Heresy alert: You left REAPER and went to...

[C-note]

It was interesting to hear that Justin was just trying to make a better Vegas - explains a lot. However after building a user base and finding out (from forum postings) what real daws do - Midi?, he still chose to ignore any baseline of features established by those who came before. Even using the most basic project/product management techniques would have benefited Reaper development greatly.

Presonus S1 is way ahead of Reaper at their equivalent stages of development. I would also venture that Presonus could give us a pretty accurate feature road map going forward if they wanted to.

To me Reaper has the soul (engine) of a Bugatti

and the body (UI) of a VW Thing

The product is still after three years of "fast paced" development, not capable of functioning in the way I need it to for my composing needs.

I do applaud Justin's vision and the fact that he followed it.

C

[Astromann]

Not "lost", but perhaps "wading" a little. But my perception may be way off, in which case I'm sorry for any unintentional offense. As I said, it's a personal concern of mine with anything open-source or perhaps too-heavily influenced by user ideas that it can turn into a bit of a jungle that is inhospitable for the newcomer. I'm not saying REAPER is in that position, or even that it will be... but I have seen others state that it is.

Yeah I agree open source could be a bit of a jungle, you are definitely right there.
But in the new version he seems to be going more towards adding API functions which is much better IMO because its more of an an addition.
You see if Justin followed Daz's model (I am talking about their own market vision) he could do very well very quickly.
Why? because creative users will design their own API's and interfaces and even setups and maybe sell them for a very small fee, thats Daz's model and they are flourishing whereas all the biggies Autodesk...etc.. are struggling somewhat even tho they have been around much longer
So all Justin really has to do is is make it easy for the user to mold Reaper into their own specific workflow and add bug free features and actions available to get there.
Right now its easy enough to modify the main toolbar...but he actually needs to go further than this...into new custom toolbars and easier application of user features in the track inspector...such as humanize, quantize ...whatever...apart from whats already there, this would not make it more complicated, but actually less complicated because the user would modify reaper to completely suit their own workflow, they would have what they need and get rid of the rest.

I build stuff all the time...currently 3d cities
http://s223.photobucket.com/albums/dd184/hjmann//
and I compose a lot too (thats my main thing) so I have had to think about this a lot.

Currently Reaper is showing strong signs of heading in this direction...Logic has it too...and Cubase, I tried S1 but found it to be overpriced ($399 to $499...jeez Logic is less than that with a bucketload more features and content)
Anyway personally I found S1 to be over rated in most every single area especially in light of what they ask for it.
Nonetheless the user defined workflow is becoming very strong in Reaper, and the last few updates indicate that more and more, but some users dont want to put the time into setting it up and they will be the ones that complain about the workflow.
If he gets there I will finally have an app that works how I like to.
Others have spoken about this too, so I guess time will tell, but right now I love where he is heading with it!

I do think that Cubase, SONAR and others actually offer quite a lot of user customisation FWIW, but it will be interesting to see how far Justin takes this vision for REAPER.

Yes they do...it remains to be seen how far they will go with that.
It seems like Justin is making it his central approach...I guess we will see.

Definitely I'm in that camp. I look at it a bit differently. I am a trained musician, but I am not trained in design, for example, so its better that somebody who can do that well is left to get on with it.

Yes I hear you...I was the same, I have played guitar forever and composed for a real long time...I do build stuff tho and designed some environments for Logic in the earlier days.
BUT the challenge is to make it easy for users to change Reaper into the app they always wanted...right now its kinda easy, but not totally.
Really as far as flexibility of interface goes...it would be nice to be able to position the top toolbar anywhere, and create others with custom commands also.
This alone would change a good deal of the argument about reapers usability, because you would use your own setup in the 4 critical areas.
That is Menus, Toolbars, Inspector and keystroke.

I have used a variety of music software, including REAPER, and in most cases I found the design others had done inspired creativity in me as a musician - for example the way things are laid out on the screen can lead you in a certain direction with a project. And I'm happy to be led in that sense.

Me too...and I am a bit fickle, I like to change things around from time to time, thats another reason why I am pretty excited about Reapers direction.
As I mentioned earlier I have only used it for about a month and I am nearly up to Logics speed (because I spent a little bit of time setting it up)
So in such a short time to be almost at Logics speed (20 years on that) is something I am excited about.
Cheers

[kelldammit]

back to the OP topic...
when i replace my mac, i'll try to go back to logic. in all likelihood, i'll use logic and reaper in tandem. it kinda sucks cause there's stuff i like sooo much about each, that it would really be hard to just use one or the other.
i'd love a mishmash of the two, with some dp/pt features thrown in, to boot

kell

[hibidy]

I didn't know reaper was up to speed on mac. Kudos if so, I know back in the day (when I had an icrash) it wasn't.

[Astromann]

back to the OP topic...
when i replace my mac, i'll try to go back to logic. in all likelihood, i'll use logic and reaper in tandem. it kinda sucks cause there's stuff i like sooo much about each, that it would really be hard to just use one or the other.
i'd love a mishmash of the two, with some dp/pt features thrown in, to boot
kell

Actually I am working on a project right now where most of it has been done in Logic on the Mac (its heavily orchestrated) now I am using the RME Fireface on the Mac and the RME hammerfall with the Adats connected to the Fireface.
Anyway it took some setting up but I can play midi into my mac and fire any of the midi stuff in reaper on the PC and it works amazingly with very little delay, I have channels set up on the Mac for directly recording back the Reaper stuff as wave files from the Adat ins just before before mixdown.
So I am running a lot of the heavy stuff on the PC like the play stuff, Kontakt 4 etc...and can even run amp sims on the PC with the wave file on the Mac its really cool.
But eventually I will get an i7 and record most of the stuff on the PC I guess.
I am finding Reaper fits in more and more with what I like...at first I used it as a glorified VST inst receiver (and it kicks ass for that) but I am going to try a whole project in it soon
Cheers

[cosmosis]

The whole mouse-drag to get a note is something that seems counter to REAPER's goal of everything being faster and more flexible. If you're doing drum parts with the diamonds view, it's just a huge pain to draw those.

I thought I'd miss the tool and single-click, but it seems to be help workflow to not have to drag every single note to the length you want. I can see how some people would find this a benefit, but it's equally as difficult to others, as well.

umm, not sure if I understand your problem correctly, but when in the midi editor, there's the option "Use last note lengh when inserting notes".

[PaulG]

You know, besides the useless bickering and obvious misunderstandings, I think the most enlightening thing in this entire thread was how REAPER was never intended to be anything but an extended audio editor.

Not saying it didn't grow into something pretty spectacular, and the coders are top-of-the-game, but now it makes sense why MIDI-as-a-critical-composition-tool seems to be the redheaded stepchild of the program, and not even talked about in the forums that much.

And probably explains why multi-out VST's are difficult, too.

(I know, I know...I'm going to get 5 or 6 comments about how wrong I am, blah, blah, blah-frickin' blah...)

But honestly, I don't feel so bad now - I was trying to make REAPER the "one central app" for all of my composition and production needs, which admittedly are pretty varied, and kept thinking that there was something wrong with me for not being a total convert to the REAPER "religion" as it seems.

It does great work for me in audio with the routing and stuff, but now knowing that being a full-functioned MIDI app is not the intention, nor may EVER get the attention it deservers, allows me the space, at least mentally, to be able to partner with another app that DOES do MIDI "with tools" and with FORESIGHT of what is helpful as much as REAPER does with audio.

Lots of enlightenment on this thread.

(Cue gong and incense...)

[Yatmandu]

If I leave Reaper for any period of time it will be to learn Cubase (for midi), but Reaper will always be my go to standby for recording audio (with some midi sprinkled in). I guess some people prefer eye candy/"workflow" to actual basic audio functionality.

?????? Eye candy? How so? And what audio functionality is missing in other apps like Cubase?

Brent

Just to clarify a bit, I was comparing Reaper (my current DAW) to Sonar 8.5 LE (for which I got a $1.99 try me email from Cakewalk) and to energyXT2.5 (for which I got another try me email from thje eXT company). I was not comparing it to Cubase which is my logical next step from Reaper if I want total control over my midi h/w and s/w.

With the same ASIO setup as in Reaper (using my Edirol UA-101 audio i/f), I tried playing some demo tracks (2 audio tracks) in Sonar 8.5 LE. Snap-crackle-pop city. Tried increasing buffers, tweaking all the settings, etc, to no avail. Next, I tried energyXT2.5, as I'd heard it's rather efficient. It made Sonar look like an MPC. It could barely play two audio tracks without completely freezing. Back to Reaper: 20 tracks without a hiccup.

Now, this can very possibly be stupid user error, although this particular user has been a computer teckie since 1976 and has a master's degree in EE specializing in DSP. I'm not saying I didn't botch things up, but at the same time I was only trying these products out of curiosity, and they failed out of the gate -- no need for me to go into a heavy debug session.

I never intended leaving Reaper because it does what I want it to do, and it does it rather beautifully. I am moving to Cubase for complex midi arrangements though!

I have no emotional attachment to these things, but they have to work for me, or they're out...

[kelldammit]

And probably explains why multi-out VST's are difficult, too.

lol, i will disagree with the multi-out thing. i've dealt with MUCH worse.
logic7 and samp come to mind specifically. i find it pretty annoying in pt, too. it's certainly not as easy as say...logic 8 though.

But honestly, I don't feel so bad now - I was trying to make REAPER the "one central app" for all of my composition and production needs, which admittedly are pretty varied, and kept thinking that there was something wrong with me for not being a total convert to the REAPER "religion" as it seems.

there was never anything at all to feel bad about. as koolkeys stated earlier, some daws just "click" for some users, and others just don't. each daw has its share of zealots, but personally, i prefer a more slutty approach it is really amazing how passionate the debates get...when all the different tools really just do the same basic stuff in the end. as if joe listener could really gives a sh*t what daw was used. i guess the presence of "what commercial cd's were done with daw x" threads are telling. people seem to need reassurance that they've made a good choice, even though the daw has nothing to do with the commercial success of a cd anyway.

It does great work for me in audio with the routing and stuff, but now knowing that being a full-functioned MIDI app is not the intention, nor may EVER get the attention it deservers, allows me the space, at least mentally, to be able to partner with another app that DOES do MIDI "with tools" and with FORESIGHT of what is helpful as much as REAPER does with audio.

Lots of enlightenment on this thread.

at this point i see midi in a similar light as when it was introduced in PT or samp. the focus was certainly audiocentric to start with, and it just takes time for the midi features to evolve and catch up. some are saying pt's midi is finally getting to the point of usability at last...and it's been what? a little less than 10 years since it was introduced? given that reaper's only been around for 3 or so, the improvements have been pretty staggering. it's just not there yet. all we can do is wait and see what comes down the pipe.
enlightening, indeed.

[fandango]

And probably explains why multi-out VST's are difficult, too.

lol, i will disagree with the multi-out thing. i've dealt with MUCH worse.
logic7 and samp come to mind specifically. i find it pretty annoying in pt, too. it's certainly not as easy as say...logic 8 though.

I think it tends to be a problem if you've been used to doing it another way. In Cubase and Sonar, you have a very clear distinction between MIDI tracks and Audio tracks. In Reaper you can do it this way, but you might need to (certainly, I do) color the MIDI tracks and Audio tracks seperately to keep track of what's what (because all the tracks visually look the same, with audio fader). And then disable one group in the Track View and the other lot in the Mixer view. Otherwise, you can disable feedback looping in the project options, and configure both MIDI and Audio on the same group of tracks. By which time I've usually remembered why I prefered the 'old-fashioned' way of doing it in Cubase/Sonar with just a couple of clicks and tracks that I can instantly discern as being MIDI or Audio. And freely add/remove tracks with only slight tweaks in the inspector panel*.

Reaper feels a lot like Linux to me. Tremendously powerful, but you need to invest a little more time and knowledge to get the best of it.

* - I would like to see an inspector panel for the docked area in Reaper at some point. AFAIK, you can't dock the I/O routing pop-up dialog in the docked area? It would be really useful if you could.

[grinkor]

I'm trying to switch to it since v2.x. and I see that they are doing an excellent work, but there's still some things that keep me out of REAPER:

-Drum map management. In Cubase, for example you can make your own drum maps with note names and custom mappings. In Reaper, AFAIK, note names in MIDI only applies to certain VSTIs

-Audio Warping features are still VERY basic. Reaper can do pitch and time stretching but is still light years behind the audio warp capabilities found in Logic, Live and cubase, where I can stretch the time ruler to match a variable tempo performance, and then drag the hitpoints of the audio files, quantize audio, etc. with a few mouse drags.

-I would like some per-clip audio processing history like in Cubase, where you can see all the nasty things you have done to each audio clip, undo/redo each one, change the parameters of one of those editings and the program rebuilds the clip automatically.

- Audio events grouping is handy, but is way behind the Cubase's "audio parts" where you can group some audio events and enter to an editor where you can arrange then, make fades, etc.

- It lacks an "Pool" or something similar: A window where you can manage all the media inserted in your project.

- Many musicians would want a score editor.

- a Dual panner where you can pan freely both channels of a stereo track.

- The vegas-like track plug-in management is really ugly and uncomfortable

On the other side, it's true that Reaper has some interesting features you can't find in other hosts, such as its insane routing capabilities, the "channels" approach for plug-ins routing, The parameter modulations, The highly efficient audio engine, the low cost....
But I repeat: There's still some things keeping me out of REAPER

[fandango]

-Drum map management. In Cubase, for example you can make your own drum maps with note names and custom mappings. In Reaper, AFAIK, note names in MIDI only applies to certain VSTIs

Double right-click on a note (i.e, a piano key on the left, I mean), you can set your own note names. You can also load *.txt note names and save drum maps from the MIDI Editor file menu.

Haven't a clue about the other stuff, but 1 out of 8 ain't bad...

[PaulG]

-Drum map management. In Cubase, for example you can make your own drum maps with note names and custom mappings. In Reaper, AFAIK, note names in MIDI only applies to certain VSTIs

Double right-click on a note (i.e, a piano key on the left, I mean), you can set your own note names. You can also load *.txt note names and save drum maps from the MIDI Editor file menu.

Haven't a clue about the other stuff, but 1 out of 8 ain't bad...

Ditto - if I couldn't have named my Battery maps, I wouldn't have even stuck around.

It's cool because you can save different note name maps to files and such.

[bullshark]

- a Dual panner where you can pan freely both channels of a stereo track.

JS: utility/chanmix2. Come with Reaper standard install.

- The vegas-like track plug-in management is really ugly and uncomfortable

Could use some polishing up, but, now that I'm used to Reaper way, it pisses me off when I have to use another app and it doesn't offer filtering options.

[ubergod]

Well I guess you could make the argument that REAPER is more like a studio in the sense that you can arrange your studio environment anyway you want, physically and workflow-wise and choose different wall-paper, etc... maybe that's not the best way to go about it, but lots of people like that, and it's something relatively unique and could be cool if they keep extendig (which does look like the direction they are going). On a smaller scale Logic kinda tried doing this with it's "environment", but really may've been too techy for lots of people to take advantage of it. The same problem exists with reaper, there are many that don't have the patience or understanding to really get into, even though it's dead simple compared to logic's environment and just a little bit more complicated then the average DAWs custom key-command setup.

I also agree about the "refinement" argument. I've been asking for a couple SIMPLE tweaks since like versoin 0.7 that I see in many other daws (Vegas included!) that just seem to have been forgotten about over the years for the more popular "big feature requests" and that's kind of annoying but apparently the way justin likes to work: scramble a bunch of stuff together, then later make it more refined. I still feel like they are in the "scramble stuff together" phase.