KVR Audio

Andywanders · Post by **Andywanders** » Tue Sep 02, 2014 1:27 pm

I've tried to like Reaper. I like Cokcos & Justin's philosophy and the way they listen to their users (most of the time). The forum is good too - a lot of very helpful folks there. However, when I want to record a song, Reaper gets in the way and kills my inspiration. I can never seem to find what I need without wading through tons menus and trying to understand the cryptic (to me) terminology. And that 'Actions' list... OMFG..! The user manual doesn't help much either.

It's fun to play around with though, but when I want to get my music out of my head and into a DAW, I use Studio One. The workflow is more streamlined and the DAW is almost transparent. It doesn't "kill the moment" like Reaper does.

IMO Reaper is a tweakers DAW, designed for anoraks and "serious" recording engineers who relish in the technicalities of options, routing, customisation and WIN98 graphic-style dialogues.

Don't get me wrong, I have respect for Reaper, but right now it's just no good for me or my music. Maybe one day it will be.

Oh, and it doesn't support VST3 either. That's the icing on the cake.

Rah · Post by **Rah** » Tue Sep 02, 2014 2:11 pm

I converted over to Reaper from Cubase a few years back. I have superficially tried FLstudio, Ableton, and Bitwig, but I've not been inspired to invest.

Reaper definitely is an anorak's DAW. It took me a lot of learning and customising to get it into the 'shape' I want so I can use it quickly and efficiently. I can certainly sympathise with those who don't make it over that hump

LawrenceF · Post by **LawrenceF** » Tue Sep 02, 2014 2:15 pm

anorak

Actually had to look that word up. Once I did I understood why. "British slang"?...

In British slang an anorak /ˈænəræk/ is a person who has a very strong interest, perhaps obsessive, in niche subjects. This interest may be unacknowledged or not understood by the general public. The term is sometimes used synonymously with geek or nerd, or the Japanese term otaku, albeit referring to different niches.

Rah · Post by **Rah** » Tue Sep 02, 2014 2:30 pm

Yeah, an anorak is actually a kind of coat that became associated with nerds, I guess because 'anoraks' are far too into their interests to be worrying about style or fashion

ontol · Post by **ontol** » Tue Sep 02, 2014 6:30 pm

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Tue Sep 02, 2014 6:33 pm

Andywanders wrote:Oh, and it doesn't support VST3 either. That's the icing on the cake.

Doesn't mean it won't at some point. In any way, the world can pretty much live without VST3, it's been there for 7 years without gaining much traction despite Steinberg's obvious pushes. It's obviously not conceived very well, since you can find a lot of developers thoroughly angered by the problems the SDK has.

Ranjarresh · Post by **Ranjarresh** » Tue Sep 02, 2014 6:49 pm

I often use SynthFont2 for MIDI rendering tasks and Audition CS6 for sound editing.

EnochLight · Post by **EnochLight** » Tue Sep 02, 2014 7:15 pm

I use Reaper with Reason. Have done so for years. The "why" is because Reaper addresses Reason's shortcomings, and Reason addresses Reaper's shortcomings.

LawrenceF · Post by **LawrenceF** » Wed Sep 03, 2014 12:19 pm

Although I occasionally mix stems in MixBus and I also occasionally will start a hip-hop beat or similar in stand alone FL Studio, I do the vast majority of my work (mixing mostly) in Studio One or Reaper.

Reaper is a far more powerful host for many things (especially offline like batch rendering) but Studio One is a far more comfortable and logical work environment. When it comes to recommending a host for potential home recording clients to use to send me projects to mix, I recommend Reaper, mostly because it's damn near free and the less money they spend on software the more they can spend on their mixes.

pc999 · Post by **pc999** » Wed Sep 03, 2014 12:27 pm

It seems I have made the transition to BWS from Reaper, anyway only picking Reaper again if it is native Linux.

Phorous · Post by **Phorous** » Wed Sep 03, 2014 1:09 pm

I only use Reaper and don't feel the need to use any other DAW. I tried FL Studio and Ableton but they just were not my cup of tea. Im a tweaker at heart so Reaper and I are a match made in heaven

EDIT:

As for the whole VST3 support issue, Reapers incredibly flexible routing is better than what VST3 offers with its standardized sidechaining, IMO. Also, as none of the plugins I own are VST3 only I don't care too much either.

LawrenceF · Post by **LawrenceF** » Wed Sep 03, 2014 8:56 pm

Re: VST3: Lots of people see no advantages in it at all. I'm cool with that tbh.

As relates to many things like that, not surprisingly or all that unusual, some of those opinions tend to change once they actually get it.

No way in heck would I ever want to go back to the old way of adding and deleting envelopes or using mono and stereo plugs instead of plugs just switching mono stereo by themselves. Granted, if VST 2.x allows that, cool with me, plugin and host developers should implement it there.

Turello · Post by **Turello** » Wed Sep 03, 2014 9:19 pm

@RLSguitar: If I have understand You're a composer and a guitarist (As Me!)... Well, I use to create the rhytmic structure of a song (drums, keys etc) with FL Studio (I follow the song with an acoustic\electric guitar or bass in front my DAW but with out record), FL Studio, with his amazing piano roll give me a good\speed workflow, after I export all tracks as 24bit\44khz wave and I load in Studio One or Nuendo 5 (obvious respecting the BPM in the new S1\Nuendo5 Projects!), so I start to record the real instruments: guitars, electric bass, vocals, choirs etc etc... After some days (away of the DAW!) I open the saved project and start to mixing with all tranquillity!

This 3 softwares have a good compatibility with almost all plugins (2.4 and 3) and very stable too! I don't know well Reaper but IMHO is too boring to learn another DAW!

Good Luck!

PS: Obvious this is just my way to work!

RLSguitar · Post by **RLSguitar** » Wed Sep 03, 2014 10:15 pm

Thanks for all your replies. Though guitar is my main instrument, I also use virtual instruments via MIDI keyboard controller, so MIDI composing and editing capabilities with piano roll are indispensable for me.

I'm using VST 2.4 because I use Reaper, though Steinberg has ended development and support of this spec. Most of my VIs don't support VST 3 yet, but I'm hoping that Cockos will support it before plugin developers quit using VST 2.4 and start using VST 3 mostly. However, I'm sure most will support both (as some have already been doing) for a transition period before VST 3 takes hold and becomes pervasive.

frankz00 · Post by **frankz00** » Thu Sep 04, 2014 8:42 pm

I use ACID for constructing beats with loops then bring it back into Reaper for future mixing and/or overdubs.

I actually got in on a past Sonar X3 deal and got the $40 upgrade to Studio but haven't worked with it much. I plan on checking it out for mixing.

Right now I'm treating it like a "backup DAW" for now. If I work with it and find it works well, it might become my "Pro" DAW.

I have no regrets buying it even though I haven't used it heavily yet.

Reaper users: Do you use any other DAWs for your own music in addition to Repear?