stems

what are they? and yes, i did search the manual but it's returning every instance of sySTEM. also, what is an item? i assume if i have one track that i split in two places, i would then have 3 "items" on one channel? and since i have your attention, on the selected track below, as you can see, it's split in two places. if i want to apply an effect only to the part that's green, how would i do that? same thing with increasing the volume. i know i can hover at the top of the part(item?) and click+hold while moving the cursor down if i want to DECREASE the volume(which is AWESOME!!!), just haven't got the other things figured. and thanks to everyone that's helped me out so far. digging it BIGTIME!

Stems are renders of entire tracks. There are pre-envelope/fader and post-envelope/fader stem options when you render. Items are like you think, your example of the split is correct. To apply effects only to a particular item just open the Item Fx Browser. I think the default is Shift-E (that's what it is on my system now, anyway). The effects you add there only apply to the selected item. I'm not sure how you increase the volume in that example although you could obviously put a JS trim effect or something like that on the item, but there has to be an easier way than that.

you might want to set your media pref's to show more things... here is how mine are set most of the time: doing that will give you not only some small 'icon' boxes on each media item, but also one at the lower left for FX... clk that and add your FX to just that item.... ok the volume thing... let's say you only want that one item to be louder... few ways to go: one is make all the others softer with the volume control of each item as you know about it and then put a compressor\limiter on the whole trak... use that FX to boost the gain and limit the peaks while you then control each items volume per item... another way would be similar but with a volume envelope for the whole track... another way might be to just put the comp\limiter on the single item and boost the gain for just that item.... I can think of a few more possible ways but one of the above might get what you want...

awesome. thanks.

since you did suggest it yourself... YES YOU SHOULD RTFM! really man, it is a pdf, and you can easily search for a word, like "envelopes" and go to the pages for that and learn a ton of great things along the way.... so much great work went into that user guide and we are very fortunate to have it!

dont forget about the chat room too - a great place for insights

I know it's a pain, but I think one of the best things I did when I first started using Reaper was to go all the way through the manual. It's very well done. I played with a few tracks as I went, but I kept plugging past the things that were confusing. The goal was to make it through and at least be exposed to everything. I actually bought a printed copy so I didn't have to sit at a computer while reading through it, and I could easily highlight stuff, and fold down pages. Then, after I started making recordings and had some experience, I went all the way through it again. I also bought ReaMix, a more detailed guide that includes files you can download. At the end of the day, I'm convinced that I'm more efficient at resolving issues now than if I had started from the beginning doing word searches on the pdf, or on the forum. So, I proudly RTFM. By the way, folks on this forum are an awesome resource.

NO... read up now and save yourself half of the time you'll waste otherwise! I think the best way to learn what envelopes do is to try using a few... make a project for env. testing.,.. give it two audio files and try some various envelopes on them... check with the manual for details you don't understand... no need yet to get into the complex things env's can do... just stick with the basics... learn to add and move points, change the shape of points, etc... find out what trim, read, write, all do...