So, you downloaded a DAW and hopefully Reaper because it’s great and it’s very cheap and you got it set up, installed, you recorded something and it sounds terrible. Don’t worry, that’s exactly what’s supposed to happen. It’s going to happen a lot. So, you try to fix it. You look around. You find a bunch of people that seem to know what they’re talking about droning on about plugins and stacks and channel strips and all sorts of things that seem relevant, but you’re not exactly sure what they are.
A plugin might add reverb or delay. It could be an EQ or a compressor. Or it could even be an entire instrument like a drum kit. It could be a piano. It could be a saxophone. It could be an entire orchestra. Plugins are all over the place. Can do almost anything. Essentially, it’s a piece of software that sits in your DAW and processes something. It does something. Adds an effect. Uh adds an effect like compression or delay or chorus or or whatever. It’s an instrument as I said earlier.
But exactly what you might need for your setup, that’s another question entirely. I’m going to talk a little bit about plugins, what a VST is, what’s an AU, what’s a DB, what’s a PT, what’s an FU, who knows? We’re going to talk about all that a little bit and hopefully narrow down what you might need for what you’re trying to do. We’re looking at Sweetwater, as I always do, at the various software and plugins that they have. As you can see, there’s plugins all over the place.
We’ve got Superior Drummer 3, which is basically a plugin that acts like an entire drum kit that you can control via MIDI. We’ve got drum triggers. What else? Sonar Works for uh plugins for speakers and headphones. We’ve got Let’s look for some recognizable stuff here. Let’s see. There we go. multimedia amplitude. That’s uh an entire series of amps you can use. Plug your guitar directly into uh your sound interface, your excuse me, plug your guitar into your audio interface.
Use that as your amp. Excuse me. Use that as your amp and your speakers and you’re all set. First, let’s look at VST plugins. What What does that mean? Well, VST stands for virtual studio technology. uh and AU, which is another type of plugin, stands for audio units. These are software standards that allow audio plugins, effects like reverb, EQ, or virtual instruments like synthesizers and so forth to run inside a digital audio workstation. The one that we’re going to look at today is Reaper, but VST and AU uh plugins will work in almost any DAW.
They will offer similar functionality but different management within various different DAWs. You need your formats compatible with your DAW and your OS. AU is for Mac only. VST3 is for most modern DAWs, both Mac and PC. And sometimes VS2, excuse me, VST2 for older plugins. often installing both VST and AU versions will offer maximum flexibility if you have the resources to basically just throw everything on there and see what works. Your computer will only recognize what it can read obviously, so it’s not going to create any problems in that regard.
VST3 is the latest VST standard and uh it’s offering better performance and CPU efficiency than the older VS2 which is preferred on PC. For Mac users, especially Logic Pro, install AU and VST3 or VST2 versions for compatibility. As Logic Pro only uses AU natively, but other DAWs like Ableton use VST and uh it depends on what DAW you’re running.
AU is safe, but go ahead and install if you’re using Mac, go ahead and install AU and VST uh two and three just to be safe. Now, as I said at the beginning, I prefer Reaper. I suggest you try Reaper if you don’t already have a preference. So, if you’re just starting out, you don’t know what’s going on, download Reaper and get started with that. Not only because it’s inexpensive, but because it also comes with a lot of free plugins. Now, you’re going to have to download them separately. I’ll link to it below along with a uh link to the Reaper DAW. But let’s take a look at what you can download for free and use just for using Reaper.
So here’s your compressor rimp. The interface isn’t as pretty as the compressors you might be able to purchase or download elsewhere. But as far as a starting point and a place where you can learn about compressors and how they work, this is a great place to do it. It’s got a compressor. Here is your RIA delay. Perfectly serviceable digital delay. Again, the interfaces don’t have all the bells and whistles. It doesn’t look bright and happy like the ones that cost money, but this will teach you how this thing works.
And if you need a delay and you don’t have any money, this one’s great. It works perfectly. EQ obvious. And actually, I have a hundred different EQs and I still use this one sometimes. So definitely get started there. Noisegate, wonderful, simple uh this uh again all this is absolutely free and the gate will do exactly what it’s supposed to do.
RIAJS real time effects processor. It does a whole lot of stuff. stick it onto a channel and start goofing around with it. I’m not going to go over everything that it can do here because it does too much. And just play with it. It’s a lot of fun. You’ll figure it out as you go along. But as you can see, these are free. Now, there’s more free stuff out there for Reaper. This is the RIA plugs, the VSTFX suite that you can get via Reaper. Uh again, links below. Check it out. Play around with these, especially the compressor. You’re going to probably need that on pretty much anything you’re going to use, especially if you’re doing any voice over or vocals in your music.
You’re going to need that. Take a hard look at it. Figure it out. The thing since there’s no way to hide, and it shows you all of the sliders, uh, and what they do. You really have to learn how a compressor works, which is a that this is valuable information that you’re going to use regardless of where you move to from here. So, understanding how these work and what’s going on is important. And these beginner plugins are going to help you do that.
I say beginner and actually they’re a little bit harder to use than some of the newer AI fancy plugins that you can get, but by using these plugins, you’ll actually understand what’s going on and and that can help you moving forward. So, that’s what we’ve got. And uh have fun with plugins now that you know what they are. And if you have any questions, ask them below. I’ll try to get to them.