BBGUNNs Allen and Heath ZED R16 setup guide for Reaper

So youve bought or are thinking of buying an Allen and Heath Zed R16 and are wondering how to make it work with Reaper. Well, youve come to the right place! This console is a nice piece of equipment, but as with any other control surface or mixer it has its pros and cons. Pros: It is one of very few controllers that is a control surface, analog mixer, and audio interface all in one. The preamps and EQ section are top notch, they sound good and are easy to understand. The faders can be used to control Reapers faders or can be switched to route the audio through the Zed mixer instead, per channel. There are also transport controls and various knobs, buttons and faders that can be used to control just about anything you want in Reaper or in third party VSTs running in Reaper. Cons: The mixer has 16 monophonic channel strips, which is fine if you are recording a live band with microphones on the drums, guitar amps, etc But what about stereo tracks in Reaper, like synths and midi drums and that sort of thing? Well, if you want to use the EQs during mixdown, you are going to have to chew up two tracks - one for left and one for right. Now you can choose to just use a single fader to control a stereo track in Reaper of course and use VST EQs and the like, but that sort of defeats the purpose of having these great hardware EQs, doesnt it? So be prepared to make a few concessions. Do not get confused though - Reaper can still do unlimited tracks, its just that only 16 of them can be controlled by the hardware. Also I have found that it is easier to mix to the main faders on the Zed and dump the master track back to a wave editor like audacity or Sony Sound Forge to make your wave file instead of using Reapers render function. Its old school, but it sounds better and I have yet to figure out a way to monitor Reapers mains without a feedback loop coloring the sound. If someone can figure out how to do that, or how to patch the EQs into the DAW like it describes in the manual on page 41 (you have to create tracks as return channels - not very simple) maybe you can post it in the forum so we can try it out! So - now for the setup I need to qualify one thing, though. I am on a PC and dont know anything about Apple so hopefully you mac users can muddle through these instructions and interpolate! Also, I use a firewire interface and do not have a lot of details about the ADAT functionality, so you are on your own there

Step One: Plug it in! Pretty simple really - one cable for power and a firewire cable to your computer in my case. Also make sure the toggle switch on the back of the mixer is set for either ADAT or Firewire, whichever you are using. There is also a switch for sampling quality - I use 44k which gives you the 16 mono channels plus 17 and 18 to use as a stereo master. Step Two: Load up the drivers! I went to the Allen and Heath website and downloaded them from there so I could install the latest greatest updated drivers. Pages 26 through 32 in the manual will walk you through how to do this. You can also download an electronic copy of the manual from Allen and Heaths website - http://www.allen-heath.co.uk/zed/zedr16 . Step Three: Fire up Reaper! Heres where the real fun begins. Now at the moment of creating this document, I am currently using Reaper 4.0 beta. I believe these instructions work for version 3 as well. The first thing to do is open Reapers ever popular preferences page (options, preferences or ctrl-P). First, lets set up the audio interface. Go to Audio / Device. For audio system choose Asio, and for audio driver choose Asio Allen and Heath Firewire. Make sure enable inputs is checked. The next few drop downs are for configuring Reaper so that it knows how many inputs and outputs it can use. First is the first channel in the range that it can use. In this case, we want channel 1. So choose 1: ZED R16 CH1 / CH1 / 2 Last is the last channel you want Reaper to use. I want to use a range of channels between 1 and 18 (16 track channels and 17 and 18 for stereo master) so I selected 18: ZED R16 R / MAIN L/R. Do the same thing for the output range, with 1 being the lowest and 18 being the highest. Heres one more tip - Click back to Audio in preferences. At the bottom you see Channel Naming / Mapping. There is a button next to both input channels and output channels that says Edit Names / Map. Here is where you can name your channels to an alias that will be easier for you to read when you start using Reaper. I named mine Zed 1, Zed 2, and so on. I would do it for both inputs and outputs, as it will be less confusing later on. Thats about it for the audio interface. Step Four: Time to set up the midi control. Still under Audio in the preferences box, click down to Midi Devices. The top box is a list of Midi input devices. You should see something like Allen and Heath Firewire (which is what mine says). Double click that. Uncheck enable input from this device. Check enable input for control messages. Click ok. Now it should say control only next to the A&H Firewire device. The next box is for Midi output devices. Since there is no need to send midi messages back to the Zed, there is no selection for Allen and Heath here. Guess what! Thats it. I know you really want to jump down to control surfaces and put something in there, but dont. Why? Because you dont need to. Say OK to save your preferences. To see if the midi settings worked, try out the transport controls to see if you can play, stop, record, etc Step Five: Go to http://stash.reaper.fm/index.php . Type in zed in the search uploads box. Look for my file called zed.rpp and download it. Now, you dont really have to use this file if you dont want to. You can simply create your own tracks one by one if you really want. But why? I already did it for you! In Reaper, just do a file / open project (or ctrl - o) and open the Zed.rpp file you just downloaded. Walla! 16 tracks and 16 mixer channels at your fingertips! You can also save it as a template and have it automatically open this way every time you start a new project in Reaper if you want.

Step Six: Set up the faders to move Reapers faders. For this we need to use the feature in Reaper called actions. Go to Actions and Show Action List (or type ?). In the filter box type volume. In the list below scroll down until you find Track: Set volume for track 01 (Midi CC Only). Highlight this and then press the add button below. Now go to the Zed R16 mixer console. On channel one at the bottom is a button that says Fader=Midi. Push this button so that the light is green. This transfers control of the fader to Reaper. Move fader 1. Where it says shortcut it should now say something like Midi Chan 16 CC1. Hit ok. Now the zed fader moves reapers fader. Now go to Track: Set volume for track 02 (Midi CC Only) and repeat. Do this for all 16 channels. I also assigned the first black fader on the Zed to the Master track. And there you have it! Now you know the secret to assigning all of the other buttons and knobs to whatever you want! Also, many software VSTs like Native Instruments have a midi learn feature that will allow you to do the same thing for assigning zeds knobs to the VSTs knobs, so you can control the cutoff sweep on a synth or change the pitch or tempo The possibilities are almost endless Go crazy with it! Step Seven: OK. So how do you record? Good question. The first thing to keep in mind is that recording and mixing are two totally different things. One is for getting sound into Reaper and the other is for getting sound out of Reaper. I will warn you, it can get confusing. The first thing I want to point out to you is a button on the far right of the zed labeled DIG MASTER TO L-R. If your speaker system is hooked up to the CRM (control room monitor) outputs, and you push this button so that it lights up green - you are listening to Reaper. If you push the button again and turn off the green light - you are listening to the zed mixer. (Same goes for the DIG MASTER in the phones section). So lets say that you have a microphone plugged into channel 16 on the Zed, but you want to record it on Track 1 on Reaper. The signal from the mic goes to the gain knob, the HPF button, and then on to the EQ. In order to use the EQ, you have to make it active by pressing the EQ In button which turns the light to green. At this point there are a variety of choices for sending audio from this channel back to the DAW, but for simplicity sake Ill just tell you to push the top button for fader 16 that has the red light next to it. This is called DIG SEND Post EQ which then sends your audio signal to Reaper, after the EQ. I usually also select the Fader=Midi (green light) option to make the fader control Reapers fader. Also note the little white L-R button. This is what enables the sound from this channel to go to Zeds Master channels (the red faders). If you dont have any sound you might want to check this! Now - in Reaper. If you are using my zed template you may already notice signal going to channel 16. But wait, you wanted it to record on channel 1! Go to channel 1 (either in the mixer view or the track view) and right click on the record button. Where it says Input:Mono select Zed 16. Now the microphone from channel 16 is being routed to Reapers track 1. Keep in mind that after youve recorded something with that microphone, the audio will now play back through Zeds mixer on channel 1, not 16. See what I mean? It can get confusing.

Step Eight: Mixdown. Youre all done. You want to use the Zeds EQs for all of the tracks youve recorded. Youve recorded Drums on channel 1, but they are in stereo. You skipped channel 2 so you can use that for the drums. You recorded bass in mono on channel 3, a mono guitar on channel 4 and a stereo guitar on channel 5 (leaving channel 6 open for the stereo guitar). How do you route all of this for mixdown? Lets start with the drums. First you have to get the track to playback through channel one (left) and channel two (right) in order to use the mono EQ on the Zed (wish it was a stereo EQ, but oh well). What I usually do is send the same stereo signal from channel 1 to channel 2 and then pan channel 1 left and channel 2 right. How to do this? On track 1 hit the routing button for that track, which looks like this:

Where it says add new send, send to track 2, pre-fader so it looks like this:

Now pan track 1 left and track 2 right. Also pan the controls on the Zeds channel 1 and 2. On the Zed for both channels, turn on EQ in green light , turn off Dig send post EQ red light is off, turn on Dig return pre ins yellow light is on, turn off dig ret post eq red light is off, and turn on fader=Midi green light. Now you have stereo drums on 1 and 2, EQ active for both. The third track will be mono bass just going to track 3 (no need to create a send), the fourth track will be mono guitar just going to track 4 and the stereo guitar will be going to tracks 5 and 6 setting up sends using the same method I described above. Phew! Well, you may or may not use these methods I explained in this document. After all, the Zed is designed to work in many different ways with many different configurations. But hopefully I was able to send you down the right path to figuring out the best way to use the Zed R16 for your own studio needs. Your methods may differ from mine, but hopefully this document gave you a jump start and caused you to find solutions quicker than I did when I started using this console. Now go forth and record something!