Polarized opinions about Reaper

[woggle]

I guess when almost everyone accross diverse languages/countries says it's stable and only a couple of people on KVR say it isn't, the anecdotal evidence applies more to this last group.

Actually it is all equally anecdotal.

[lolilol1975]

I guess when almost everyone accross diverse languages/countries says it's stable and only a couple of people on KVR say it isn't, the anecdotal evidence applies more to this last group.

Actually it is all equally anecdotal.

jancivil's experience is indeed splendidly anecdotal.
The fact that his setup somehow worked with another system doesn't prove that Reaper was the cause of his problems.

Case in point: the only time Reaper crashed on me was because of a bug in the Sanford reverb VST. That reverb somehow worked in other DAWs since the bug hadn't been reported. Yet it doesn't mean it was ok and Reaper was buggy. In fact the reverse was true and Leslie Sanford promptly corrected it.

[woggle]

Your report is anecdotal, as is mine, as is jancivil’s. all the forum reports on all the forums are anecdotal.

[lolilol1975]

Your report is anecdotal, as is mine, as is jancivil’s. all the forum reports on all the forums are anecdotal.

Yes but when many anecdotal reports confirm the same thing accross languages, forums, etc, when people spontaneously report how remarkably stable Reaper has been stable for them, it gives a level of confidence on those reports than only a couple of anecdotal evidence don't. After all statistics is made of individual experiences. Especially when you hear of really complex situations like the one reported by himalaya here or that of the musician SceneOfAction that you can check by yourself.

But if you want statistics, here is a simple example. On the biggest french forum, where users put their feedback on all the products, in reviews of Reaper, the word "stable", "stability" or "very stable" appears 23 times in 30 reviews.
https://fr.audiofanzine.com/sequenceur- ... er-5/avis/

[woggle]

Stats are derived from measures taken with defined processes over defined phenomena. What we get with Reaper is a lot of people saying it is stable. Given selection bias / sample bias there is not a lot more we can say other than a lot of people on forums say they find Reaper stable. From that we can derive no stats that can tell us if Reaper is more or less stable than any other DAW. We might have a belief about that but we can’t justify that belief statistically in the normal sense of the term

[lolilol1975]

Of course, but we can also have a reasonable doubt about the fact that diverse people accross diverse regions who have no financial interest in the company can just say their honest opinion on the product. You can't just dismiss the opinion of a majority with a couple of counter examples. Having read for many years opinions on places like Amazon and such, I've developed an ability to see what to get out of opinions posted on products, and especially how to spot outlier/dishonest opinions. I can confidently say there are 2 dishonest posters here (jancivil is not one of them).

[woggle]

Sure and I assume Reaper is stable for most users most of the time. But I assume that for most daws and most software with a reasonable history. And , mostly, I am right.

[dune_rave]

Ok, it's "almost" stable. But From time to time, I can crash it.
Maybe the plugins are the cause.

For example Today I played with a little project, that contain:
-microtonic -predator2 -repro5 -imposcar2
I played back a longer region, with the loop settings on.
At a point, I switched from one imposcar2 presets from another.
Bang - there's a crash!

And if I don't use the special "Run As" settings (separated or dedicated process),
the whole reaper application crashes, and usually leaves my Asio driver in an unusable state.
So I open next time Reaper, and it starts with a pop up error message: can't open asio driver.
If this is the case, I have to restart my pc to get the asio back.
Or If I reinstall soundcard driver (without pc restart) I also get back my asio.

So my oppinion is, that reaper also could easily crash, as all other daw, because:
-people use many plugins - that's a risk factor -
-Reaper has many updates from time to time - also a risk factor

I won't quit using Reaper, my workaround is to use all plugins in "Run as separate process" mode.
So when something crash, reaper don't crash. After the crash I can reopen the project, and continue.

I used to have much more crashes, when I created some music In Jeskola Buzz years ago

[DrFolder]

Ok, it's "almost" stable. But From time to time, I can crash it.
Maybe the plugins are the cause.

For example Today I played with a little project, that contain:
-microtonic -predator2 -repro5 -imposcar2
I played back a longer region, with the loop settings on.
At a point, I switched from one imposcar2 presets from another.
Bang - there's a crash!

And if I don't use the special "Run As" settings (separated or dedicated process),
the whole reaper application crashes, and usually leaves my Asio driver in an unusable state.
So I open next time Reaper, and it starts with a pop up error message: can't open asio driver.
If this is the case, I have to restart my pc to get the asio back.
Or If I reinstall soundcard driver (without pc restart) I also get back my asio.

So my oppinion is, that reaper also could easily crash, as all other daw, because:
-people use many plugins - that's a risk factor -
-Reaper has many updates from time to time - also a risk factor

I won't quit using Reaper, my workaround is to use all plugins in "Run as separate process" mode.
So when something crash, reaper don't crash. After the crash I can reopen the project, and continue.

I used to have much more crashes, when I created some music In Jeskola Buzz years ago

That doesn't sound very good. I had similar experiances when I had a Ni Audio interface. It turned out I hadn't updated the firmware for a while. What interface do you use?

[EvilDragon]

Yeah, leaving ASIO driver in unusable state is actually the driver's fault, not Reaper's... A well-written ASIO driver wouldn't do that.

[dune_rave]

I use the latest driver for my soundcard.
I have an ESI Juli@ soundcard, and driver is :
Juli@-x2v-v1_21.zip from here: http://download.esi-audio.com/?p=6&

So if my driver behaves in this way, for me the separate process is the solution.

Oh, And I forgot to mention I also used Kirnu Cream in my project to control Imposcar2 before the crash. Hm maybe I should update Cream, somewhere I saw there's an update...

[BMoore]

Latest update to those drivers was over two years ago?!

[do_androids_dream]

Reaper has a self feedback loop of you guys telling yourselves how stable it is. You accept your own isolated, untested and anecdotal evidence, while shunning any other.

??? What does this even mean? I don't think you even know.

Reaper is known for its stability because it's very stable - not because of a 'self feedback loop' lol.

[THE INTRANCER]

Reaper is very stable lol... this has been my regular experience with this daw over 17 years, even with the latest versions in the past few years.

[Guenon]

Reaper is very stable lol...

Reaper's been running constantly on my workstation with an open project 24/7 since I last posted in this thread, hehe

But yeah, I do give a lot of credit to the underlying hardware and its drivers too, though. It's a very carefully chosen configuration, and the RME HDSPe AIO is just amazingly solid. That's an important factor in anecdotes like this, and gives this particular setup an edge right from get go, for example. It also might be the reason why Live 8 functions so robustly on the system as well, as it's often been cited as a flaky version of Live, I don't know. It does crash on me a couple of times a year, though (two times this year, just checked the crashlog directory), and every one of those crashes that I do remember from the recent years has been a One Synth Challenge synth crumbling under stress and giving it a hard time ... Reaper I still haven't seen crash on this system ever.