By frog_jr
On 13th March 2009 Version: 2.5+ Read all reviews by frog_jr
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Best in Class. Me, I'm mostly a mere hobbyist, whose professional work involves spoken word recording, editing and mixing. I like to play around at music and have for years. But I know a fair bit about DAWs after all these years of playing around with them, and have tried a few. Reaper is my favorite among all of them, with the possible exception of Audition 3, which I sometimes use in conjunction with REAPER.
First, Reaper is quite stable. It comes with a high quality selection of your basic plugins, and has a broad compatibility with the huge collection of VST plugins that I have, most free and some of your cheaper commercial ones. Updates to REAPER were taking place throughout '08 fast and furious but they've slowed down a little bit lately, but they are still forthcoming, and I've seen two now this month.
Second, the acronym I think is Rapid Environment for Audio Prototyping and Assembly R-something, I forget, something like that. But anyway, the first word is Rapid, and they mean it. To that end, Reaper is supremely script-able and virtually everything can be done with keyboard macros. The built-in scripting feature is as good as I've seen with any computer program bar none.
Third, Reaper can be automated in a handful of ways, and can MIDI learn to control almost any param of any audio track via midi controller, computer keyboard, etc. This was not available as a feature until '08 I think, and has been growing up and maturing pretty well in the past year and a half.
Tool-less. The GUI with a gazillion little windows and a half dozen little tools is gradually becoming a thing of the past I think, and a more elegant UI is the case in REAPER. It's all in the choices between right- or left- click, or Ctrl-click etc. now. The downside is it's not so obvious to the new user. The upside is you have it all at your fingertips without so much screen clutter.
Feature Overload:
Just a handful of features off the top of my head: it has a really nice built-in media explorer that lets you preview any audio, and you can drag-n-drop onto any track from it. You can also drag-n-drop from Windows Explorer. Has a nice built-in sampler that I like to play around with, and for which there's a handful of templates for use as a drum sampler. I do that a lot with my Alesis IO 1010 drum machine, and it's a lot of fun. Nice features recently incorporated in '08, you can now have filters applied to samples or MIDI items individually and not just on a per-track basis. Full-featured MIDI editor. Easy routing and VERY flexible I/O configuration, oh boy, the list goes on and on.
Documentation and community: REAPER has always enjoyed a devoted community of users who provide and share resources for each other frequently. The number of users uploading custom skins, project templates, keyboard configs, songs, is pretty good. I have usually gotten my questions answered there in very short time. And thanks to a fellow user named Nicholas, there is a GREAT user manual available as a cheap downloadable PDF, or a spiral-bound hard copy for a mere $25. It is one of the best software manuals I've ever seen for any computer program. Probably because they love what they're doing.
There is no built-in Wave editor like in Audition. But at this well-developed state, it's not really needed. Instead of opening a track or audio item in a separate editor window like in Auditon, you simply zoom in on the item you want to edit and perform your edits directly. You can apply all filters or edits on a per-item basis this way, non-destructively, or you can render these changes to a new file, if you have an appetite for destruction. And I repeat, this can all be reduced to one macro. And for the edits I can't or don't like to do in REAPER, I have selected Audition and Total Recorder as a couple of my external editors, and you can just select "open item in external editor" from the context menu.
The application has a learning curve. I personally think that if you don't familiarize yourself with at least your basic keyboard shortcuts, you will not see the beauty of REAPER, and if you use REAPER much you will learn them by necessity. That probably applies for most advanced audio apps really. And of course with such a huge collection of things you can do with REAPER, there's naturally a lot of learning. But once over that hurdle, you will REAP the benefits of a mighty fast and powerful audio environment.
REAPER originated as a recording/mixing app, and has filled out nicely in more ways than I can count offhand. Five out of five. |
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Last edited by frog_jr on 13th March 2009
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By AzureCrystal
On 25th January 2009 Version: v 2.55 Read all reviews by AzureCrystal
12 of 13 people found this review helpful.
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As a professional user of sequencers since the DOS days of Voyetra, I have tried most of the shareware and commercial audio sequencers out there (I also own Cubase SE, Sonar, Samplitude 9 SE, nTrack) and lately I keep coming back to Reaper for it's excellent audio quality, nice interface and low CPU usage.
I am really digging it's latest interface with all the cool context sensitive mouse functions, for instance, depending on where you hover, the mouse scroll button will do a number of things, resize tracks, control pan or volume, or simply scroll the mixer and track panes. Where Reaper is still behind is in Midi Editing, but the developers have been actively releasing new versions that have taken care of most of my original midi gripes and are getting really close to making this the best Audio product in this price range !! Support is top notch and I get frequent updates with significant feature enhancements and fixes, that in itself is an unexpected treat, as right when I think of a little midi wish list, the next release has addressed them.
I also love the very simple yet clever way of setting up Sends, Inserts, and Virtual Instruments. So far I have figured out most of the features without resorting the the extensive 500+ page PDF manual(which I also purchased a printed copy at Lulu.com to support the developer), that says a lot as I spent weeks reading through Samplitude's manual and just gave up trying to do even easy tasks, so Reaper it is for me !! I do also like Pro Tools, but it would not be a fair comparison considering that to get the same audio quality on that system I would have to spend $1,000 or more. All things considered, Reaper has become my main audio tool in my studio and based on the great support it has enjoyed so far, I know it will continue to evolve into a main contender, surpassing some of the more expensive products out there. I recommend Reaper enthusiastically ! |
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Last edited by AzureCrystal on 25th January 2009
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By MaliceX
On 18th May 2007 Version: 1.857 Read all reviews by MaliceX
10 of 12 people found this review helpful.
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REAPER, developed by one of the guys who previously worked on Winamp (Justin Frankel), was initiated to be THE DAW that had everything you needed in a really small package. To this day, it's already made a huge leap since its 0.x betas.
REAPER comes with a huge amount of Rea-- effect plugins, developed by Jesusonic, and probably amounts to about the same types that come with most highly-paid DAW programs such as ACID, FL, Live, Reason etc. The program is highly versatile, and can be considered an alternative to users of ACID or Live.
However, being a miniature-sized DAW (2.2mb setup), it would most likely be natural for one to realise that this doesn't necessarily mean it's the best thing out. In fact, it isn't, but for what it's gained is a huge feat. The interface, in my opinion, is UGLY. A lot of buttons, a rather ugly default colour scheme (however there are custom interface enhancements being made by users), and is potentially off-putting for a beginner. Also, the MIDI sequencer still needs revamping.
The upside is, it supports BOTH DX and VST plugins, from which it takes about as long as Cantabile on startup. The render system is sufficient enough, and it doesn't take much CPU like some hosts do. In addition, REAPER supports various functions for MIDI and Audio input, and full automation of controls.
So far, I haven't had any random crashes with this program, which is a BIG FAT PLUS. Same with the amount of support the author gives to this program, in terms of updates and feedback. In addition, the program may be labelled as shareware, however EVERYTHING IS ACCESSIBLE. (ie: No limitations, uncrippled shareware, other than a nag screen) The licensing is probably more than fair. Cheap for non-commercial. Fair, for Commercial license.
Other than that, it might not look very nice of a DAW to use, but if you know what you're doing with that, then it could very much be useful to you. It's a matter of 'look' that needs work, really, but otherwise everything else is more than excellent. Great support, stable, CPU-hog-free (where applicable), and can fit in your USB drive. |
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Latest 3 reviews from a total of 3 |