REAPER project to MP3

Drop an .rpp to hear it as an MP3, or select a file — it opens in the studio, ready to export.

RPP · ZIP

How to get an MP3 out of a REAPER project

Someone has sent you an .rpp and you want something you can play. Nothing on your computer will play it — not REAPER, if the media never came with it, and not a media player, which has no idea what a project file even is. But the notes in it are not a reference to somewhere else. They are in the file, and notes can be performed.

  1. Add your .rpp: The project file on its own is enough — what a performance needs is the notes, and those are inside it. A `.rpp-bak` beside it is REAPER's own safety copy, not a second project; it is ignored.
  2. Read in your browser: Because an .rpp is plain text and nothing else, the whole read happens in the page: tracks, tempo, and the notes in every MIDI item. Signed out, with nothing uploaded.
  3. Give it instruments, then export: Every lane that came out of the project needs a player before anything can be heard. Pick one per track, then use Export audio, under File, to write the mix as a 256 kbps MP3 — that render needs a free account.

More ways to work with your music

Try our online tools to separate, transcribe and convert — Doseedo does it all.

Questions about the REAPER project to MP3 converter?

We have answers.

Can I convert an .rpp straight to MP3?

No. The sound lives in plugins and samples on the machine that made the project, so there is nothing for a transcoder to read; what gets bounced here is a performance of the notes. For your own mix, File → Render in REAPER writes the master or a file per track.

Do I need an account?

Yes for the MP3, no for the reading. The .rpp is parsed in your browser signed out and nothing is uploaded — the render that turns its notes into sound runs on a GPU, and that step needs a free account.

Do audio items come across?

No. Audio holds no notes, and the browser read returns notes only — an audio item in an .rpp is a path to a file on the machine that made it. If you have the whole project folder, Import session in the studio loads that audio from your own copy and the bounce includes it.

Will it sound like my mix?

No. It is a re-performance — the same notes, the same arrangement, your track names, played by modelled instruments instead of the plugins the project names. Treat it as a different take of the same song rather than a copy of yours.

Try our free REAPER project to MP3 converter

  • An .rpp points at its audio — it does not hold it

    REAPER stores its media by path, and the project that references it is legible text: an arrangement, plus a list of places to look — a kick in one folder, a vocal take in another, a sampler pointed somewhere else again. Move the .rpp away from that media and every one of those paths is a dead end, which is exactly the position anyone who has been sent a project is in. Nobody holding REAPER and the whole folder needs this page: File → Render writes the master mix, a file per track, or a matrix of regions, in one pass. The people who ask were sent the file alone.

  • Thirty-six players, not your plugins

    The sound a REAPER project makes comes out of plugins and samples installed on somebody's computer, and nothing here loads a plugin — not the reader, not the renderer, not the bounce. There is no route from a project file to your synths at any price. What there is instead is a palette of thirty-six modelled instruments, assigned lane by lane, and a GPU render behind a free account that plays your parts on them. An .rpp rarely says what a lane was meant to be, because REAPER names tracks and not instruments, so the assignment is a reading of the arrangement rather than a recovery of it. What lands is your arrangement in different hands.

  • Bounce the brace, not the song

    The export has a range as well as a format. Put the loop brace around eight bars and the bounce is those eight bars — the same offline render, started and stopped where the brace is, at the same 256 kbps the whole song would get. That is a useful shape for an MP3, because an MP3 is what you send someone for an opinion, and an opinion about a chorus does not need the four minutes around it; a minute of audio is under two megabytes. Leave the range alone and you get the arrangement instead, measured from the start of the session to the end of the last clip on any track, so nothing trails off the end.

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