This product has been discontinued or is no longer sold.

[valley]

I wonder how many DAWs will be 'saved or created' this year, in contrast to the DAWs that get flushed down the tubes? Anyone know the formula they use for figuring this out?

I figure it on the beer glass scale. If you're sobbing into your beer you're going to have trouble emptying the glass as fast as someone who is busily, and messily toasting a great day for mankind[1].

So just look at the beer glasses. If you're a glass half-full kind of guy, you're probably screwed.

[1] Still, there's no harm in trying.

[christianmusicmaker]

But I'd have to say, that at $60.00 for a non-commercial license, Reaper is a far better purchase.

http://www.reaper.fm/

It's alive, and developing, and they actually care and communicate with their users!

Yes it is $60 but both Reaper 3 licenses are commercial now. The lesser price will give you a full commercial license with a limitation in place that will (just guessing) be ideal for most people anyway.

"Fair Pricing
There is only one version of REAPER. We offer two licenses, depending on how you use it.

$225: full commercial license.
$60: discounted license.

You may use the discounted license if any of the following is true:

You are an individual, using REAPER only for personal use.

You are an individual or business, using REAPER for commercial use, and the yearly gross revenue does not exceed USD $20,000.


You are an educational or non-profit organization."

By the time you hit the limitation you would have covered the cost of the $60 discounted commercial version of Reaper more than 300 times.

[metamorphosis]

Yes, Reaper is FTW in the technical and licensing areas, unfortunately in the GUI area it's more than a little 5-years-ago bad design.
Mind you, it's still better than cubase, pro tools et al IMHO.

[hware]

Yes, Reaper is FTW in the technical and licensing areas, unfortunately in the GUI area it's more than a little 5-years-ago bad design.
Mind you, it's still better than cubase, pro tools et al IMHO.

*Agree* with Reaper you get the feeling that it's the very skilled programmer that also made the interface, where the interface is kind of secondary opposed to get every feature working/optimized. With Tracktion you get the feeling someone put a lot of creative thought about the ease/workflow of the interface, and then did all the programming. Where with Reaper (and many others) you have the feeling it's the other way around where the interface is a necessory evil that should have the long list of features accessable, and contain a billion of options with as many visible at once.

I'm a professional programmer myself, but when I make music I would really like to be as far away from my profession as possible, although I have no problems at all grasping the most complex programs/DAWS.

If I was making electronic music I'm pretty certain Ableton Live is the choice, but I'm not.

[mhuss]

I'm a professional programmer myself, but when I make music I would really like to be as far away from my profession as possible...

+1! (former programmer in this case)

--mark

[oxbee]

I spent some hours on the new reaper last week-end and, no thanks...

That's so bloated. You know, I've been trying to switch for the last weeks. I am an IT engineer by profession and quite easy with any kind of technology and software but the last statement about the growing complexity of hosts is definitely what I think.

When it comes to creative processes the last thing I want to bear is complitated functions or programs made by some kind of millionaire geeks or by companies whose product is tailing off slightly and who feel putting more and more useless and questionable functions will make it more attractive.

If you ever been so much concentrated until your mouth is dry searching for a forgotten function you need NOW in front of a software like Cubase, then you know what I mean.

It's like being in the preliminaries with a girl and to fail at how to undo her bra (it can ruin everything!) at the only exception that <complicated host> won't do it by itself at the end.

[kangul]

If you ever been so much concentrated until your mouth is dry searching for a forgotten function you need NOW in front of a software like Cubase, then you know what I mean.

Because there's always a choice between simplicity and possibilities.

edit: typo

[tovokas]

That's so bloated. You know, I've been trying to switch for the last weeks. I am an IT engineer by profession and quite easy with any kind of technology and software but the last statement about the growing complexity of hosts is definitely what I think.

Because there's always a choice between simplicity and possibilities.

I agree, but one thing I found that really helped working in Reaper was to set up a very complete starting template where all my most used sub-groups and plug-ins are set up 'just so'... and only require minor tweaking to fit the task at hand. (And since - at least for me - Reaper can handle more plugs, I can be pretty extravagant in the amount of fx I include in the base template.)

It's a larger investment of time/manual-searching up front, but when I narrow things down to just recording and dealing with clips, the usability gap between it and Tracktion is much narrower.

[metamorphosis]

Have to disagree with you there tovokas -
the usability gap is pretty huge from my perspective - simple stuff like plugin handling becomes so complicated in Reaper - not only is it not on the main screen (which to be fair is tracktion's exclusive domain) but it's not even on the mixing bus itself. You have to bring up one window to see the plugins, then another to see the plugin itself - similar to cubase I guess, which has the same problem.
The whole interface is a case-in-point example of featuritis with no thought as to how to streamline the architecture or group the functionality.

What tracktion did, that no other host I've seen has managed on such a scale, is to take a lot of features and make them accessible in a way which didn't violate good HUI principles (no hidden functionality, everything visible but not distracting, etc).
Why audio apps think they can get away with the shitty UI's they have is absolutely beyond me. No other domain of applications seems to have this flaw.

I absolutely agree with the programming point the others made - I too, am a ex-programmer/computer scientist.

I actually think the programming of reaper is not so shit-hot, from an abstracted perspective.

Justin really needs to work under a management team, but as his history shows, he's a bit too much of a live wire to function well in that environment.

His focus is purely low-level, with (seemingly) little thought about the top-down architecture of the application.

If he was designing top-down, the visual architecture of Reaper would fall into place quite naturally.

But being a bottom-up kind of guy, it's ludicrously efficient, but stunningly anarchic in terms of the clustering of functionality.
Maybe it is just the GUI, but you get the sense of a whole lot of spaghetti programming, with everything referencing everything else without a coherent structure. Probably C not C++.
If there was a coherent structure, I imagine the GUI would follow it closely.

At any rate, it's far better in terms of disk buffering and (most likely) multi-core/thread handling, but exactly the same or worse in terms of plugin handling (although obviously how it handles multiple cores affects this - on my single-core, I can load the same number of plugs in reaper as in tracktion).

I think it might be a good idea to start a thread detailing what's good and bad about tracktion - including links to other hosts so people have ideas about where to jump ship to, if they need to-
Cheers,
m

[Gabriel_S]

Man...if I hear the word Reaper one more time .........
I'm with Mat, it's one of the ugliest GUI's I've set my eyes on and there are more menus to sort through than Sonar, Cubase, Pro Tools and Logic combined. I really don't like to compare hosts, whatever works for you is the one you need to use but all these Reapervangelists are really starting to get annoying !!!!!

[Gabriel_S]

You have to bring up one window to see the plugins, then another to see the plugin itself - similar to cubase I guess, which has the same problem.
m

Well that's not quite true Mat In Cubase yes, you can access the plugs in a variety of ways (whichever suits your fancy I guess), but you can also access everything on one screen as well. If you click on a track you will see a column on the left side of the screen with the track name, inserts. equalizers, Sends, Channel, Notepad and quick Controls. Simply click on any of those drop down menus and you instantly have access to everything you need without ever having to leave the main screen. You can even click on the track name just above the drop downs and you will have a visual picture of your Panning, Volume, Track Delay and your Input and Output Routing. I use a second monitor only for my mixer, that's it. Like I said, you never have to leave the main screen! Quite simple really.

Gabriel

[valley]

But being a bottom-up kind of guy, it's ludicrously efficient, but stunningly anarchic in terms of the clustering of functionality.
Maybe it is just the GUI, but you get the sense of a whole lot of spaghetti programming, with everything referencing everything else without a coherent structure. Probably C not C++.
If there was a coherent structure, I imagine the GUI would follow it closely.

While I agree with the overall sentiment of your post (programmer too), I don't think it's correct to say that well structured classes encourage good UIs, as IME a good UI is utterly independent of the code that drives it. Correspondingly a bad UI does not denote bad coding practices, as more usually it is just the result of a programmer programming for other programmers. See also UNIX/usability.

Further, speculating on the quality of Justin's code based on his tendency to overcomplicate UIs is unfair. AFAIK Reaper is extremely stable, and lightweight, as was WinAMP before it mutated into a media hub. Robust, reliable code is generally a sign of a decent programmer, simply because it takes skill and care to produce.

[tovokas]

...all these Reapervangelists are really starting to get annoying !!!!!

I don't believe most the folks here who are experienced with Reaper are wild-eyed fanatics, oblivious to its problems, I know I'm not! I've always saved my wild-eyed fanaticism for Tracktion.

I think the advantage of Reaper is that you can pick it up, and completely put it to the test while you're deciding on a transition strategy. Most of us here are experienced users who understand that you won't really know about a program until you push it to the limit - on your specific hardware - over the course of multiple projects. That's difficult to do with limited demos, and as far as I know, impossible to do with Cubase without shelling out and dongling.

In that sense Reaper provides a low-risk, testable transition path, which explains why lots of users here have gone that way.

[Gabriel_S]

...all these Reapervangelists are really starting to get annoying !!!!!

I don't believe most the folks here who are experienced with Reaper are wild-eyed fanatics, oblivious to its problems, I know I'm not! I've always saved my wild-eyed fanaticism for Tracktion.

I think the advantage of Reaper is that you can pick it up, and completely put it to the test while you're deciding on a transition strategy. Most of us here are experienced users who understand that you won't really know about a program until you push it to the limit - on your specific hardware - over the course of multiple projects. That's difficult to do with limited demos, and as far as I know, impossible to do with Cubase without shelling out and dongling.

In that sense Reaper provides a low-risk, testable transition path, which explains why lots of users here have gone that way.

Hey tovokas,

Sorry if it seemed like it but this post was in no way directed at you
It just appears that no matter which forum I visit, be it Sonar, Cubase, Raw or whatever every 3rd or 4th post is Reaper related (well maybe a slight exaggeration but you get my point). Just seems that MANY Reaper users are literally shoving it down our throats. Listen if it works for somebody, that's GREAT, but enough with the million links to the download button lol.

Funny thing is, most folks compare it to Cubase. Now I own Sonar PE, Cubase, Traction, Reaper, Live 8 and Reason. Believe me when I tell you, THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO COMPARISON BETWEEN REAPER AND CUBASE. Two entirely different programs. My guess is most of the folks that make this comparison either have never tried Cubase or have never bothered to learn the program. Cubase IMO of course, is ingeniously designed, fantastic work flow and very easy to understand. And yes, you can do EVERYTHING on a single screen just as in Traction

I suppose the confusion sets in when you start utilizing the advanced options which shouldn't be a problem whatsoever for Traction users since Traction doesn't incorporate most of these features!

Anyways it's all good. If it works, why change

Gabriel

[metamorphosis]

While I agree with the overall sentiment of your post (programmer too), I don't think it's correct to say that well structured classes encourage good UIs, as IME a good UI is utterly independent of the code that drives it. Correspondingly a bad UI does not denote bad coding practices, as more usually it is just the result of a programmer programming for other programmers. See also UNIX/usability.

Understood well, but my point is that a coherent class structure tends to lend itself towards a coherent interface without too much additional thought involved -
whereas a more subroutine-oriented C approach tends to necessitate additional forethought as to how to match the gui to the underlying structure.
Agreed that they are separate entities, but there is a correlation as well, I think.

Further, speculating on the quality of Justin's code based on his tendency to overcomplicate UIs is unfair. AFAIK Reaper is extremely stable, and lightweight, as was WinAMP before it mutated into a media hub. Robust, reliable code is generally a sign of a decent programmer, simply because it takes skill and care to produce.

I could complicate things here by turning this into a programming-styles argument, but I think it's simpler to state that I respect Justin's coding, as low-level oriented as it is, and it is certainly more advanced than mine ever will be. It's mainly that the style he has (and this was the same with winamp) tends towards low-level efficiency rather than high-level cohesiveness, as is (construed to be) reflected in the interface.
This is also the case with most lightweight open-source projects (not saying reaper is open-source, just using comparisons) like FFMPEG or Linux.

Efficiency in C programming tends towards less cohesiveness from my little experience.
Personally I'm on the side of cohesiveness at the expense of a little efficiency. But Reaper is an excellent example of how important low-level efficiency is, and how much we can lose in computing power by focusing mainly on top-down approaches. Anyway, I'll shut up now

Well that's not quite true Mat In Cubase yes, you can access the plugs in a variety of ways (whichever suits your fancy I guess), but you can also access everything on one screen as well. If you click on a track you will see a column on the left side of the screen with the track name, inserts. equalizers, Sends, Channel, Notepad and quick Controls. Simply click on any of those drop down menus and you instantly have access to everything you need without ever having to leave the main screen. You can even click on the track name just above the drop downs and you will have a visual picture of your Panning, Volume, Track Delay and your Input and Output Routing. I use a second monitor only for my mixer, that's it. Like I said, you never have to leave the main screen! Quite simple really.

My bad - the last time I used cubase was SX2, and it had the same sort of mechanism as reaper as I recall-
Cheers-
M@