Some questions about using Reaper, Mixing, and Mastering

[David Vector]

Maybe I need another to try other DAWs because I swear there is a huge variation in what I'm hearing in the project and what gets rendered.

I just did a mega-fast skim through the topic but that jumped out at me. As a general note, when DAW's sum tracks together, it's simple arithmetic and all modern DAW's are doing it the same way. People have sworn that this DAW had a different "sound" than that one, but it's been show to be purely psychological with null tests. Myself, I've never encountered a render sounding different from playback. That said, there are situations that could conceivably result in that, anything from somehow having routed tracks incorrectly to the odd plugin that behaves differently on render vs. realtime playback. If you google "Reaper why would render sound different from playback" it will bring up a few threads on the Reaper forum with suggestions regarding how that could possibly happen.

As far as trying different EQ's and compressors from the ones included with Reaper, you could try the free versions of these. I haven't used them, but they seem to be reasonably well regarded.
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[silky smoove]

As a general note, when DAW's sum tracks together, it's simple arithmetic and all modern DAW's are doing it the same way. People have sworn that this DAW had a different "sound" than that one, but it's been show to be purely psychological with null tests.

Absolutely correct. In addition to confirmation bias it often comes down to settings people didn't know were changed within their DAW. For instance, a change in pan laws can result in a very different stereo mixdown which would show a potentially sizable difference in a null test. That said if you do a matched-settings, matched-plugins comparison of one DAW to another they will be identical. If they're not, or what you bounce out of your session doesn't match what's living in it, there is something wrong with the system.

 

[BonesawMcgraw13]

I'm sure that you guys are right and I'm missing something in the settings. I just wish I could figure out what it was. I feel like I've been over them a bunch of times and can't find anything that would make it do that. Maybe it has to do with a plugin that has been added to the vocals since that seems to be the track I'm having issues with.