We bring to your attention a completely renewed «Ear» for REAPER . This extension, through the interfaces of voice access programs, provides blind users with convenient access to all the most powerful functionality of the mentioned audio studio.

Basic capabilities and key features of the «Ear»

1. Support for the latest REAPER (from 6.12 and up).
2. Multilingual. (Currently «Ear» has been translated into the following languages:
   • English ;
   • Russian.
3. Full support, high-quality voice acting, and organization of convenient work with all media objects of the program REAPER :
   • media tracks;
   • media items;
   • media item takes;
   • project markers;
   • tempo markers;
   • stretch markers;
   • take markers;
   • effects and their parameters;
   • automation ):
     • envelopes;
     • automation items;
     • envelope points;
   • and so on ... Support for new media objects is implemented immediately, as the corresponding api appear in the REAPER SDK.
4. A human-readable representation of all internal program parameters, be it grid devision or horizontal zoom.
5. Multi-selection - the ability to select non-adjacent, that is, located far from each other, media objects.
6. Voice acting for all important standard commands REAPER , as well as some third-party extension commands such as SWS. If you find an important, in your opinion, command that is not voiced, we will voice it as soon as possible or teach you how to do it yourself, using the appropriate «Ear» toolkit.
7. Multipressing - the ability to assign multiple quick clicks of one and the same key to different commands.
8. Cyclic switches - the ability to assign multiple slow clicks of the same key to different commands.
9. Advanced virtual dialogs, as duplicate standard ones, which are difficult to access for the blind, and providing some additional convenience for users with vision problems.
10. Full and high-quality voice acting of a powerful in-standart MIDI editor, as well as a inline editor. Navigation through the notes / controllers, the ability to change their properties on the fly, the mode of previewing the changes made, the chord mode, the mode of binding navigation through the controllers to the band (CC Lane), the multi-selection mode, convenient access to the filter of MIDI events through a virtual dialog, the ability to step by step input of notes using function keys and much more.
11. Complete independence from theme and other visual settings REAPER .
12. Enhanced injecting into executable code REAPER in order to implement mechanisms that require much more features than those provided in the REAPER SDK. For example:
    • Blocking some commands of the main section that interfere with navigation in certain program dialogs.
    • Sound Control surfaces and midi- messages from external devices.
    • Making any adjustments to the REAPER behavior vital for a blind user.
    • And much, much more ...
13. A variety of specialized tools, thanks to which blind users can perform those operations that were previously available only to the sighted.
14. Possibility of simultaneous work of a sighted user and a blind person within one instance REAPER ;
15. Possibility of pronouncing the color of tracks, items, takes and markers. Color management of the listed media objects through virtual dialogues, by means of an embedded palette in text representation, consisting of 144 colors of various shades.
16. the presence of ©ear-script mechanism, through which both the voice acting of 100% of the standart commands and the implementation 99% of our extension commands.
17. Availability in the source code of all algorithms that ensure the operation of the extension, both responsible for scoring standart and third-party commands, and responsible for implementing additional functionality of the extension itself.
18. Possibility of acceptance participation in the development and enhancement of the extension functionality by any person who is even superficially familiar with the basics of programming.
19. Incredible ease, stability, reliability of the extension and all its components.
20. Automatic and regular two-level update : Executables, keyboard maps and algorithms are separately downloaded as needed.

What's next?

Currently, work is underway or planned in the following areas:

• Voice acting for 100% of the standart REAPER commands of interest to blind users.
• Implementation of various useful tools for the blind, for example: spectrum analyzer, midi-editor based on Braille notation system, etc.
• Writing detailed documentation on scripting tools built into the extension.
• Bringing to mind the english-language localization and translation of the extension into other languages.
• Porting to other operating systems: macOS, Linux and so on ...