Free Reaper script · v1.0

Singtall Drum Align

Every drum mic, lined up on the snare. Free for life!

Close mics, overheads and room mics all hear the snare at slightly different times. Those few milliseconds smear the snare and thin out the kit when the tracks are summed. Singtall Drum Align lines every drum track up on the snare in a couple of seconds, flips polarity where it's needed, and moves the items themselves. There's no plugin to leave running and nothing to render.

Download Singtall Drum Align Install with ReaPack

Reaper 6 or newer · no registration required

Each mic hears the snare a little later the further away it is, and some hear it upside down. After one run they all start together, the right way up.

How to use it

Use it at the start of a mix, before any plugins.
Select all your drum tracks by Ctrl-clicking their names in the track panel (Cmd-click on a Mac). Include the snare.
Run Singtall Drum Align from the Action List. Reaper pauses for a few seconds while it listens to the whole song.
Read the report. It lists how far each track will move and which ones get their polarity flipped. Press OK.
Zoom in on the Drum Align marker. Every track's snare now starts on it. One Ctrl+Z puts everything back if you change your mind.
Next, run Singtall Drum Clean to cut the bleed between kick and tom hits. Aligned, clean drums need far fewer plugins, and no gates.

What it does for you

Finds the hit itself

It checks every snare hit in the song and picks the cleanest one, where no kick or hi-hat lands on top of it. You don't need to place a marker.

Lines up the start

It aligns where each mic's snare actually starts, which is the same thing you'd do by eye. Floor toms that ring along with the snare don't throw it off.

Fixes polarity

If a mic hears the snare upside down, its polarity gets flipped. If the snare itself is the odd one out, it flips the snare once instead of flipping everything else.

Leaves your audio alone

It only moves items and sets their polarity. It listens to the tracks before their FX, so gates and channel strips don't affect the result, and your own markers are never touched.

Install it by hand

Download Singtall_Drum_Align.lua using the button above.
In Reaper, open Actions → Show action list.
Click New action… → Load ReaScript… and choose the file you downloaded.
It now appears in the Action List. Add it to a toolbar or give it a shortcut for one-click aligning.

Install with ReaPack

With ReaPack installed, you'll get updates automatically. Go to Extensions → ReaPack → Import repositories… and paste:

https://singtallstudio.com/reapack/index.xml

Then open Extensions → ReaPack → Browse packages, search for Singtall Drum Align and install it.

Good to know

The master track is the selected track named like a snare top. If none is, it's the topmost selected track. The report shows which track it used before anything changes.
Tracks marked check by ear are ones where other hits in the song gave a different answer. Kick mics are the usual ones, because they hear the least snare.
An item that starts at 0:00 can't move earlier, so its start is trimmed by the same amount instead.
Select only drum tracks. Every selected track gets aligned.

Like it? Try our EQs.

Singtall EQ Pro is free, and Engineer, Producer and Master are dynamic EQs built by the same mixer who made this script. Every paid plugin has a 14-day free trial with no card required. Compare the editions → or get updates on new free tools.