KVR Audio

ls1xxx · Post by **ls1xxx** » Wed Sep 21, 2016 12:37 pm

I have never tried this Daw and was wondering how well the Midi is in it compared to Cubase. Is the Piano Roll decent? How well does vsts work in this Daw? I have been using Cubase and both FL. Just wanted to try this one out and wanted some opinions. I work with only Midi from vst and will NOT be using any audio or external hardware. Thanks

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Wed Sep 21, 2016 12:43 pm

MIDI editor is much better than what used to be there in versions 3 and 4. Work is being done to fix stuff up. Also v5 introduced a pretty easy to use notation editor as well. VSTs work awesome with Reaper - you will very likely notice you can load quite a bit more plugins than you can with Cubase, courtesy of Reaper's extremely lean code and some other features.

You have a feature unlimited demo to try out, so give it a shot. Just a few things to note: right-click is the king in Reaper, use Actions list to see what you can do with the MIDI editor, and DEFINITELY go through the mouse modifiers (Properties->Editing Behavior->Mouse Modifiers) to adjust how piano roll behaves. You can get it in FL Studio's ballpark using this, which is pretty smooth for editing.

bungle · Post by **bungle** » Wed Sep 21, 2016 6:16 pm

It is no where near FLS piano roll unfortunately, Reaper is my favourite linear DAW, but it's MIDI is just another in a long line of "oooof, they could have made that perfect" moments in Reaper development.
Stick to FLS and Cubase if you are just sequencing VST, you will save yourself wasted time and effort, Reaper is king of audio, not so much sequencing MIDI.

Boone777 · Post by **Boone777** » Wed Sep 21, 2016 6:38 pm

If you need to go deep with midi Cubase and Logic are better but for everyday tasks it's perfectly fine. Don't let others discourage you try it. I have found that the advantages of Reaper surpasses greatly it's disadvantages for what I use it.

sinkmusic · Post by **sinkmusic** » Wed Sep 21, 2016 7:03 pm

What Evil Dragon said above.
I'm also a Live9 user, but i use Reaper way more often.
Reaper is rock stable and cpu-efficient with VST and VSTIs (much more than Live), and Midi is good. Depending on your needs, you may find some features better midi-wise on other DAWs (but you could say the same with just about any other DAW, and it doesn' t mean that Reaper's midi is bad or average).

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Wed Sep 21, 2016 7:17 pm

Reaper does have better CPU utilizationi than FLS, though, bungle.

And mouse modifiers do get pretty close to FLS layout, indeed. For some other things, there are scripts, but I am sequencing MIDI (both software and hardware synths) without issues in Reaper just fine (and can actually change timesignatures within a project, unlike FLS!). Once I set it up for myself I became even faster in tweaking MIDI than I ever was in FLS.

xbitz · Post by **xbitz** » Wed Sep 21, 2016 7:30 pm

bungle wrote:It is no where near FLS piano roll unfortunately, Reaper is my favourite linear DAW,

bit strong

note drawing/erasing, selecting (ok there is no lasso drawing based), copying/moving, channel setting, chord/scale/arp inserting, scale snapping, MIDI scrubbing, play cursor moving, note brushing, note scaling/streching are same as the FL one, can handle ghosting, there is AL like folding, multiple clips/tracks editing , there is script for diagonal multi-note slicing

if u need articulation editing should try

incubus · Post by **incubus** » Thu Sep 22, 2016 4:16 am

I wish someone could explain this "FL studio is so much better with midi" thing.

It's no more "betta" than anything else I've used (and is terrible convoluted with a sea of menus to do what others do in two or three steps)

xbitz · Post by **xbitz** » Thu Sep 22, 2016 5:04 am

incubus · Post by **incubus** » Thu Sep 22, 2016 5:40 am

I've seen all of that, but it's not the is-all/end-all of midi.

Not saying it sucks (I like FL) but it's not OMG that I can see.

woggle · Post by **woggle** » Thu Sep 22, 2016 6:08 am

Hasn't FL the only midi editor that allows selection of melodies or phrases directly? ie using a brush tool (or lasso maybe). I thought that was pretty neat (although I can't understand why it is not standard across all DAW's)

xbitz · Post by **xbitz** » Thu Sep 22, 2016 6:46 am

woggle wrote:Hasn't FL the only midi editor that allows selection of melodies or phrases directly? ie using a brush tool (or lasso maybe). I thought that was pretty neat (although I can't understand why it is not standard across all DAW's)

RapidComposer knows it (phrase based editing with auto scale assignment)

and it can be used as VST in any host (with its MIDI out), MIDI also can be exported from it using simple drag and drop

woggle · Post by **woggle** » Thu Sep 22, 2016 7:00 am

xbitz wrote:
woggle wrote:Hasn't FL the only midi editor that allows selection of melodies or phrases directly? ie using a brush tool (or lasso maybe). I thought that was pretty neat (although I can't understand why it is not standard across all DAW's)
RapidComposer knows it (phrase based editing with auto scale assignment)

and it can be used as VST in any host (with its MIDI out), MIDI also can be exported from it using simple drag and drop

that looks interesting - I have not seen it before. I don't think it has what I am thinking of - the ability to select melodies as if with a brush - RapidComposer looks like it still just has rectangular marquee selection from my quick look

stacev · Post by **stacev** » Thu Sep 22, 2016 7:01 am

I use Reaper, but recently demoed few daws in terms of midi editing to see if there is a big difference.
Functionally Reaper's midi editing is good, you can do all common editing tasks and adjust preferences to your work flow. Only midi look & feel in Reaper is not very smooth comparing to some others.
The best piano roll for me was in FL Studio, Cubase - second, and then Reaper.
But differences are not huge to switch the daw because of that.

.jon · Post by **.jon** » Thu Sep 22, 2016 10:25 am

It doesn't compare with Cubase. Reaper's midi editing is nicely configurable so you can set it up to your liking. Customizability is better than in any other DAW, the price is spending an eternity fiddling with the preferences, it's garbage out of the factory, but midi side lacks many modern features and (like the rest of Reaper) generally suffers from low quality control. Have a look at a compilation of some of the current midi bugs:

http://forums.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=181729

This list is by no means exhaustive (and just midi bugs!), but should be enough to give an impression of the state of affairs. Some work is being done on those bugs, but the developers are of the type who prefer coding new fun things than delivering solid, polished features. Considering Reaper's old age, these kinds of bugs really shouldn't be there anymore.

How is Midi in Reaper?