Hi reaperfriends! 💙 I’ve been away for almost a year, and I haven’t been able to use REAPER that much. So I thought it’d be fun to catch up on some of the latest REAPER updates together. These are the ones I’ve been most looking forward to trying out!
📌 Pin tracks to the top of the TCP
This is super convenient if you have a big session and need to keep one track visible at all times, like a reference track, a chord track, a video, or your drums. Anything you want to see all the time!
Just right-click any track and select Pin Track to top of TCP view. That track will stay locked at the top no matter how far you scroll, while you can still work on everything else normally.
You can, of course, use this pinned track like normal. For example, I’ve been enjoying pinning my guitars right before recording so they always stay in the same place!
Some other ways I like to use this:
- Pin the drum track while editing so I always have a timing reference
- Pin a “chord track” to keep the harmonic structure visible while arranging
- Pin a reference track while mixing
- If you're composing for video or doing any video editing, you can pin the video track so it's always visible at the top while you work on the rest of the session
🎵 Create a “chord track” using empty items
A cool thing you can do with pinned tracks is create a visual chord map for your session or any big other big text that you may need.
Create a new track, name it "Chord Track", and pin it to the top. Then:
- Make a time selection by clicking and dragging in the timeline
- Go to Insert > New Empty Item
- Double-click the item and type the chord name (e.g. "F Major")
- Make sure Stretch Text is checked and hit Apply
Now you have a chord map always visible at the top of your session. Really handy for songwriting!
🎢 Smooth tempo curves
You can already add tempo markers with Shift + C, but now you can make the transition between two tempos feel smooth instead of an abrupt jump.
Here's how:
- Open the Master Track via View > Master Track
- Click the Automation button, find Tempo Map and enable it in the Visible column
- Hold Alt and click and drag between any two tempo markers to create a curve
You can go from 170 BPM and gradually slow down to 100 BPM in a really natural way. You can also right-click any tempo marker to set the curve shape manually.
🎸 Auto Bypass Effects on Record Arm
If you record with a lot of plugins loaded, latency can be a constant pain. REAPER can now automatically bypass any plugins that introduce latency the moment you arm a track, then restore them as soon as you stop recording.
This works for plugins anywhere in your signal chain, whether they’re on your instrument track, the master, or elsewhere. Common culprits include limiters, multiband processors, denoisers, and other heavy plugins like Soothe, FabFilter Pro-L, or iZotope RX.
To set it up:
- Go to Options > Settings > Audio
- Enable Auto Bypass Effects on Record Arm
- Set your threshold — I find 3ms works really well
- Hit Apply
Such a good addition!
✂️ The Crossfade Editor
REAPER has always been great for editing, but the new Crossfade Editor makes it even better. Double-click any crossfade to open it and you get a detailed view with one item in green and one in red, fine control over gain matching, a Phase Align button, and a live preview right from the editor.
The editor also shows a phase alignment percentage so you can see exactly how well the two items line up before committing. If you do any sample editing, dialogue editing, or drum editing, this is really worth checking out.
🌊 Low-Pass Fades
Right-click any item fade and you'll now see a Low-Pass Fade option.
Instead of only changing volume over time, this also opens a low-pass filter as the fade progresses — so the low frequencies come in first, and the full sound opens up gradually.
It's a really nice effect, especially on fade outs. If you hold Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (Windows) and click on a fade, you can quickly audition all the available fade shapes.
📊 Render Dialog upgrades
The render dialog in REAPER 7 has had some really nice updates. You now get a lot of useful information after each render. And best of all, you can play the rendered track right from the preview. This makes it easy to spot render glitches or listen through one more time without leaving the dialog.
You can also do a Dry Run with no output to check for clipping before committing. Any clipping shows up as red lines, and you can press M to drop a marker at those spots so you can fix them in the project.
↔️ Ripple Edit Media Item Edges
There's a new ripple edit option worth knowing about. Right-click the ripple edit toolbar icon and enable Ripple Edit when editing media item edges.
Now, when you drag the edge of any item, everything to the right shifts automatically. This is really helpful for adding or removing space between takes without having to move things around manually.
🌈 High-Resolution Spectrogram
The spectrogram view now has a high-res option when zoomed in!
Go to View > Peaks Display Settings, switch to Spectrogram, click the three dots and select Show high resolution spectrogram when zoomed in. It should now be much more detailed.
And if you spot a problem frequency, you can right-click the item and go to Spectral Edits > Add Spectral Edit to Item to target and reduce it directly. No extra plugins needed!
🛡️ Ignore Mouse Click Unless on Fader Handle
This is a life savior, literally! If you've ever accidentally clicked the black area of a fader while selecting tracks and get the volume blasting your ears, this one is for you.
Go to Options > Settings > Mouse and enable Ignore mouse click unless directly on fader handle. Now the fader only responds when you grab it directly!
📁 Drag and Drop Folder Import
You can now drag an entire folder with subfolders directly into REAPER and it'll import everything while keeping your folder hierarchy intact. Really useful if you work with large sound libraries, stem mastering or do game audio stuff!
There have been so many more updates since I've been away, but these are the ones that caught my attention the most. I'm sure I missed something important though — what has been your favorite recent REAPER feature? Let me know in the comments! 💙
