineconfig opens, click on the Audio tab, select ALSA (and *only* ALSA), and click OK.

Now, download the latest installer executable from the Reaper website:
http://www.cockos.com/reaper/download.php

install in a terminal with the commands:

tux@64studio:~$ cd Desktop
tux@64studio:~/Desktop$ wine reaper*.exe

(assuming you downloaded the installer to the desktop)

It will install Reaper, and even stick a launch icon on the desktop.

Now,

  • Start jack, the normal way. (Running Jack Control and starting the server)
  • Run Jackbridge: (only do this in 64bit version)
    • If using Gnome, Press <Alt><F2>, and type jackbridge and press enter
    • Users of other desktop environments (like fluxbox, KDE etc.) open a terminal, and run
      tux@64studio:~$ jackbridge

      Keep the terminal open... (you can minimise)

  • Start Reaper:
    • In Gnome there is an icon on the desktop (Or the wine menu)
    • Other desktop managers might behave differently, and you might need to create a start shortcut. The command for starting Reaper is:
      wine "c:/Program Files/REAPER/reaper"
When Reaper starts up press <Ctrl>P for preferences, and under Audio -> Device, select ASIO

Open your jack-control connections interface and connect the jackbridge outputs with your ALSA inputs.

Press play in Reaper...

To start Reaper in future, now all you need to do is:
  • Start Jack-Control (qjackctl)
  • Start Jackbridge (64bit only)
  • Start Reaper
  • Make your connections in Jack - and you are on your way!
Enjoy!
  • By Quentin Harley at 07/03/2008 - 06:18
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Notes

If the Reaper splash-screen just sits there, click outside it so that you can get to Audio -> Device and choose ASIO. If I start Reaper from the supplied desktop icon, I get repeated popups saying that the audio device could not be opened, even after changing to ASIO. Bizarrely, I can avoid this by going to the install dir (/home/user/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/REAPER), and running "wine reaper" directly from there.

I am running on a 32-bit system, without jackbridge, and Reaper only shows audio connections in QJackCtl while it is playing (like Audacity). This limits its useability to a large extent in terms of routing stuff to and from it. On this PC (Sempron 2800), the screen update is also rather sluggish.

It's quite impressive that Reaper runs at all, but I think that on this PC at least Ardour is a better bet.

  • By donnek at 07/16/2008 - 08:36
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Ardour

...is Still my first choice. Trying my best to install ardour 2.5 on my system to check it out. The change log looks impressive.

Strange that Reaper would now run better (more user friendly) under 64bit than under 32bit ;-)

Cheers!

  • By Quentin Harley at 07/16/2008 - 19:08
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