Product Reviews by KVR Members

The SAW family has always been second to none in terms of sound quality, performance, and editing speed. Compared on its core feature set it can't be beat. Ultimately the lack of native plug-in API integration hurts it. You have to use adapters to get standard plugins to work and this is where SAW ultimately lost me over a decade ago. Even today, every time I'm pushing regions around or doing any kind of editing in my current DAW it makes me long for the days of SAW and how fast it was to do everything. If only it ran on OS X and had better plug-in API support.

REAPER is great. Built for the pro, priced for the beginner. From basic tracking and mixing all the way to advanced routing tricks and mastering, REAPER has you covered. It is not merely the sum of bullet points for all its features. REAPER is also high quality software. Any other "pro" DAW you try will install hundreds of megs of "stuff" you may never need or use. REAPER's install is slim (10-20 megs and most of that is the UI "skin"). If your goal is to record and mix audio then you won't do better than REAPER. Try it.