36 votes, 29 comments. I recently tried out the daw reaper and my god, it’s amazing. I’ve been using it for a little while playing around with all. Picture 1: The Rado theme shown with an enlarged master fader. Give Reaper a make-over with a change of graphic theme. One of Reaper's unique and most loved features is the ability to customise the user experience according to individual preferences and workflow. Vadym Mykhaylyukd October 20, 2015 at 3:50 pm. Just yesterday I managed to setup REAPER visuals the way I love it. I used RADO v4 theme, some color toolbar from EvilDragon, his color scheme. Reaper Themes Best. Picture 1: The Rado theme shown with an enlarged master fader. Give Reaper a make-over with a change of graphic theme. One of Reaper's unique and most loved features is the ability to customise the user experience according to individual preferences and workflow. Unlike most other DAW software, such tweaking.

UPDATE v2.0 (2021-04-29): Almost 7 years after the last version, this theme got a major update (v2.0) to support Right-Sided TCP FX slots, TCP FX embed, and proper Dual Pan TCP display. It also got lots of fine tunings. This article got updated as well.

UPDATE v2.1 (2021-05-06): And now with a Dark Theme version!

2 Features
4 Download
5 Installation
6 Changelog

Introduction

Reaper is the most customizable DAW of the market.
We can assign actions to shortcuts, to buttons on toolbars, create macros, write scripts, create plugins, and we can change the software appearance with a lot of freedom.
On this last point, there are a lot of themes online, but the higher customization level you can afford, is to create your own theme !

Because I wanted to have a GUI that satisfy all my needs, I didn’t wait a lot of time before beginning to learn Walter, the system elaborated by Cockos to allow users to write their own themes (a system which handle pictures, elements placement with a custom code language etc…), and I did it so intensively that I ended to write a Synthax Highlighting Color code for Notepad ++, a freebie well appreciated by the community 😀 (EDIT 2021: now I use ReaSyntax with Sublime Text).

So, I designed for my own usage a custom theme, X-Raym Analog, based on Default Analog 1.8 by Lerian, itself based on the Reaper 4 Default theme. It has become a heavy mod though, with lots of different images, colors and behaviors.

If you like the default v4 theme, but would prefer something a bit warmer with nice track color support, then this time can fit your needs!

Features

Note: The screenshots are not all updated to match the last version of the theme.

Right-Sided TCP FX Slots (v2.0 update)

REAPER v6.14 from September 2020 introduced the the Show Track & Sends in TCP feature. It allows you to insert, duplicate, remove, bypass, switch FX without even opening the track FX chain (I let you explore how to do that wit a combination of click, click and drag and modifier keys – ctrl/alt/maj).

This is nice to have and I wanted this to be well integrated into my theme, with a right-sided layout, just like in FeedTheCat themes (thanks to him for having providing instructions about this!) and in other DAW.

As years after my theme initial release, and despite the fact there are lots of other really great themes with nice features I still fallback to it because of his warm look, and because I know it is still used by other users as well, I decided to spend extra work on it.

It took me several days on it to make this update happen, mostly because I cease the opportunity to polish countless of other things in the theme (and because I had to fight about some complex stuff), especially Dual Pan pots in TCP and FX embed. That is why it is now considered as v2. Check Changelog section below for more infos. 😎

To activate this feature (in REAPER v6.14+), you can go to Options menu then:

Show sends in TCP (when size permits)
Show FX inserts in TCP (when size permits)

Optionally, you to wrap these actions in a single custom action, and put it on a toolbar button so it can be easily toggle if needed.

Color Chart

The color chart came from the Default 1.8 theme, which propose a warmer version of the default green theme. I didn’t invent anything on this point, because it was my starting point. That why I don’t consider myself as a themer, but rather as an hardcore theme moder 😛

Rado Style Pan Pot for the Mixer

The default Pan Pot in the mixer a rotary one.

If a Pan Pot is optimum when there is not a lot of room (as in the TCP), I think that a linear slider correspond much better to our sound perception. Indeed, a Pan Pot Rotate from 7:00 to 17:00 (hour equivalent), despite the fact that the maximum amplitude is only Left / Right, (9:00 – 15:00 in hour equivalent).

To imagine the linear pan slider as a line that cross our head when we mix with headphones, or even better, as a line in front of us when we mix with speaker, line on which we place our instrument, seems to be more representative of the reality to me.

I have immediately found this idea awesome, idea that come from the Rado theme by Rado Records, so I decided to implement it in my theme, with the consent of the team 🙂

Shadowing Optimized for Colorization and Track Selection

I have often around 100 tracks on my projects. I will be completely lost without tracks colorization.

The thing is that, by default, it is the background of the track name which is colorized, which I consider to be an ergonomic al issue, due to the fact that it can generates readability issues (yellow background under white text, it’s not easily readable); I find more pertinent to color the TCP background and leave the interactive elements (buttons, slider etc, but especially text elements…) intact. This way, the color appears clearly, not just like small vignette, and don’t interfere with text.

The thing is that by default the colorization of tracks is not perfect. Some colors are not clearly visible, especially when selected, because of the blending mod applied to these colors.

Hopi tried to correct this problem in a custom theme inputting borders around selected tracks, but some tracks colors still had trouble (colors made the borders disappear when the tracks is selected).

I had the idea to draw shadows and textures in the TCP, and to define the selected tracks as flat and brighter, and I tested it with every tint were good : it works ! 😀

Animated demo Here 🙂

All the TCP and MCP have been desaturated to not interfere with color tracks chosen by the user.

Notice than pan information on the MCP are displayed on a dark grey background in order to be clearly visible no matter the color of the track.

More Ergonomic Take Selection

By Default, when a take is selected, it gets darker, which, I think, is not very intuitive. Selected items have to be highlight, literally.

So I decided to have a more lighter selection take color.

More, this color is now customizable into the preferences panel. I have to get rid of the default texture image but it’s not bad : we found the same behavior I set for TCP (selection = flat, without shadow).

Three lines height Responsive TCP

The default theme provides responsive TCP, it means that the elements appearance (position, width…) inside the TCP are adjusted, according to the width of the TCP, which is great. But… It is too responsive.

There is so much levels of responsivity that there is no consistency anymore. Thus, the more we widen the TCP, the less there is lines attributed to the track control, which provoke some counter-intuitive things : for example, you want to see a track title a bit long, you widen the track, and BAM, the buttons are merged, a line is deleted, and you see even less characters of the track title than before. You should have rather contract the track panel in order to widen the track name field…

So, I locked the responsivity on three lines maximum and reduced the number of key width to consider, which give a lot more consistency.

If you want a comparison with the original, click here !

VU-Meters Color

Vu-Meters colors are customizable !

dB Scale in the MCP

I really wanted that feature, so much that I implement it to every MCP layout that could r

Reaper Rado Theme