¶ Microphone Setup for Commentary!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hoShb3KJ4g
¶ Downloads
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWiAp8sMTDg |
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| Want an even more advanced setup? Here's how to add an EQ (equalizer) to REAPER! |
¶ Updates
Hello! Please also follow these steps, as there's often weird popping and crackling issues without these changes!
- Go to Options > Preferences at the top of REAPER:
Your mic will be muted while this menu is open!
- Go to the Device tab on the left, and set the "Block Size" number to "2048":
- Go to the Buffering tab on the left, and set the "Behaviour" drop-down to "15-Very Aggressive":
Make sure "Thread Priority" is also set to Highest!
You should be set! If you or the people you talk to notice you have any popping / crackling sounds from your mic, let me know (AlastairVox on Discord)!
¶ Running REAPER at Startup
We can setup REAPER to run when your computer starts, so that you won't join a call without sound.
- Find a shortcut to REAPER, then right click to select "Open File Location". You can do this by opening the start menu and searching for the program.
- In the folder that opens, right click and copy the REAPER shortcut.
- Go up one folder from where the shortcut was saved (to
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs) and enter theStart-upfolder (C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp). Paste the shortcut here.
- Right click the shortcut and go to "Properties". Here, on the "Shortcut" tab, click the "Run" dropdown and select "Minimised". Then, click OK.
You're all done! REAPER will now start with your computer, and start minimised so it doesn't take up the whole screen every time.
¶ Green Room
Let's talk about how to run the green room! The idea behind the green room is to use a LUFS (Loudness Units relative to Full Scale) meter to more accurately judge the relative "loudness" of users rather than relying on the decibel levels, which are notoriously bad at reflecting how loud things such as high pitched noises sound to a human despite being at the same decibel level.
¶ Setup
- First, download the Youlean Loudness Meter
It will download as a .zip file, so make sure to extract the files to a folder and then run the installer.
- After launching the meter, we need to first set it to monitor the audio from your computer before we can use it. Go to File > Preferences at the top of the program.
- Set the "Driver Type" to System Audio, and the "Output Device" to whatever your headphones device is. Then click ok.
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You should now see whatever you're listening to on the meter:
- "Short Term" is the current, instantaneous volume level of what you're listening to.
- "Integrated" is the average volume level of everything you've heard since you last hit the red X to clear and reset the measurements.
- "Loudness Range" is the volume range of the loudest and quietest sounds you've heard so far.
¶ Green Room Process
The basic process is to listen to each commentator, and have them adjust their microphones until their volume level is almost the same LUFS level as everyone else.
Before you start, make sure everyone's volume is set to 100% in Discord. Otherwise, they will be setting their volume correctly for you but wrong for the stream.
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Clear your LUFS measurements by clicking the red X at the bottom of the meter, so that we can be sure we are measuring the average of just one person's speech.
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Listen to each competitor by having them read the following script one at a time (this script should already be in the Green Room text channel):
Whimsicott is a small, brown, bipedal Pokémon. A mane of cotton-like fluff covers its back, neck, and forehead. Behind it is a green, star-shaped section similar to where a stem or vine meets a fruit or flower on a plant.
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As they read, watch the "Short Term" reading. We want to make sure they are not exceeding -13 LUFS.
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When they are done, check the "Integrated" reading. It should be somewhere between -13 and -14 LUFS.
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Have them adjust the gain knob or volume slider on their microphone up or down a few decibels depending on where they fell on the measurements. Some people may need to increase their volume significantly. Have them read the script again and repeat the process until they hit the right threshold!
If they don't have the ability to increase their mic's volume, or don't know how, then lower or increase their volume percentage in Discord yourself until they hit the threshold. You'll have to record this percentage and tell Waffo so that they can set that person's Discord volume to the same number while they're on stream.
¶ Changing Reaper FX via Stream Deck and SAMMI
Make sure you have Python installed on your computer (whatever the latest 3.x version is)
If your router assigns your computer a new local IP address, you will need to update all the Stream Deck buttons and the SAMMI script with the new IP address (if everything suddenly stops working for you, this is probably why!). You can tell your router to keep your computer on a specific IP address to ensure this doesn't happen, but that is beyond the scope of this article. You can ask me (AlastairVox on Discord) how to do it and I'd be happy to walk you through it, though!
¶ Preparing REAPER
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First, you'll need to edit the FX in REAPER that you want to toggle on and off together.
- Right click an effect from the FX menu, and select "Rename FX instance".
- Then, add a unique prefix to the start of the effects name, like the word "Ann" or "Madden" (or anything you'd like).
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In REAPER, open Options > Preferences and scroll all the way down to Plugins > Reascript and make sure it looks something like this:
- Then, scroll down to Control/OSC/Web and click add, choose OSC, and set it as follows:
¶ Enabling and Disabling Effects
- Download the following Python script: togglefx-announcer.py, and open it in a text editor. We need to change the first set of variables:
- You'll need the name of the track that has your FX (like "Track 1" or whatever).
- The prefix of all the effects you want toggled on and off.
For each set of effects you want to toggle on and off together, you'll need to copy this script and run through these steps again.
- Go to Actions > Show action list, New action (at the bottom) > Load reascript, and choose the Python script from earlier. That will make a custom action, which you want to run once to make sure it works.
- Copy the ID by right clicking the custom action and getting the custom action ID.
- Now that you have the action ID, you can follow Changing FX via Stream Deck or Changing FX via SAMMI to use the action with those programs.
¶ Reset a Track's Effects
- A special version of the toggle script will act a "reset" button, allowing you to turn off all but your "default" effects, if something gets messed up: solofx-default.py. You'll need to edit this script like the others:
- You'll need the name of the track that has your FX (like "Track 1" or whatever).
- The prefix of all the effects you want enabled (all other effects on the track will be disabled).
- Follow the same steps as Enabling and Disabling Effects to get the action ID for this script and follow Changing FX via Stream Deck or Changing FX via SAMMI to use the action with those programs.
¶ Modifying an Effect
- Download the following Python script: modifyfx-glitch.py, and open it in a text editor. We need to change the first set of variables:
- You'll need the name of the track that has your FX (like "Track 1" or whatever).
- The name of your FX to modify.
- The number of the parameter/parameters (you can just count down the list of controls, starting from 0) to change.
- The percent to increase / decrease.
- Finally, you'll want to make a copy of the script that has "reduce" set to "True" and a copy that has "reduce" set to "False".
- Go to Actions > Show action list, New action (at the bottom) > Load reascript, and choose the Python script you downloaded earlier. That will make a custom action, which you want to run to make sure it works.
- Copy the ID by right clicking the custom action and getting the custom action ID. Then, go to Changing FX via Stream Deck.
- Now that you have the action ID, you can follow Changing FX via Stream Deck or Changing FX via SAMMI to use the action with those programs.
¶ Changing FX via Stream Deck
- To run the action via stream deck, you need to load the plugin called "Send OSC Command".
- Add a Send OSC Command button, and set it like below. The OSC message is just "/action/" + whatever the custom action ID you copied earlier was!
- I create a "Multi Action Switch" for each effect I want to toggle that has the same command in each part, so I can tell at a glance which ones have been activated!
¶ Changing FX via SAMMI
Setup in SAMMI is a little bit more involved... :'3
- Open a command prompt and run the following command:
python -m pip install python-osc - Save the following Python script: executeosccommand.py, and create a shortcut to it (right click > create shortcut).
- Edit the shortcut (right click > properties) and replace the "target" with:
but replace the path (%systemroot%\System32\cmd.exe /c "start "" /b pythonw D:/Me/Documents/Data/Programs/SAMMISoundEffect/executeOSCcommand.py"D:/Me/Documents/Data/Programs/SAMMISoundEffect/executeOSCcommand.py) with where you saved the file. - Set the "Run" drop down to "Minimised".
- Save an empty text file next to the script and shortcut named "osc.txt" (or whatever you'd like).
- Edit the script you downloaded in a text editor, and change the path to the text file you created and the IP and port REAPER has set for the OSC settings.
- Use the shortcut to run an OSC command, like so (the "execute program" file path is the path to the shortcut):
¶ Monitoring Your REAPER Virtual Microphone With a Stream Deck Button
So you wanna listen to your fucked up little REAPER mic but you're tired of opening the sounds menu and checking "listen to this device"? here u go:
- Download this zip file: monitor_mic.zip - put wherever you want and extract the files.
- Run "SoundVolumeView.exe" from wherever you extracted the zip folder's files.
- Find what it names your devices (your virtual mic) that you want to monitor on & off (sort by "type" and look for "device", in my example I'm looking for device name "Virtual Audio Cable" that I called "Microphone" in my sound settings panel when I set it up).
- Right click the device that is listed as "Capture" and go to properties, copy the "command line friendly id" - save it somewhere!
- Repeat the previous step for your actual headphones / monitoring device (whatever you want to listen to your virtual mic via, it should not be able to be picked up by OBS or your viewers will hear double when you're monitoring).
- In my case thats the "render" direction for my "5- Steinberg UR22" device called "Line". Copy the command line friendly id from the properties again - save it somewhere!
- Edit the two ".bat" files in the zip folder:
- Edit "ListenToMic.bat" to have your virtual mic on the first line and the second line (red underlines) and the monitoring headphones on the second line (blue underline) - keep the quote marks, of course!
- Edit "StopListeningToMic.bat" to have your virtual mic on the first line (red underline).
- Set up a "Multi Action Switch" in Stream Deck to "System: Open" the ListenToMic.bat file first, and then to toggle to "System: Open" the StopListeningToMic.bat file when pressed a second time!
The included program can be used to programatically change any device settings that you can normally only change through the sound menu, so you can think about that if theres anything creative you wanna do there! :3