Rendering
Rendering from the DDP Metadata Editor
Rendering is done with the Render buttons along the bottom of the DDP Metadata Editor window, which you open with Y (Create CD Markers). Each button applies its own settings and renders straight away, without showing REAPER's render dialog. The first (destination) folder is the one rendered, and the files go into an Exports subfolder of the project folder.
| Button | What it renders | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| DDP | A DDP image (44.1 kHz, 16-bit, triangular dither, as the Red Book standard requires) | Exports/DDP/IMAGE.DAT with its companion files |
| Cue Audio | The whole album as one audio file to pair with a CUE file | Exports/Audio+CUE/ |
| WAV | One WAV file per CD track | Exports/<format>_<samplerate>_<bitdepth>/ |
| FLAC | One FLAC file per CD track | Exports/<format>_<samplerate>_<bitdepth>/ |
| Opus 160 | One 160 kbps Opus file per CD track (48 kHz) | Exports/<format>_160/ |
| MP3 320 | One 320 kbps MP3 file per CD track | Exports/<format>_320/ |
| M: Stems | One WAV per M: mixer track for each CD track, rendered through the master | Exports/Stems_<format>_<samplerate>_<bitdepth>/ |
| Custom | Opens REAPER's render dialog, pre-filled with your choices to the left | wherever you set |
Files for individual CD tracks are named by CD track number and track name. In these per-track files, album and track metadata (titles, performers, ISRC and so on) is embedded where the format supports it, and if the project's media folder contains cover.jpg or cover.png (or folder.jpg or folder.png) it is embedded as cover art in MP3, FLAC and Opus files.
Three dropdowns next to the buttons set the sample rate, bit depth and dither for Cue Audio, WAV, FLAC, M: Stems and Custom. DDP always uses the Red Book settings. Opus renders at 48 kHz, and MP3 uses 32, 44.1 or 48 kHz, whichever the chosen sample rate divides into cleanly. The Tracks box limits WAV, FLAC, Opus, MP3 and M: Stems to particular CD tracks, for example 1-3,5; leave it blank to render every track. DDP, Cue Audio and Custom always render the full album.
Before rendering, ReaClassical checks your metadata and warns about text that DDP and CD-Text cannot hold (characters outside Latin-1, embedded line breaks), duplicated ISRC codes and tracks without a title.
Screen reader users (Clara)
The accessible DDP Metadata Editor has a Render Settings row (sample rate, bit depth and dither) and a Render row where you choose the format and then, if it applies, a track range such as 1-3,5. Progress and warnings are announced through Clara.
To export every recorded take for the musicians or a producer, see Distributing Takes On Location.
REAPER's Render Dialog
You can still open REAPER's own render dialog with R. In it, click on the presets button then All Settings. ReaClassical adds presets for DDP, BIN+CUE, Audio for CUE export, Export for External Resampling, and FLAC, WAV, MP3 and Opus at common sample rates and bit depths. After selecting a preset, you should feel free to change any render settings and perhaps save as a new preset for future use.
Samplerate
Now that r8brain free has been introduced as the best quality resampler available in REAPER (I highly recommend double-checking that it is selected when resampling at render time) I feel I can do everything, including DDP creation, without leaving my favorite DAW. However, generating a CUE file via the Create CD Markers function is still useful for all sorts of things and I often create FLAC + CUE for album playback in my media player or WAV + CUE to easily burn a CD at home. The Cue Audio button renders the whole album as a single file next to its CUE file for exactly this.
Dither
The Render row offers sample rates of 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4 and 192 kHz, bit depths of 16, 24 and 32-bit float, and dither of Triangular, HP filtered, Noise shaping or Off. Dither and noise shaping are applied by the render, so choose Off if you prefer to use RCDither or another 3rd-party dither as the last plugin on the master chain. In that case be sure to keep the master fader at unity.
Loudness & Limiting
REAPER has a fantastic rendering feature which allows the user to set a desired loudness and peak / true peak setting. For quick exports that need to meet certain targets (i.e. streaming) this makes things extremely efficient and is very transparent when not set to extreme values.
Dry-run Rendering
Another REAPER feature that is outstanding is the dry-run render function which allows for very quick offline loudness and peak checks and much faster than using REAPER's included realtime loudness meter. It is therefore extremely easy to set up compressors, limiters etc in the project and make small adjustments based on the dry-run values and maintain complete control over the process.
Other Rendering Tips
Not necessarily obvious to new REAPER users are the special =START and =END markers (make your markers in the usual way and label them accordingly) that constrain the length of the project. Rather than rely on extended silence at the end of items or time selections, the =END marker is a great way to ensure you have the exact amount of lead-out you want at the end of the disc. You will hopefully notice I have included various shortcuts for manually creating regions (single or multiple) from items and time selection (great for quickly generating demo snippets). Also worth noting is that you can still do some (or all!) of your source-destination editing with your track markers in place as the S/D markers have IDs far higher than any classical CD would have and are automatically deleted after a successful edit. As long as you have your ripple-per-track mode engaged, all your existing marker placements and carefully crafted edits will remain intact. But, again, don't manually create CD markers at this point as I include a very powerful tool to make light work of that side of mastering.