Reaper vs Studio One

[batcave]

+1 dimitar
that's an excellent
representatation

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[Scoox]

I have both Studio One and Reaper installed on my machine, but I keep going back to Reaper. Reaper has some areas much better covered than Studio One and vice versa.

Reaper wins at flexibility and overall has many more features than Studio One (e.g. awesome MIDI and audio routing, parameter modulation, ability to run commands/macros from either the keyboard or a MIDI device, etc). The routing and the ability to layer VSTs in Reaper allows me to create sounds in ways that are simply not possible in Studio One. Hoever, Reaper still lacks some key features such as a built-audio editor which hopefully will be added soon...

Studio One has fewer features by comparison but the ones that it has are very well implemented. All the key features that one would expect are there e.g. a built-in audio editor. Integration with Melodyne is a big plus. But routing audio is a pain in the ass and you cannot route MIDI at all.

Generally speaking, it is quicker for me to lay down a tune in Studio one because the workflow is very convenient, but if I am looking to experiment with sound (e.g. layering VSTs and blending in effects with some crazy routing) I turn to Reaper every time. Luckily I can Rewire Reaper in to S1 so I can get the best of both (although this set-up is not ideal).

Newcomers looking to 'make some beats' will definitely find Studio One far more attractive, savvy users coming from other DAWs will love the workflow of S1 but may find it somewhat limited and recognize Reaper's massive power, so I say use both.

[standalone]

Newcomers looking to 'make some beats' will definitely find Studio One far more attractive, savvy users coming from other DAWs will love the workflow of S1 but may find it somewhat limited and recognize Reaper's massive power, so I say use both.

I'd rather say that S1 is better for composers and Reaper is better for sound designers, in my own experience and attending to your description of both products too. Depicting S1 as a beginers DAW is misleading in my opinion. None of the complex routing features that you mention are relevant for a lot of experienced users, me included. I don't find S1 lacking in any field. Reaper is very good and the price is mindblowing, of course.

[EvilDragon]

S1 has inferior piano roll to that of Reaper's, believe it or not. With R4's mouse modifiers, piano roll in Reaper can be a lot faster, and customized to your workflow.

It's fast approaching FL's piano roll now.


For this reason alone, Reaper fits well for composers, too.

[kev2525]

I downloaded reaper and tried the demo. It took a lot of diggin in the manual to do simple things and get some sounds down. With S1 I pretty much had something down after a few minutes. For me it's a 1000 times more intuitive. Sure, the routing isn't as flexible, but I am happy with how routing is implemented. I like the drag and drop single screen interface, the tons of samples I got the ease of switching between the mixer view, sequencing view etc etc.

Ultimately it came down to east of use and it's hard to argue with S1 in that regard. Reaper is much more flexible in regards to customizing it's look and feel, but for me that was a big negative because I didn't want to spend hours trawling the forums for skins I liked and macro plug ins to do extra functions. S1 does everything I need and it does it well. I have a copy of ableton too sometimes I just rewire the two together and jam away in ableton and print the audio to S1. That works for me, but everyone is different.

[Astromann]

There seems to be unending threads about this.
The thing is...often people say well such and such a DAW sucks and this other one is sooo easy!!
And that may be true to an extent, but it is totally subjective and depends how well you know the particular DAW.
I barely ever read the manual of Reaper, never go on the Reaper forums other than to download the latest build.
But I have set it up to work very smoothly and easily...even really basic stuff is one click or key command, so even at that level its easy, and I can do the most complex midi editing as well.
I looked at Studio One and although its nice I felt it simply could not do everything I needed...but that may change.
Others obviously don't agree that Reaper can be very easy to use...and thats cool, but just because they may struggle with Reaper it does not mean everyone does.
The changes in the Piano Roll (Marix edit in Logic) have really clinched the deal for me, I can now do things easily that were hard even in Logic (and that is a composers tool in many ways)
So yeah if it keeps going that way I will be very happy.
Cheers

[spaceman]

It's a thread from 2009 and I thought quite obviously meant as a laugh at all the Reaper threads at the time

I thought the 20-40% usually gives it away.

[paterpeter]

I work ITB exclusively and I find Reaper quite a joy to use. The piano roll works well for me. I love the flexible track routing. Automation envelopes don't work that well for me, though. I mean, they work. But editing them never feels fluid for me. I always end up with extra points, more points being edited than I wanted etc.

I do have S1 v2 Pro (I went from v1 artist to v1 pro to v2 pro) but haven't had the chance to do a full track in it. I plan to use it alternately with Reaper for the next songs. What I saw so far was pretty cool, though. There are some great editing tools for items (or events as they are called in S1 lingo). The mastering section could be quite useful.
It's a bit weird that there is no support for splines in automation graphs, though.

I'm an FLS user as well, but I've used Reaper much more recently because of several things that I don't like in FLS:
- Lack of overview. For example I can't see what parameter a automation clip automates and I can't see at a glance where mixer channels are routed to and from.
- The way MIDI (not) works in FLS. You have to jump through hoops to use MIDI to control parameters. CC data doesn't seem to have a channel. You need to do some arcane MIDI data routing to use MIDI VSTs. You can't drop MIDI files into a pattern properly (Ever tried to drag&drop a pattern from the second Geist engine that contains per step modulation to a FLS pattern? Good luck. It won't work.). Even in Patcher MIDI doesn't flow properly. It puzzles me how a sequencer can have such a bad support for MIDI.
- No x64 version. Yeah, I know. Can't do that with Delphi and I don't need an x64 version as it can already load x64 plugins. I know the drill. But I'm not a huge fan of this bridge-athlon.

That being said FLS has some undeniably great features I miss in Reaper and S1, like automation clips (PLEEEEAASE Cockos) and parameter mapping formulas.

[Dewaine]

I have never used S1, but I can still say that it is useless. (I learned this technique from iPad haters).

Reaper is better.

[luxgud]

Been using S1 v2 a lot. Probably the best DAW I have ever used (overall)
Very stable (unlike Sonar) and so easy to figure out (unlike Sonar). I think, however, it it is a little expensive given the competitive nature of the DAW market and in particular the great price for Reaper.

Studio One needs a few extra 'goodies' (such as a step sequencer)to justify the relatively high price especially when you look at what you get with Reason 6.

[Astromann]

It's a thread from 2009 and I thought quite obviously meant as a laugh at all the Reaper threads at the time

I thought the 20-40% usually gives it away.

Yep gotcha...I realize there was a lot of jest in the posts, but not all of them.
So I guess I kinda replied more on the serious side of it.
Cheers

[spaceman]

It's a thread from 2009 and I thought quite obviously meant as a laugh at all the Reaper threads at the time

I thought the 20-40% usually gives it away.

Yep gotcha...I realize there was a lot of jest in the posts, but not all of them.
So I guess I kinda replied more on the serious side of it.
Cheers

Well, since then I've posted a thread or two about how great Reaper is, so I guess this thread has become serious as well

But anywho, all hosts are great. The amount of great depends on the user. All of them allow you to make whatever music you want.

[Scoox]

Newcomers looking to 'make some beats' will definitely find Studio One far more attractive, savvy users coming from other DAWs will love the workflow of S1 but may find it somewhat limited and recognize Reaper's massive power, so I say use both.

I'd rather say that S1 is better for composers and Reaper is better for sound designers, in my own experience and attending to your description of both products too. Depicting S1 as a beginers DAW is misleading in my opinion. None of the complex routing features that you mention are relevant for a lot of experienced users, me included. I don't find S1 lacking in any field. Reaper is very good and the price is mindblowing, of course.

I think what I meant was what you said, composers vs sound designers. Both are very powerful professional applications in different ways and I dislike them equally

[LawrenceF]

I think what I meant was what you said, composers vs sound designers. Both are very powerful professional applications in different ways and I dislike them equally

Reaper and S1 both cover the more conventional aspects of audio production very, very well... imo, mmv, as strong as any with various gives and takes. Where they both may subjectively fail in a narrow contextual comparison to something like Live (for that particular thing), they both excel in what they were designed to do from a basic level.

If you want to experience that firsthand, dump 50 audio tracks into just about any of these multiple really clever little electronic music sequencers and watch how quickly things become really problematic.

It appears to be - and this is speculation - that the people writing these things have no real experience in conventional audio production so most of those apps lean heavily toward electronic production and sequencing. If you need your software to be the center of a conventional audio production studio, you pretty much have to look to the usual suspects, Logic, Reaper, PT and similar. Some of those others would fail miserably in that role... beyond a really, really small project studio setting.

So... horses for courses.