What's so special about Reaper?

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fluffy_little_something wrote:What's wrong with toolbars? I like them 8)
You must be a Windows user then. :lol:
Follow me on Youtube for videos on spatial and immersive audio production.

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Yes :oops:

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Reaper is an amazing program that basically does everything and can be configured personally to your needs. It does everything that all the major DAWs do and much more for far less cash.

My only gripe is the very small interactive things that irritate. It's a personal thing of course.

Things that annoy:

Audio regions slip off the grid ever so slightly if you're not careful.

Similarly you have to be precise when selecting audio due to the fades handles getting in the way.

The annoying toolbar that I don't need.

I find Abletons time selection / duplication aesthetic very quick and easy and due to Reapers depth it can be hard to simplify and replicate that workflow.

My conclusion is that when DAW companies decide the workflow for you to a degree...that in itself is an art. And can be better than an infinitely configurable DAW. Ableton, Cubase, Studio One, Protools...all have unique workflows that may or may not suit the user.

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Reaper is like vim or emacs. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. If you really learn it, customize it, and script it, no other DAW can compare. But that's a pretty big hurdle. And even then, there are still some holes that have yet to be filled, like, for example, the lack of a drum rack.

I'm somewhat surprised that no one has bundled a sane starter distribution for Reaper - sane customizations, packages, and UI / mouse / keyboard tweaks, default template. There are a few 3rd-party packages (ReaPack and SWS/S&M) that are absolutely essential, and a handful of others that add so much functionality and ease-of-use that anyone using Reaper for any length of time will inevitably install them.

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Trancit wrote: Fact is, that Reaper definetely lacks of drag n drop support of audio from the timeline into a plugin...
Reaper lacks of many features, which are present in other DAW´s for electronic music production...
Actually Reaper supports and has supported drag n drop to plugins for a long long time, I wont even bother with the rest of your post because you obviously don't know Reaper either.
Duh

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woggle wrote: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
I really like Reaper as a DAW, once you set it up, it is the fastest DAW around, there is no argument to that at all, however, the UI/X is extremely poor at first download, and no matter how much you theme it, it is still 30% Win 3.11 and looks/feels absolutely horrific, so much so that some parts of it make your **** itch (Oh look automatable parameters, hey there is 12000 all listed in one big list, scroll till your fingers drop off.

But to be fair it gets some nice UI updates about every four or five years ;)
Duh

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It is like you went to Ikea and there was a DAW on sale.

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Rather like shopping in the DIY market. ;)

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chk071 wrote:Rather like shopping in the DIY market. ;)
Not really. After all, you get a plastic bag with all the actions, you just need to figure out where, when and how to use them to keep the thing from falling apart. :)

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I still say, as a conventional audio guy, that in my mind Ardour is the closest thing in software to a real recording console. They didn't miss anything. No gaps in monitoring, metering, soloing or anything else. Those guys nailed it... the mixer.

There are good lessons to be learned there, for how to engineer / design a digital mixer in software.

People often talk about product A, B, C being made by guys with studio recording experience, experience with good consoles and all that and … mostly ... not really true. If it was true they'd all never have missed those basic things. In that case with Ardour it's true, or they sure consulted well.

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Reaper is special because it starts with the letter "R"....

That helps to make it fast....as in "Racer"....

It has nothing to do with the fabulously tight coding or the lack of bloat...

I've looked at most of the DAWs out there and used quite a few of them and my preferred option is Reaper...

Why ?

Cos it's funking fantastic on so many levels...

That's why :wink:
No auto tune...

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A note of caution here....

Reaper is not for babies who want to be spoon fed forever....

There is a little effort needed to wrap your head around the idiosyncrasies and configure a few things to get the program running the way you want it to...

And there is plenty customise should you require it...

But once your teething problems are over and a few small teeth start to appear,you're ready to dig into the solids and chomp away on the good stuff...

You can't sit there expecting someone to wipe your bum forever :wink:
Last edited by digitalboytn on Fri Jul 20, 2018 3:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
No auto tune...

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digitalboytn wrote:A note of caution here....

Reaper is not for babies who want to be spoon fed forever....

There is a little effort needed to wrap your head around the idiosyncrasies and configure a few things to get the program running the way you want it to...

And there is plenty customise should you require it...

But once your teething problems are over and a few small teeth start to appear,you're ready to dig into the solids and chomp away on the good stuff...

You can't sit there expecting someone to wipe your bum forever :wink:
This sort of patronising contempt is what gave Reaper such a bad name for "fanbois" a few years back.

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It's true...

Most people expect things in their lives to be set up and ready to go these days...

No effort needed...like takeaway food....

I was one of the people who found Reaper completely unintuitive until I sat down with v5 and finally got my head around it...

I have licenses for a few other DAWs,but they don't really get any use now :tu:
No auto tune...

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My previous point above is that actually interface design is an art and in this respect someone cleaning your bum for u can be good if theyre an expert. Hence the 808, 303, 101, SP1200, MPC ad infinitum.

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