You might get 27VDC out of a lightly-loaded 18VAC transformer. Won't take a lot of load to sag it.
Under some load, you might have 1V of average ripple. But what really matters is the bottom of the ripple. Common DC meters read the average DC, the ripple zig-zags both sides of that. Not sure how you are measuring your ripple, or how sharp your zig-zag is... this all depends on many things. But as a wild guess, you could have 3V peak-peak ripple. Or in other words +/-1.5V around 27V. And 27VDC+/-1.5VDC gives 25.5V at the bottom of the ripple. That is just too low for most 24V regulators.
Anyway, it is crazy to try to shave things too fine. You use a regulator because the raw supply varies. One day the wall outlet is 122VAC, another day it may be 112VAC. Or the bass-amp hits a power chord and your house line sags to 105VAC for an instant. Or you get a different transformer where the 18VAC isn't really 18VAC. Or one day you have one 1mA mike, and another day you have a dozen 8mA mikes.
The idea of the regulator is you give it too much, and it throws away the excess. (as heat... that metal tab is on there for a reason. Bolt some metal to it, and don't let it run hot enough to burn your finger.)
Don't be cheap!!! Another few volts of transformer is not expensive. Being a tenth-volt short sorta ruins the whole point of a regulator.
There is a simple rule of thumb:
Volts AC equals Regulated Volts DC.
Let's see how that works.
We want regulated 24VDC. Per the above, we buy a 24VAC transformer. If it is small, then at rated line input and at no-load, it might make 28VAC. But we are going to load it, so we don't care (yet) about no-load voltage.
Rated voltage ========= 24VAC
Low line voltage -10% ==== 21.6VAC
Times 1.414 ========== 30.5V peak
Minus 2 rectifiers -1.5V === 29VDC
3V peak-peak ripple ======== 27.5V at bottom of ripple
We see that VAC=VDC is barely enough on a bad day. Sure, it will be plenty most days, but you have to design pesimistically. If you don't, Murphy will bite you, usually in the middle of a great gig.
I said we don't care about no-load, but you have to check the regulator's maximum input for another kind of bad day. Small transformers will rise 20% above rating at no-load. So a "24VAC" winding is really 28.8V at no-load. Then say half of Florida goes off-line again, and the rest of the US grid bounces up 5%. You now have 30.24V. 30.24V*1.414= 42.7V peak. At light load, the rectifier drop may be very small. Clearly you can have over 40VDC into the regulator, which isn't rated for it.
So to get 24VDC with standard regulators, you "have" to use 24VAC windings, don't load them so hard they sag all the way to 24VAC, don't undersize the capacitor, and it would be wise to have some permanent load (like an LED) on the raw DC to keep it from floating too high if the load becomes disconnected.
You can go through all those calculations every time. But some factors are guesses. And you are limited by available transformers. So for regulated DC over about 10VDC (up to hundreds of volts), it is usually expedient to just buy VAC=VDC.
Under 10V, rectifier and regulator fixed-voltage losses bite you badly enough to hurt, and you have to buy more VAC.