“Start new files every 1024 megabytes.”

[oldbrownhat]

I just came across this setting in the Audio Preferences and am not sure what its importance is. How does this setting affect "making data more secure when recording a long performance"? In fact, this is what I mostly use Reaper for. (I thought there was a setting to "autosave every x minutes" but couldn't find it.)

I have a habit of hitting "Command-S" every once in a while anyway, but in a few weeks I may be recording a concert that I'm actually performing in, so manually saving won't be an option!

[Xenakios]

It starts a new audio files while recording long/large files. It's not related to saving the project file itself. (Which does not contain audio data.)

If you are not 100% certain your system will never crash or experience other interruptions while recording, it's useful to keep that option on to keep more audio safely stored on disk in case some problem happens.

[cfillion]

Audio is recorded directly to disk anyway, you don't need to manually save for that to happen. Ctrl+S only saves the project, not the media. (If you really do want to save the project automatically every X minutes, or maybe for another occasion, the option for that is in Preferences > Project.)

[oldbrownhat]

Thanks for the clarifications. Also probably a good idea to record to a second dirctory as well.

[Gass n Klang]

I wanna revive that thread. What risks under what circumstances do I take if I turn that thing off? I need to transfer my recordings to different people from time to time and it's a pain to handle with multiple files, especially if you record mixed mono and stereo tracks. I'd like to have one file per recording, no matter how long it is. Are there any pcm wav file size limitations? I thought it was just the 4gb in 32bit systems.

[schwa]

Plain .wav files have a file length limitation of 4GB. Some other rendered file formats have similar file-size limitations as well.

When recording to .wav, REAPER defaults to seamlessly/automatically generating a RF64 header instead if the file would be over 4GB. If you are recording to .wav, and you know the downstream users are fine with RF64, there's no technical reason to limit the recorded file length. In that case the only reason would be for ease of transferring files, or safety in case something crashes while recording (although in many cases the partially-written file could be mostly recovered with some technical work).

[Gass n Klang]

thank you! so if I set it to 4096 everything will be fine and I will be compatible?

Does this setting have an impact on glueing items as well?

[joshxtra]

I would like to question this being turned on by default.
Even if my system crashes and I now can recover a large portion of the recording, I am still missing the recording of what happened during the system crash. So I will need a backup-solution anyways.

The file-splitting makes it more cumbersome to deal with the media in most situations, I would presume.

[Lunar Ladder]

Originally Posted by Gass n Klang

thank you! so if I set it to 4096 everything will be fine and I will be compatible?

I'd go for a slightly smaller file (very slightly is enough) to be certain that you are also under the FAT32 maximum file size. If the file size based on 4096 is calculated with the familiar traditional 1024 multiplier, and the file is literally 4096 x 1024 x 1024 bytes long, you will end up with a file that is too big for storing on a FAT32 filesystem.