KVR Audio

woggle · Post by **woggle** » Thu Jul 19, 2018 8:39 am

Trancit wrote: Reaper is a really great DAW...
Nevertheless it´s far from being the holy grail and especially edm producers have to do their work with many cumbersome workarounds...
I would really like to see some improvements on this side, but I fear that Justin & CO are the wrong people for that...

Agree. Pretty sure Justin has made it clear he has no interest in interface development or usability - the dev(s) aren't musicians they are programmers and I think that shows in the development of Reaper and to some extent in the visible / forum users.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Thu Jul 19, 2018 8:46 am

Actually both devs are musicians. Justin is self-taught but plays a number of different instruments (and posts videos and audio of his stuff) and schwa actually has a degree of sorts IIRC.

Neither of them are EDM folk, so tough luck there. There are automation items in Reaper, though, and they're pretty cool.

But if you're hard on EDM, go to FL Studio or whatev'.

woggle · Post by **woggle** » Thu Jul 19, 2018 8:49 am

EvilDragon wrote:Actually both devs are musicians. Justin is self-taught and schwa actually has a degree of sorts IIRC.

I've heard Justin - he is strictly an amateur and, no offense intended, not much of a musician. Schwa has a maths degree (PhD?) but might have some musical training - although I have never seen anything public by him that suggests he has.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Thu Jul 19, 2018 8:52 am

He def has some musical training, he did the notation view for Reaper.

Oh, and since when is being an amateur a bad thing? ("Strictly", LOL.)

woggle · Post by **woggle** » Thu Jul 19, 2018 8:52 am

EvilDragon wrote:He def has some musical training, he did the notation view for Reaper.

Don't see a necessary connection there but yeah, he might, in which case apologies to Schwa

woggle · Post by **woggle** » Thu Jul 19, 2018 8:58 am

EvilDragon wrote: Oh, and since when is being an amateur a bad thing? ("Strictly", LOL.)

when it's your cardiothoracic surgeon

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Thu Jul 19, 2018 9:13 am

woggle wrote:
EvilDragon wrote: Oh, and since when is being an amateur a bad thing? ("Strictly", LOL.)
when it's your cardiothoracic surgeon

There was a time when your cardiothoracic surgeon had not performed a single surgery, and did his/her first one. At that time, I guess we could call him/her not even an amateur, but "strictly" an apprentice.

LawrenceF · Post by **LawrenceF** » Thu Jul 19, 2018 12:25 pm

Not sure surgery works quite that way.

Anyway.. I know people (in the real world) who wouldn't use anything but Reaper and swear by it, and others who quite literally hate it, and others in the middle. None of them are wrong. I'm mostly in the middle. Sometimes I love it when it saves my butt by doing something I need to do, other times I don't like it so much.

We all wish for the holy grail, the perfect daw for every situation and every user. That's about as likely to happen as finding unicorns shooting dice in your backyard.

Jim Roseberry · Post by **Jim Roseberry** » Thu Jul 19, 2018 1:25 pm

woggle wrote:
EvilDragon wrote:Actually both devs are musicians. Justin is self-taught and schwa actually has a degree of sorts IIRC.
I've heard Justin - he is strictly an amateur and, no offense intended, not much of a musician. Schwa has a maths degree (PhD?) but might have some musical training - although I have never seen anything public by him that suggests he has.

An understanding surely helps... but you're talking about two different disciplines/skill-sets.

If you're a professional software developer, you're almost surely NOT a professional level musician.
Only so many hours in a day...

If Justin was a touring level player, he most likely wouldn't be developing music software, he'd be on-the-road playing.

Jordan Rudess is a great example. He's a brilliant player... and is involved with testing/development of many musical tools... but he's giving input from a user's perspective (not mechanical engineering or writing code).

Being a touring level player doesn't necessarily mean you're a great song-writer... or that you're adept at engineering/arrangement. If any of you remember the GRP All-Star records... that's a good example.
At that time, you had some of the greatest modern-jazz players on the planet working together.
Phenomenal playing... but the songs were... uh... not particularly great.

Leo Fender wasn't a guitar/bass player... but he designed/built "classic" musical instruments.

An engineer can help a guitar player achieve great recorded tone... but doesn't necessarily have the skills to shred on said guitar.

Long winded point:
I don't think one need be a high-level musician to create great DAW software.

Side Note:
Noel Borthwick (CTO at Cakewalk - now with Bandlab) is a very good guitar player.

woggle · Post by **woggle** » Thu Jul 19, 2018 1:38 pm

Jim Roseberry wrote:
Long winded point:
I don't think one need be a high-level musician to create great DAW software.

Side Note:
Noel Borthwick (CTO at Cakewalk - now with Bandlab) is a very good guitar player.

I am only pointing out that the devs aren't musicians within the context of the design of Reaper. No interface designers are employed by Cockos, nor to my knowledge have Cockos undertaken and responded to extensive user testing of the design. Instead the design is by Justin and the other devs and has evolved over the years from the earlier Vegas clone beginnings. That design is not particularly informed by musicians but rather by programmers. Hence Reaper's form. This is not a hate on Reaper thing on my part, it is just an observation on the way Reaper has and is being developed. Lots of people love Reaper precisely because it has a programmer mindset behind its design. And others dislike it for much the same reason.
In many ways it is the programmer focus that makes Reaper special

mgw38 · Post by **mgw38** » Thu Jul 19, 2018 2:07 pm

I've resisted Reaper for a long time because that ugly toolbar is just so Windows95. I mean, seriously, that user interface design was outdated 20 years ago. And unfortunately, no theme I have seen so far really helps. Some themes make the toolbar less objectionable but that is really it.

But I have Reaper on my system now simply because it is very literally the only affordable DAW that can handle multichannel audio well. It is either Pro Tools Ultimate for $2500, Nuendo 8 for $1900, or Reaper.

fluffy_little_something · Thu Jul 19, 2018 2:40 pm

What's so bad about the GUI? I find it much better than Ableton's, frankly.

mgw38 · Post by **mgw38** » Thu Jul 19, 2018 2:51 pm

fluffy_little_something wrote:What's so bad about the GUI? I find it much better than Ableton's, frankly.

Ableton's GUI admittedly takes some getting used to but it is very consistent. The Reaper GUI is a bit all over the place. But my particular grievance is with the toolbar system. It looks and behaves like it was taken out of a software history textbook. Reminds me of the early Blender days.

jethrobull · Post by **jethrobull** » Thu Jul 19, 2018 3:24 pm

So it's vintage looking? Isn't that a good thing these days?

fluffy_little_something · Thu Jul 19, 2018 3:57 pm

What's wrong with toolbars? I like them

What's so special about Reaper?