September 7th, 2014
Recently I’ve been playing around with punch and roll recording, which is an extremely fast way to record audiobooks or any other long form narration project.
Unfortunately, some Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) like Reaper and PreSonus Studio One only allow you to set your preroll to musical measures or bars. This can be confusing when you want to set, for example, a 5-second preroll for your punch and roll recording.
Without getting into to much music theory behind it, here’s how to set your projects so you can actually get seconds:
Step 1:
When you start a project you will be asked to set the tempo or the “speed”. This is in Beats Per Minute (BPM). Most DAWs default to 120. Change this number to 60 (which is 60 beats per minute, meaning that one beat is exactly one second.)
Step 2:
Then you need to set the time signature. Most DAWs default to this odd looking musical fraction: 4/4. Change this to 1/4. Now a measure (or bar) is only 1 beat long (and because of step one above, that 1 beat is exactly 1 second.)
Here are some screen shots of the set up:
PreSonus Studio One
When you make a new song:
Reaper
From the File Menu choose Project Settings:
Now when you set your preroll and your DAW only accepts measures or bars, you can actually enter the seconds of preroll you want and that’s exactly what you’ll get.
PreSonus Studio One
In the Metonome Setup…
Reaper
In the Metonome and Preroll Settings…
These are the only two DAWs that I’ve worked with that do punch and roll, but this technique will work with any DAW that won’t allow you to set your preroll to purely seconds.
Enjoy! 