Polarized opinions about Reaper

[chk071]

Cubase 8.5 likes to give me the crash on exit it doesn't happen often but when it does it happens in the most annoying times like changing preferences and it doesn't save so I have to do it over again

Oh, i had that as well with Cubase artist 8.5 64-bit. Was completely gone with Cubase Artist 9 though.

[Romantique Tp]

It should be gone for almost everyone in Cubase 9.5.10.

[THE INTRANCER]

There's many reason's why I don't use Reaper, I've highlighted them already, stability in my experience is just one of them, sorry I just don't trust the product or consider it to the level of others.

[BMoore]

There's many reason's why I don't use Reaper, I've highlighted them already, stability in my experience is just one of them, sorry I just don't trust the product or consider it to the level of others.

You've highlighted your stability issues with Reaper by googling an image with an error message.

You're not even original as a troll.

[spigmu]

Well, I really didn't want to jump in on this, but I've decided to on the stability topic.

Been using Reaper for 6 or 7 years after deciding to add it to my PT rig for it's batching and plugin handling and especially offline bouncing, which PT wasn't doing at the time. Owned them both together for quite a while, always preferring to record and edit in PT and use Reaper for other tasks. Though I still work in PT my personal PT rig fell by the wayside when I decided not to continue upgrading (possibly just for the time being) and now don't own current PT and have been forging ahead in Reaper. Also, since my critical PT work was more often happening in rooms other than my own it made sense, though I keep an older version running on 10.6.8 just for times when I want it.

Reaper is a great program. Support is the polar opposite of Avid's, which is to say it's immediate and sensible. I'm still not a fan of working in Reaper's environment. The physical aspect of grabbing things and moving them to the exact place I want them and keeping the mix environment and tracking environment *tactilely* as I want them is not not high among the DAWs I spend any time in. That said the more I use it as my main DAW the more my dissatisfaction being in its UI lessens.

But my reason for posting is to say that Reaper is hands down the most stable music software program I've ever used. I started using it for live remotes a few years ago, due to that fact that it's so rock solid and is also about the easiest on the CPU DAWs I've ever experienced (you can pretty much run it on *anything*. You'll need to adjust based on the complexity of the project but I've been amazed at the old and slow Macbook Pros I've tried it on and been able to do plenty). For me it never quits or freezes, never opens projects as corrupt, handles large projects with many tracks filled with plugins. I use a 2015 15" MBP 16gig ram as my laptop that doesn't leave the studio and a 2009 MBP 13" 8gig for live gigs up to 16 tracks simultaneously with Metric Halo hardware and never had a live hiccup ever.

So I'm definitely NOT a Reaper proselytizer. I could care less about the 1,000 ways you can customize it or the scripts that let you make every 4th midi note on every 3rd bar shorten by 25% unless it's between F# and A (I can't do midi editing in it. I just can't. Need to export, do it elsewhere and import it back and it still took less time). But it's an incredibly stable and easy on the processor DAW for me and has been for years.

[THE INTRANCER]

There's many reason's why I don't use Reaper, I've highlighted them already, stability in my experience is just one of them, sorry I just don't trust the product or consider it to the level of others.

You've highlighted your stability issues with Reaper by googling an image with an error message.

You're not even original as a troll.

It's Christmas Day, better things to do than waste my time figuring out how I last crashed Reaper or trying to instigate the way to do it and then take a screenshot, open up photoshop, upload it to dropbox, relink it and copy and paste it, when I can simply grab an example of another users crash screen on google..I mean really.. The results are the same, and highlights my point that Reaper does crash for others too, and not just me over the years I've used it.

There is also a high contingent of Reaper defenders on this forum, it reminds me of the Reasontalk forum lol.

[Guenon]

There's many reason's why I don't use Reaper, I've highlighted them already, stability in my experience is just one of them, sorry I just don't trust the product or consider it to the level of others.

No need to be sorry about that, even though I feel the way you approach the discussion is rather odd at points. Main thing is you've found what works for you, and you are speaking from extensive personal experience at that. My experience has been different, and the process through which I've come to choose Reaper has been similarly very informed. In a sense, there seems to be a great deal of overlap in our audio/music histories, since the 90s, but our preferences, working methods and experiences still differ remarkably

Personally I consider the three years I spent with Studio One a diversion of sorts; I had disregarded Reaper for a long while because of the biased view I had developed of it. I wanted a "more traditional" environment for composing tasks alongside Live, having been away from Cubase and Logic for years, and narrowed it down to Studio One, which seemed great at the time - but I grew tired of its shortcomings in relation to my preferred way of working during its (still ongoing) v3 cycle. After that, I tried out the then brand new version 5 of Reaper.

I was amazed how elegant and powerful it was after I configured it exactly as I wanted to work. It surprised me, fully earned my trust in a working environment, and now over two years later, I still regard it very highly. Live has been in my use all this time, of course, can't part with an environment that awesome and it complements a "traditional" sequencer very well.

[Guenon]

There is also a high contingent of Reaper defenders on this forum, it reminds me of the Reasontalk forum lol.

The whole idea of there being something to "defend" is odd, in my opinion. If something clearly works that well for some users, even power users and professionals at that, isn't that only cool? So if people are chiming in and saying, hey, this does work remarkably well for me, runs super stable on my system and so on, good on them. Less headaches for those people, and more concentrating on actually working on new material. Each to their own, and so on.

If someone says to me Studio One is a perfect fit for them, and they are so satisfied with it, I don't try to somehow spoil it for them by describing how it's bad at this and that, and how there are systems that run it like this and that . When I describe my experiences with it, I literally mean they are my experiences and relevant to the sort of use case I happen to have, not that there is something universally wrong with it and people just don't know better, hah.

[chk071]

To be fair though, there ARE people here and elsewhere, which defend Reaper no matter what, and declare it "The king of stability", while not even knowing many other DAW's. I think i can safely say that, from my time spent in online audio forums. Software like Reaper simply has that potential, because it's "the alternative to the established stuff the pro's use", it's low cost, and it has an open development. Thus the Linux of DAW's. It just has that religious cult potential. That doesn't mean everyone using it acts like that, of course.

Discussions like these aren't at all isolated cases, of course. Start a thread about browsers, or antivirus programs, and you get a lot of religious fighting. Or worse, start a thread about religion, or politics.

BTW, if just want to try a plugin out, or similar, on a computer i don't have one of my other DAW's installed, i install Reaper, because it's a small installer, low weight, quickly installed, quickly uninstalled, and it always does what it's supposed to do. And, yes, i consider it pretty stable, although i never had an issue with other DAW's in that regard too. They're all designed to be stable. You also have to consider that there's a LOT less functionality in Reaper than in Cubase, hence the tendency to get unstable is much higher in Cubase, simply because there's a lot more stuff going on in the software. So, it's a bit difficult to compare.

[Anderton]

I think the reason why there are polarized opinions about DAWs is because peoples' priorities are different. There are two considerations in choosing a DAW, objective and subjective. For example, when I switched from a combination of Cubase for MIDI and hard disk recording with Acid for looping to Sonar, it meant I could use one program instead of two. At the time, it was the only program that did all three functions well, so this was an objective difference. It was important enough to me to use a single program that I was willing to overlook any of Sonar's shortcomings, because they paled by comparison.

Another objective example is I create loop libraries with Acidized files because almost all DAWs can read and respond to that format. They're less necessary than they were because DSP can handle the task almost as well, but because I do a lot of audio-for-video work, Acidized files are great when there are cuts made to the video and you need to compensate in the audio. Sonar and Acid Pro are the only programs I know that can create Acidized files. Furthermore, Sonar is the only DAW I know of that does direct DSD import and export, which still matters for Japan to some degree.

Now, if you don't do soundtracks, create loop libraries, or need to do DSD, the three things that are objectively important to me with Sonar will have zero value to you. Similarly, I use Live for live performance because the only way I can get the audio engine to stop is to drop the laptop on a concrete floor, there are really excellent hardware controllers for it, and there's a neat trick where with laptops, you can fool Live into thinking it's streaming from disk, but it's actually streaming from a USB stick so you don't need to give up any RAM or boot drive space. However if live performance isn't in your future, then Live becomes less relevant.

Another example of objective is if you're doing Hollywood work. Everyone uses Pro Tools, so regardless of whether you like the program subjectively or not, it's as close as the industry comes to a universal file/project format. OTOH if you just want to make music and upload videos to YouTube, Mixcraft has probably the most practical built-in video editing of any DAW. If you need notation, forget about Reason...etc.

Workflow, the look, stability...those are all subjective. I include stability in there because different parts of different programs are more robust than others. Some people can use a program and it crashes all the time, while others use the same program and it works like a charm. It could relate to the hardware, the type of work they do, etc. It's impossible to have a discussion about the look, because it's so subjective. There are people who love the look of Sonar or Studio One or Pro Tools or whatever, and others who hate it.

So really, I think any discussion about choosing a DAW serves a purpose only in identifying unique features that are either deal-makers or deal-breakers. All DAWs do the basics well, so I think it's the "special sauces" - and all things being equal, the subjective elements - that will make the difference in which one is right for a particular user.

I've tried to get into Reaper but for whatever reason, I just didn't have good chemistry with it. But that means nothing, because I know people for whom Reaper is the perfect fit. So who's "right?" We both are.

[Guenon]

It just has that religious cult potential. That doesn't mean everyone using it acts like that, of course.

Hah, yeah. I certainly know what you mean. So yep, it's sort of meh if everyone relating their positive experiences with a given working environment is automatically seen as "defending", and everyone relating their negative experiences are seen as "attacking." So when for example the discourse takes a path of, subtly or not so subtly, accusing someone of defending/attacking, the whole thing has gone on its own meta level already, haha.

Use the tools that work brilliantly for you

[Guenon]

So really, I think any discussion about choosing a DAW serves a purpose only in identifying unique features that are either deal-makers or deal-breakers.

[DrFolder]

If I had stability issues with a piece of software that many other people don't have then naturally I want find out what I can do to fix it. I don't want to just say " It's rubbish" and not want to fix it and vent on forum. I haven't had the kind of stability issues that people have because I keep my system up to date and I don't use old near obsolete software. Alot of the time negative posters don't mention the details of their systems. If it's a bug then it can be reported and addressed (hopefully) and there are many users on Kvr that are helpful with a keen sense of problem solving willing to help. Most people I have found are defensive in nature when others just want call something unstable or crap and they respond accordingly. How many posters on the forums for any daw or instrument actually sound like they want to fix the problems they have as apposed to just wanting to vent their opinions?

[ghettosynth]

I haven't had the kind of stability issues that people have because I keep my system up to date and I don't use old near obsolete software.

You can't dismiss all stability issues with a statement like this. In fact, keeping your system "up to date" could actually introduce new stability issues. This is true whether you are talking about OS updates, DAW updates, or plugin updates. For maximum stability it's better advice to take care in choosing your updates carefully. Often you're better off to wait for a few minor point upgrades or even to exclude certain updates. I certainly take care, for example, which Pace updates that I install. I also always expect some kinds of small issues with point zero releases.

A lot of the times when people experience abnormal stability it has more to do with the fact that they aren't working on the edges. Live is considerably more stable without ever using MFL and without using any VST/AU plugins.

Someone mentioned VEP. I love it, but, it's not "perfectly" stable either. If it doesn't ever crash for you then you probably have not encountered the particular use case that causes it to crash. They even include features that are likely to make it crash, they mention in their documentation that their midi input feature is considered experimental. It doesn't have to be flakey software or outdated software that causes instability.

You can't simply dismiss instability that other people experience with the mistaken belief that they are doing something wrong, such as not keeping their system up to date. Moreover, even if happens to be true in a particular case, it doesn't change the relative value of the stability under less than ideal conditions of one tool over another. In other words, it's not an argument that some tools are not more stable.

[THE INTRANCER]

I'm watching Father Ted for the next 3 and a half hours....that's if I'm still awake.