13.37 Audio Items and MIDI Items: Essential Editing Differences
The fundamental difference between the way REAPER handles audio and how it handles MIDI is that REAPER’s audio management is always non-destructive: the audio material is never stored in the .RPP project file, but always elsewhere in its own media….
Kind: concept (user-guide-section) Chapter: 13 Working with MIDI Items Source: REAPER User Guide v7.70
The fundamental difference between the way REAPER handles audio and how it handles MIDI is that REAPER’s audio management is always non-destructive: the audio material is never stored in the .RPP project file, but always elsewhere in its own media file (.AIFF, .WAV, etc), usually on your hard disk. REAPER’s audio media items display a representation of the actual audio: changes made there (such as to pitch, volume, etc.) are applied to the item display and reflected on playback, but they are not applied to the actual audio file. itself To do that, you would need to use an external editing program such as Audacity or Wavosaur. However, in the vast majority of cases you should have no need to do this. MIDI data is just that – data, information, instructions. This information is stored in the .RPP project file. Any changes (such as those you might make in the MIDI Editor) are written into that file. The one area here that perhaps needs further explanation is pooled MIDI items. When you create a pool of MIDI items, rather than having the same code replicated several times in the .RPP file it is stored only once, and referenced elsewhere as needed. Thus, editing changes to any one member of the pool will be applied to all pool members. The obvious exception to this is that deleting any member of the pool will only cause that one item to be deleted, not the entire pool.