in How-To

How to Use Bluetooth Headphones (with Microphone) in MacOS [Reaper Tutorial]

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Using a bluetooth headset – that is headphones with a built-in microphone – is surprisingly troublesome in Reaper on MacOS. The problem is that Reaper sets the sample rate to the lowest sample rate supported by the selected audio device as a whole. Since the microphone on most headsets don’t go above 10 kHz (I keep saying 8 kHz in the video, but you get the gist), Reaper will switch the whole project into 10 kHz even when you are not recording. In this video I will provide a fix for that!

00:00 Intro
01:00 Problem Diagnosis
01:52 The Solution
03:43 Wrap-up – please subscribe!

The production of this video was unexpectedly hard. I tried recording the voiceover in one instance of Reaper while screen recording the solution in a second instance. While this technically works, my always problematic i9 MacBook pro choked and the voiceover became choppy to an extent where even Izotope Rx couldn’t save it. Fortunately the Canon camera recorded audio as well, but it’s not in the quality I would have wanted. But good enough I guess…
I also planned for a green-screened talking head, but that turned out horrible (couldn’t get a good chroma key).

Equipment used:
– Reaper 6.73 – “the unstable version”
– Davinci Resolve
– Canon EOS 760D
– Airpods Pro gen 2
– Focusrite Scarlett 2i4
– Elgato Ring Light
Note: OSIRIS GUITAR is the original author of this video, we just embed it, if you have any questions please contact him via Youtube.

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21 Comments

  5. Hi, thank you for the video. I ran into another problem after using your solution:

    The sound changed, but it is still unnatural. Now the voices ( I am editing a podcast) don't sound like a phonecall anymore, but as if they were pitched down, much deeper than the actual voices.

    Do you have any idea what could be the reason for that?

  8. I've been wanting to double check my mixes on what I've listened to music the most on: my bluetooth headphones that I listen to music while I'm cleaning and cooking. I've finally been able to do that and not surprisingly, it was pretty helpful!

  17. Thanks so much for this! I've never used a DAW and was trying to setup Reaper to do some voice over stuff, but when I hit play it would playback the audio it clearly recorded–as I could see the sound waves–but no sound would actually come out. I was convinced I'd followed the tutorial wrong but actually it was just that I was trying to use my Bluetooth headset/phones. I'll invest in some actual monitors down the line I guess.