In this quick tutorial, I will show you how to make your meters and waveforms in REAPER look way smoother 👌
REAPER allows you to customize the smoothness of your meters and waveforms. By default, the settings are quite low, resulting in a jagged appearance.
I am going to go over how you can customize each of these now.
🌊 Smoother waveforms
You may have noticed that when REAPER is recording, waveforms are drawn very slowly. And it's because the default refresh rate of this is only 3 Hz. We can crank this to 30 Hz and make it look waaay smoother like this:

This is especially cool if you film videos like this!
Setup:
- Go to Preferences > Recording.
- Where it says "Show preview ...update frequency", set it to 30Hz.
- Done! Try recording and your waveforms should look much nicer 😊
🎚 Smoother meters
Meters can also be quite adjustable!

Setup
- Go to Preferences > Track Control Panels.
- Where it says “Meter update frequency”, set it to 30 Hz.
I also suggest changing “Meter Decay” to about 40 db/sec. - Done! Your track meters should look way smoother now.
If you have VU meters on your tracks, they should also be looking better now 🙂
That’s it!
If you notice any performance hiccups you can lower the frequency numbers to maybe 15 or lower. I personally don’t notice any difference with these settings even in older machines.
Enjoy 💙