Polarized opinions about Reaper

[lolilol1975]

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 is buggy and more crash-prone than any other DAW except Tracktion/Waveform out of the one's I've used or tried. They believe in-house testing never finds all the bugs, so they don't do it. It's tested voluntarily by a small group of fans instead. In Reaper's case, this has proven to be less efficient at providing solid development than the conventional way. It's two steps forward, one step back, hence the frantic release pace.

INTRANCER has many solid and true points, but on the other hand Reaper has lots of very functional stuff that others don't and often even implemented cleverly.

It has a generous demo scheme and for a reason, if you're considering it do take the time and dive deep into it before committing completely. It is an indie project by a minimal team who mainly develop the software for themselves, and as such it's benefits and shortcomings compared to large scale software projects.

Reaper has never been the cause of a crash on my computer. Like ever. Probably the most stable non-trivial piece of software I've ever seen. The only time it crashed on me, it was the excellent Sanford reverb plugin. I contacted Leslie Sanford and he fixed the issue in a week-end. in my experience, and from trying to help other users on the forum,there are two possible sources of crash in Reaper:
1) buggy plugins
2) buggy driver/broken hardware
I'm not saying Reaper can't crash. I'm saying I am now confident enough that it doesn't happen that I will look first in these two areas. And I am confident enough to say the problem is with your gig, not Reaper.

[lolilol1975]

About to switch to Reaper...

How are the built-in effects compared to third-party effects such as Toneboosters?
I used to use Mixcraft, but its native effects were of mediocre quality in my view.

I was also surprised about the small download size
Glad they don't bundle crap with their DAW

Keep your ToneBoosters, they are the best.

[DrFolder]

I really don't get what people are talking about when they criticize the U/I and workflow beyond the mid-2000s-ish look of the thing. I don't like the weird icons, I think that they could hire someone to do a better job with their graphic design elements. Some things are in a bit of a weird place, like controlling how midi routes through a chain of plugins, but, with other hosts you don't even have some of that kind of control.

What exactly is it that slows people down? I'm asking honestly here, I really don't get what the challenge is?

I'm in exactly the same boat as you. People say it's fiddly but I find it very easy to use but I guess it depends on what people need. As for the gui I was always under the impression that Reaper used the operating systems resources for gui tasks to save processing power and compatibility so if you have a classic theme loaded in the os then the windows in Reaper will be the classic theme.

[do_androids_dream]

It is buggy and more crash-prone than any other DAW except Tracktion/Waveform out of the one's I've used or tried. They believe in-house testing never finds all the bugs, so they don't do it. It's tested voluntarily by a small group of fans instead. In Reaper's case, this has proven to be less efficient at providing solid development than the conventional way. It's two steps forward, one step back, hence the frantic release pace.

I've had the opposite experience. There's been quite a few times where I've had the urge to stop using Reaper so I've gone hunting for another DAW. Every single time I ended up coming back purely because of Reaper's reliability. Tracktion was possibly the worst offender for that most irritating of crashes - the *poof where's my DAW gone* kind. Bizarrely it most often happened when zooming in to a waveform.

Have you read somewhere that they don't do 'in-house' bug testing? I really can't imagine they sit there twiddling their thumbs waiting for users to do it!!!! Many coders utilise the users to help find bugs in their software. No software developer ever finds 'all the bugs' - I highly doubt there's a true bug free piece of software in existence. Two steps forward, one step back is a very healthy way to proceed with anything I would say - a good metaphor for coding.

[sjm]

"Reaper has never crashed for me" does not imply "Reaper never crashes".
"Reaper crashed on me" does not imply "Reaper is a bug-fest".

You cannot draw a conclusion from your own singular experience and apply it to everyone else. Doing so just derails this thread with bickering and polarisation (the irony).

Similarly, if a VST works fine in DAW A but not in DAW B, I would blame both plugin and host. To the end user, it's just a case of "doesn't work". It's absurd to say "the host is compatible with the plugin, it's just that the plugin is incompatible with the host" (or vice versa). It takes two parties for incompatibility.

[Romantique Tp]

You can respond like a "fanatic" if you choose, but you didn't refute my point that defects with plugin interactions may very well be sloppy programming by Steinberg.

You've simply acknowledged my point that Steinberg has written and released code with significant bugs and, moreover, that bugs caused by compliance to a spec may not, in fact, be the responsibility of a developer but rather Steinberg's problem, if, after all, as you say, they don't even use their own public specs internally.

No, I think you're comparing apples to oranges. VST MA has never been even 1/100 as important and critical as VST,
and the SDK is likely just a side project by one of their employees. It's bizarre to even see VST MA being brought up in 2017.

It's like assuming that everything made by NI must be buggy because some Reaktor freebie they made in the early 2000s had issues.

[EvilDragon]

Well, disagreed. It's been far more stable than any other DAW I've tried, and I did all the same things in all of them.

THIS is why people hate the fanaticism, exactly this.

So, stating MY honest experiences from the usage of other DAWs (Cubase, Sonar 7, FL Studio) is somehow fanaticism? Wow.

I was being honest. Cubase crashed for me doing regular editing stuff. Sonar was worse. FL Studio was about the same as Cubase, but it was much more fussy with plugins than either of the two. Reaper turned out to be the most rock-solid out of all of them. It never EVER crashed doing regular editing stuff, or even crazy editing stuff. So there.

[Apratim]

didnt realized this thread will go up to 14 pages

[elassi]

What's JS?

As for the plugin quality: Never used them. Being a fan of Toneboosters myself so I think you're good with using them no matter what host you use.

I am also a big fan of ToneBoosters (being the author of the thread that I believe made them popular on KVR), and I disagree. I indeed prefer TB almost every time, but several Reaper stock plugins and even a few JS FX, while not stellar, are decent enough to be used in production.

Should have been more precise: never tried them (which implicates: never used them).

It's a simple decision based on a single reason: already have the FX tools in question and am satisfied, so why bother with the DAW FX (except they may be more CPU-efficient but never ran into such problems).

[chk071]

I used the Reaper plugin suite in Cubase, and, i wasn't too impressed either. Mainly has to do with that butt ugly GUI though, which is already a reason i don't like Reaper very much. I mean, i don't expect extra shiny eyecandy, but... i don't think it has to look like the neighbourhood's gutter either. The sound didn't impress me much either, IIRC. But, OK, it's host included plugins. They're never THAT good in my experience.

[Apratim]

I used the Reaper plugin suite in Cubase, and, i wasn't too impressed either. Mainly has to do with that butt ugly GUI though, which is already a reason i don't like Reaper very much. I mean, i don't expect extra shiny eyecandy, but... i don't think it has to look like the neighbourhood's gutter either. The sound didn't impress me much either, IIRC. But, OK, it's host included plugins. They're never THAT good in my experience.

sound ??????????????????????????????? what do you mean
i agree the GUI is ugly as f**k
but sound ????
if that was the case then i think cd projekt or any other major company wont switch from cubase to reaper

i you mean to say that the playback audio and the rendered audio is diffrent then thats to do with the default pan law set in bus track which f**k up the rendered audio

[kokotte]

I used the Reaper plugin suite in Cubase, and, i wasn't too impressed either. Mainly has to do with that butt ugly GUI though, which is already a reason i don't like Reaper very much. I mean, i don't expect extra shiny eyecandy, but... i don't think it has to look like the neighbourhood's gutter either. The sound didn't impress me much either, IIRC. But, OK, it's host included plugins. They're never THAT good in my experience.

sound ??????????????????????????????? what do you mean
i agree the GUI is ugly as f**k
but sound ????
if that was the case then i think cd projekt or any other major company wont switch from cubase to reaper

i you mean to say that the playback audio and the rendered audio is diffrent then thats to do with the default pan law set in bus track which f**k up the rendered audio

i think,chk071 speak about the plugin suite, not the daw....

[THE INTRANCER]

Is Reaper less crash prone than it was in the past ? possibly in the past couple of revisions, but my experience and this is on my current Intel I7 920 based PC and decently spec'ed 64 Bit Athlons before it, has resulted in unexplainable crashes and this is where there has been no third party VST plugin's added.
A couple of revisions ago of Reaper, UHE's HIVE had major scaling problems that didn't exist in any other host, such as Studio One, then miraculously that was fixed in a more recent release.

If I were to name two pieces of software that remained rock solid, it would of been Reason 1.0 through to Reason 5/6 before RE's. I could count the number of times Reason 1-6 crashed on one hand in 12 years.

Reaper hasn't been alone in the crash fest of daws in my 17-18 years of using daws on the PC.

Cakewalk Sonar and Abelton have been as well. Sonar would crash within 3 seconds of it loading up and Abelton 8 was very unstable. So there are worse offenders than Reaper in my own experience.

The most stable music production software that never once crashed was Music 2000 on the Playstation. Octamed Sound Studio on the Amiga was solid too in the 1990's, although I could never explain the Guru Meditations, probably ram related with having other programs open like Deluxe Paint I suspect.

I build highly complex instruments in Reaktor so I'm not scared of complexity, however Reaper has a 'screw you if you don't like me' type of arrogance to it, and that is subsequently the impression I get from the developers. It's like 'we made it', 'don't like it'..you fix it approach. Sure Reaper has some nice idea's up it's sleeve, but it's overall package and experience makes that pretty much redundant.

Someone mentioned it was like a Indi program, I think that hit's the nail on the head, nice idea's but really a hollow experience overall.

The native plugin's as few as there are look like they still living in 1998. Developer doesn't care about providing the solid meat and bones other daws have and are. Can I see a plugin thumbnail from the browser ? Nope..

I'll throw one bone it's way though.. it works on Linux where some other mainstream daws will throw a fit

[chk071]

I used the Reaper plugin suite in Cubase, and, i wasn't too impressed either. Mainly has to do with that butt ugly GUI though, which is already a reason i don't like Reaper very much. I mean, i don't expect extra shiny eyecandy, but... i don't think it has to look like the neighbourhood's gutter either. The sound didn't impress me much either, IIRC. But, OK, it's host included plugins. They're never THAT good in my experience.

sound ??????????????????????????????? what do you mean
i agree the GUI is ugly as f**k
but sound ????
if that was the case then i think cd projekt or any other major company wont switch from cubase to reaper

i you mean to say that the playback audio and the rendered audio is diffrent then thats to do with the default pan law set in bus track which f**k up the rendered audio

i think,chk071 speak about the plugin suite, not the daw....

Yep, that's it.

[elassi]

Speaking of rock solid DAWs: the only one I never experienced a single crash was Fruity Loops / FLStudio. Used it from v1.7 up to v10.

Reaper? Quite rarely, but then nothing to jump out of the window. Ableton Live? Depending on the version, but more or less the same as with Reaper. Sonar? Dito, though my zombie brain cells signal a bad experience I can't fully recall at this time. Cubase was solid back then, too, but didn't use it long enough to falsify any findings.