Polarized opinions about Reaper

[ghettosynth]

What I haven't figured out yet: how do I display the synth and the effects GUI's at the same time? When I open an effect GUI, the synth GUI disappears and vice versa

If you're talking about having multiple windows open, then right click the synth and choose "window float selected fx." It will now stay open. I find it useful not to have so many windows open at once but this allows you to have that feature when you need it.

[fluffy_little_something]

What I haven't figured out yet: how do I display the synth and the effects GUI's at the same time? When I open an effect GUI, the synth GUI disappears and vice versa

If you're talking about having multiple windows open, then right click the synth and choose "window float selected fx." It will now stay open. I find it useful not to have so many windows open at once but this allows you to have that feature when you need it.

Thanks

[THE INTRANCER]

My experience with Reaper since the day dot it came out is that, it's always been buggy and crash prone, which has been compounded with a convoluted, intimidating interface with huge bloated menu's within menu's (Yes you can configure them but that's not the point). There's lack of clear development, it's ad-hoc and unstructured, built upon 17 years of dated legacy code. It's a poor man's daw with big holes in it... Lack of core instruments, quality FX with modern GUI's is one of the biggest aspects, that has always turned me off from using Reaper and taking it seriously and is why I rather spend the time and effort using more established daws from the bigger players that do, and from developers that listen and understand what an effective learning and accessible workflow curve is.

[fluffy_little_something]

.... so all I am interested in now is robustness, no hiccups etc.

I jumped ship from Sonar 8.5 (years ago now) because of its very flaky audio engine. For example, Sonar would drop out during playback when I tweaked the fade envelope in a clip. I was really fed up with the way it would drop out at every opportunity.
I switched to Reaper mainly because of its rock solid performance, no hick ups, no drop outs, just great handling all over, especially with all the synth plugins, many alpha and beta builds...

Since then, I have used Reaper in very testing conditions. For example, I used it live at one massive live event with 5000 people, where I had over 56 midi channels ( several synths and samplers, some multi-timbral) all playing live. Not a single problem. Whereas, the same project wouldn't budge in Logic.

I can give you more such examples, but suffice to say, in my experience Reaper's audio engine has proven to be top notch. But, I still sometimes hate Reaper with a passion!

Wow, that sounds way more complex than any of my stuff will ever get. I am particularly impressed so far by its efficiency, I can now run demanding stuff like U-he plugins without any problems, which was not possible with Mulab for some reason. I have also run a 32-bit plugin in the 64-bit version of Reaper, no issues at all. It simply seems to get along fine with my new computer

[fluffy_little_something]

My experience with Reaper since the day dot it came out is that, it's always been buggy and crash prone, which has been compounded with a convoluted, intimidating interface with huge bloated menu's within menu's (Yes you can configure them but that's not the point). There's lack of clear development, it's ad-hoc and unstructured, built upon 17 years of dated legacy code. It's a poor man's daw with big holes in it... Lack of core instruments, quality FX with modern GUI's is one of the biggest aspects, that has always turned me off from using Reaper and taking it seriously and is why I rather spend the time and effort using more established daws from the bigger players that do, and from developers that listen and understand what an effective learning and accessible workflow curve is.

Buggy? Crash-prone? Is that your attempt at irony?

[elassi]

My experience with Reaper since the day dot it came out is that, it's always been buggy and crash prone, which has been compounded with a convoluted, intimidating interface with huge bloated menu's within menu's (Yes you can configure them but that's not the point). There's lack of clear development, it's ad-hoc and unstructured, built upon 17 years of dated legacy code. It's a poor man's daw with big holes in it... Lack of core instruments, quality FX with modern GUI's is one of the biggest aspects, that has always turned me off from using Reaper and taking it seriously and is why I rather spend the time and effort using more established daws from the bigger players that do, and from developers that listen and understand what an effective learning and accessible workflow curve is.

Buggy? Crash-prone? Is that your attempt at irony?

Rather a split personality 'talking' through one of his multiple accounts.

[THE INTRANCER]

My experience with Reaper since the day dot it came out is that, it's always been buggy and crash prone, which has been compounded with a convoluted, intimidating interface with huge bloated menu's within menu's (Yes you can configure them but that's not the point). There's lack of clear development, it's ad-hoc and unstructured, built upon 17 years of dated legacy code. It's a poor man's daw with big holes in it... Lack of core instruments, quality FX with modern GUI's is one of the biggest aspects, that has always turned me off from using Reaper and taking it seriously and is why I rather spend the time and effort using more established daws from the bigger players that do, and from developers that listen and understand what an effective learning and accessible workflow curve is.

Buggy? Crash-prone? Is that your attempt at irony?

No, that's been my experience, my own experience with music creation programs on computers dates back 1986/87 with an Atari 800 XL...before using Atari ST midi sequencers and Amiga trackers in the 1990's...just for reference.

[ghettosynth]

My experience with Reaper since the day dot it came out is that, it's always been buggy and crash prone, which has been compounded with a convoluted, intimidating interface with huge bloated menu's within menu's (Yes you can configure them but that's not the point). There's lack of clear development, it's ad-hoc and unstructured, built upon 17 years of dated legacy code. It's a poor man's daw with big holes in it... Lack of core instruments, quality FX with modern GUI's is one of the biggest aspects, that has always turned me off from using Reaper and taking it seriously and is why I rather spend the time and effort using more established daws from the bigger players that do, and from developers that listen and understand what an effective learning and accessible workflow curve is.

Buggy? Crash-prone? Is that your attempt at irony?

It's definitely hyperbole, but, some of his perspective isn't wrong. You only have to look at the ninjam source to appreciate Justin's development style. He gets things done, but there's absolutely some "ad-hocness" to it. I have a custom version of the server that I've used for live jams and the command parser is rather simplistic and what I'd call ad-hoc. It does not facilitate adding commands easily.

However, reliability is a matter of perspective. In fact, much like the SAW thread, it's reliability is largely derived, IMO, from the stability of the code and it constantly being slowly improved. You can see this in all of the minor bug fixes that come with each new release.

It is, without a doubt, the most stable DAW that I use. It's even more stable than Reason. I would say that Reason 5 is the most stable commercial "DAW" (no, I get it) as long as you don't try sync it to external midi. Reaper 3 was definitely less stable and there was a period in 4's development where I preferred the most mature version 3 builds. But these days I've been very happy keeping up to date with it.

I think that were Justin to ever do a full rewrite to make it more "elegant", he'd lose a lot of time in both reliability and efficiency. That is, it would take years to catch up to where it is today. Reaper is destined to be the SAW of 2030. The rest of the world will move on to super U/I sexiness and there will be Reaper with it's mid 2000s ugliness and tiny executable size, still able to run on old machines and loved by old men who don't like things changing very much.

[elassi]

My experience with Reaper since the day dot it came out is that, it's always been buggy and crash prone, which has been compounded with a convoluted, intimidating interface with huge bloated menu's within menu's (Yes you can configure them but that's not the point). There's lack of clear development, it's ad-hoc and unstructured, built upon 17 years of dated legacy code. It's a poor man's daw with big holes in it... Lack of core instruments, quality FX with modern GUI's is one of the biggest aspects, that has always turned me off from using Reaper and taking it seriously and is why I rather spend the time and effort using more established daws from the bigger players that do, and from developers that listen and understand what an effective learning and accessible workflow curve is.

Buggy? Crash-prone? Is that your attempt at irony?

No, that's been my experience, my own experience with music creation programs on computers dates back 1986/87 with an Atari 800 XL...before using Atari ST midi sequencers and Amiga trackers in the 1990's...just for reference.

Then you would not moan about the "learning and accessible workflow curve" (to name just one aspect of your rant). It simply does not fit to talk like a modern DAW-hipster ("quality FX with modern GUI's is one of the biggest aspects") and then refer to your stone-age experience.

Greetings,
another former Atari-user

[Frantz]

Reaper is destined to be the SAW of 2030. The rest of the world will move on to super U/I sexiness and there will be Reaper with it's mid 2000s ugliness and tiny executable size, still able to run on old machines and loved by old men who don't like things changing very much.

This is a great observation. It also ties the Reaper and SAW threads together nicely.

[THE INTRANCER]

Then you would not moan about the "learning and accessible workflow curve" (to name just one aspect of your rant). It simply does not fit to talk like a modern DAW-hipster ("quality FX with modern GUI's is one of the biggest aspects") and then refer to your stone-age experience.

Greetings,
another former Atari-user

I'm making the point that I wasn't born yesterday (or that I'm just 12 years old), when it comes to my experience of the evolution of daws, I'm not stuck in the past nor willing to be. Daw development is constant, and it wouldn't be where it is to day if it wasn't. When other daws set, set standards, and the one you are using isn't. There is something wrong...period.

[DrFolder]

I used Logic, Pro Tools, Cubase and Flstudio for years but they just couldn't cut it for large projects using alot of Vsti/Au. I would rather have processors available for making music instead of powering a Ui just to think I look cool making music with a flashy Ui. Bitwig and Cubase couldn't even run a project with quarter of the plugins I can in Reaper. I did like Logic but not being able to send midi out from Au instruments was infuriating (can you do that now?) And I stopped using Macs, The throttling was getting too severe on the new models.

[elassi]

I'm making the point that I wasn't born yesterday (or that I'm just 12 years old), when it comes to my experience of the evolution of daws, I'm not stuck in the past nor willing to be. Daw development is constant, and it wouldn't be where it is to day if it wasn't. When other daws set, set standards, and the one you are using isn't. There is something wrong...period.

ghettosynth has a paper at hand that describes how dreadful it is to step into the trap of modern GUI design.

Kidding aside: I accept your point(s), though I don't see yet how Reaper proves them. Just my opinion, of course.

Btw, still miss the fantastic IPS of the early Cubase. Afaik it never made it from the Atari-version to the 'modern' DAWs of our time. But, well, I left the Steinberg universe long time ago. What do I know...

[DrFolder]

Just to add to my last post, I actually like the way Reaper looks. I use an AlbertX skin on a 4k monitor and when you have a 60 - 80 track overview It looks great!

[ghettosynth]

Just to add to my last post, I actually like the way Reaper looks. I use an AlbertX skin on a 4k monitor and when you have a 60 - 80 track overview It looks great!

To be clear, I use Reaper quite a bit. Probably more than any other DAW this past year because of what I like to use it for and what I've been doing. I think that it's functional and that's fine, but, people have a valid point about the clunkiness of the use experience. It's not just about how it "looks," but about how it works.

For example, that some things can't be set without executing an action? That's clunky workflow right there. But Reaper, like SAW, often looks very Windows 3.1 ish like SAW does with it's simple, overcrowded, and poorly organized, dialogs. Again, I think that they're functional, but I think that the criticisms are fair.

I also hate the skinning, it's just like Linux themes, there's always something broken and annoying in them. I've yet to try one that I don't encounter some weird scaling or drawing issue within a week or so.