Beginner Trying To Apply FX

I'm totally new to this kind of DAW. I want to apply an effect to a selection of my track. On other, simpler DAW's I would normally select a region of the track, choose an effect and click 'OK' and the selection would have the effect applied to it. This doesn't seem to be how Reaper works. I can't figure out how to apply an effect to just one small selection. The plug-ins don't seem to have an 'OK' button to apply the effect, plus it seems to apply it to the whole track even when I've selected a time region. Any help?

Welcome to the forums! Try this. View > FX browser Then just drag and drop the FX you want ontonthe region you want. You can also go into Options >Preferences to customize the tools that show up ON the region. I believe its under "media" on the left side which allows you to check if "FX" which willbput a little FX button on every region to do exactly what you mentioned. Hope that helps!

I don't know if I'm following your instructions right, because that doesn't work for me. I drag across an area in the timeline, which appears to select a region, then I open FX Browser and drag an effect to the selection. That opens the effect window and I change some settings. Then when I play the track, the whole track has had the effect applied, not just the selection. Do you know what I mean when I describe the simple way other DAW's work? Programs like WavePad, Audacity, etc. You drag to select a region, open the effect window, click 'OK' and the effect is immediately applied and you can see that the wave has changed, it looks different. Why does nothing appear to have visually changed when I have applied an echo? The track should appear different when an echo has been applied, it should look 'noisier'. This tells me that Reaper does effects in a different way to other DAW's like Audacity, I need to figure out how.

Right Click the item go to item properties click on FX get funky from there :-)

You need to physically split the media section away to apply FX to only the one section.

^ yeah that's the pertinent bit :) You could make a macro for it, something like: split at time selection float fx chain for selected take I don't know if those are the actual action names, but I know it's possible - you just have to make sure that you have your auto-crossfade on split preferences set how you want them.

came back to mention that but Lawrence was faster than me :-)

Think they're all non-destructive... well the pro level ones anyway. His previous method was more like Cubase which doesn't have per-item realtime FX, but applies the FX to a section of the region using edit files. But it's still non-destructive. If you apply FX to a range, it creates an edit file for that range with the FX applied, redraws the waveform for that area from the edit file, and plays that section when it gets there. So if you apply say, -2 normalization to the middle of a clip you'll see the wave form drawing for that section go way up because it's representing the edit file there. It's just a "virtual edit" that happens in the background. Realtime per-item FX like in Reaper is much more useful though, in that case.

I see. Thanks for the help.

I use sends to input the FX when and where I want them. Automate the send volume to input, then you can apply as much or as little as you like.