Why you left REAPER?

[TheMaestro]

" I dived into the customization even more, determined to make it exactly how I want it, and now I’ll never look back."

That there, still remains a fundamental problem with Reaper, as it doesn't matter how much customisation you do, the end result always ends up looking horrible and dated regardless, and it's still the case today.

That there, is your ignorance.
You can make Reaper look like what ever you want. Skin it, color it, make the layout the way you want.
And your horrible taste in GUI's doesn't matter to me anyway.

Not true.

Yes it is.

[jzero]

Some skins look quite good. The visual problem is the dialogs and the stock plugins. Those are fugly. I use all 3rd party plugs so it doesn't bother me.

[Vladislav_Gronk]

I hear what you are saying but many of your points takes a minute to fix. If one doesn't like some degree of customization then Reaper definitely is not the DAW for them. I don't use it as my main but find it pretty funny for just messing around with all the scripts.

1) It's not really designed for MIDI work - in order to get to the instrument you need to press... FX button

You can map a key to a script that automatically opens the instrument on the selected track. It's in ReaPack but anyone who uses Reaper must have that + SWS Extensions installed.

The FX button can also be right-clicked for quick access to any plugin on the track.

I prefer a track inspector view like this:

you can't easily add an empty MIDI clip to instrument track

How so? You can CTRL + mouse drag and draw a MIDI clip. You can double-click to create a new one. You can make a time selection and fill it with a MIDI clip. The possibilities are endless.

automating stuff requires to dig through huge list of available parameters, editing automation is a joke: need to hold Shift to add points, Alt to delete points, can't see any way to box-select stuff

You can map a key to "FX: Show/hide track envelope for last touched FX parameter" so you only need to touch the parameter you want to automate. I totally second proper box-selection, it's sorely missed in Reaper.

Btw, try automation items. They're a very cool feature.

[Stormin Norman]

Weeeelllllll . . . . . . . . . .

It looks like a lota peeps
Have gone and left the Reaps
ain't nothin' to do with the buckage$$$
It's mainly due to the suckage

[arkmabat]

But, but... Reaper is cheaper!

[arkmabat]

The same reasons others have described.

We all know Reaper is very powerful, but its features are all very badly organized.

It comes to a point that it's just uninspiring...You know, I'd like my DAW to help me think outside the box (or at least not stay in the way), not keep demanding me to interact with boxes within boxes within boxes.

All Reaper needs is a deeply extensive UI and ergonomic reconstruction. They should really start from scratch.

It's the Linux of DAWs.

[spigmu]

" I dived into the customization even more, determined to make it exactly how I want it, and now I’ll never look back."

That there, still remains a fundamental problem with Reaper, as it doesn't matter how much customisation you do, the end result always ends up looking horrible and dated regardless, and it's still the case today.

That there, is your ignorance.
You can make Reaper look like what ever you want. Skin it, color it, make the layout the way you want.
And your horrible taste in GUI's doesn't matter to me anyway.

Not true.

Yes it is.

Nope. You can't. You can re-theme it based on your graphic coding skill, not based on what your heart desires. Themes are not unlimited in potential and the Theme Tweaker is helpful to the end user but very basic, not chameleonic. Skinning and recoloring are skinning and recoloring, changing the jacket and making it another color. Very nice but hardly "what ever you want". Are you fluent in theme coding? Can you do Walter? Know what Walter is?

If you say, Yes it is to this I'll know you haven't created any themes in the Stash and just use something available.

And I'm a fan of Reaper and daily user, registered for 10 years. It is what it is and it ain't what it ain't.

[chk071]

Reaper surely has the most comprehensive theming options of all DAW's (god forbid that you want to read something into that... ), but, as has been pointed out, it all has its limits. You can't make a Cubase out of it. Or any other DAW.

IMO, that's not the point anyway. A DAW that doesn't have a good GUI by default, and that I have to theme to make it work halfways for me (with third party themes... ugh) isn't really something I would choose.

[Rockatansky]

I usually only redefine a few hotkeys, snap the Docker to a certain position and get going. Zero need to do major configuration or personalization, zero need to switch themes. When I work in Reaper, I work in Reaper. I don't care how it looks, I care how the stuff I do inside it sounds. Honestly don't understand why people would want to invest so much effort into turning Reaper into not Reaper. Or fighting about it so viciously, for that matter.

[Obsolete462444]

The same reasons others have described.

We all know Reaper is very powerful, but its features are all very badly organized.

It comes to a point that it's just uninspiring...You know, I'd like my DAW to help me think outside the box (or at least not stay in the way), not keep demanding me to interact with boxes within boxes within boxes.

All Reaper needs is a deeply extensive UI and ergonomic reconstruction. They should really start from scratch.

Amen!

To me Reaper represents the opposite of Ableton Live in the inspiration & user experience dimension (with traditional mainstream DAWs like Cubase, Logic and now Studio One sitting somewhere in between on the spectrum).

Yes, I understand that Reaper allows you to go in-depth and is deeply "hackable", I can understand why it appears to a certain user base. But if you simply want to create music in the most straightforward and intuitive manner, Reaper will most likely disappoint.

[TheMaestro]

" I dived into the customization even more, determined to make it exactly how I want it, and now I’ll never look back."

That there, still remains a fundamental problem with Reaper, as it doesn't matter how much customisation you do, the end result always ends up looking horrible and dated regardless, and it's still the case today.

That there, is your ignorance.
You can make Reaper look like what ever you want. Skin it, color it, make the layout the way you want.
And your horrible taste in GUI's doesn't matter to me anyway.

Not true.

Yes it is.

Nope. You can't. You can re-theme it based on your graphic coding skill, not based on what your heart desires. Themes are not unlimited in potential and the Theme Tweaker is helpful to the end user but very basic, not chameleonic. Skinning and recoloring are skinning and recoloring, changing the jacket and making it another color. Very nice but hardly "what ever you want". Are you fluent in theme coding? Can you do Walter? Know what Walter is?

If you say, Yes it is to this I'll know you haven't created any themes in the Stash and just use something available.

And I'm a fan of Reaper and daily user, registered for 10 years. It is what it is and it ain't what it ain't.

You know you can use image files, right?

[Skandiluz]

Reaper surely has the most comprehensive theming options of all DAW's (god forbid that you want to read something into that... ), but, as has been pointed out, it all has its limits. You can't make a Cubase out of it. Or any other DAW.

IMO, that's not the point anyway. A DAW that doesn't have a good GUI by default, and that I have to theme to make it work halfways for me (with third party themes... ugh) isn't really something I would choose.

100% this. I bought/sold/demoed so many daws because I always tried to make Reaper act like the best parts of the daws that I liked. I tried so hard for Reaper to behave similar to Live and it kind of worked but didn't really do it for me. I tried to make it more like Cubase, and the theme did help, but it never felt like Cubase. I loved FL Studios piano roll (and how fluid it is), yet Reaper still couldn't quite get there. I eventually gave up trying to make Reaper act like different daws and I just bought the different daws. I still have, use, and love Reaper but I use it now for some mixing projects or if I need to grab some sort of audio from my computer since it's easy to do that.

[spigmu]

" I dived into the customization even more, determined to make it exactly how I want it, and now I’ll never look back."

That there, still remains a fundamental problem with Reaper, as it doesn't matter how much customisation you do, the end result always ends up looking horrible and dated regardless, and it's still the case today.

That there, is your ignorance.
You can make Reaper look like what ever you want. Skin it, color it, make the layout the way you want.
And your horrible taste in GUI's doesn't matter to me anyway.

Not true.

Yes it is.

Nope. You can't. You can re-theme it based on your graphic coding skill, not based on what your heart desires. Themes are not unlimited in potential and the Theme Tweaker is helpful to the end user but very basic, not chameleonic. Skinning and recoloring are skinning and recoloring, changing the jacket and making it another color. Very nice but hardly "what ever you want". Are you fluent in theme coding? Can you do Walter? Know what Walter is?

If you say, Yes it is to this I'll know you haven't created any themes in the Stash and just use something available.

And I'm a fan of Reaper and daily user, registered for 10 years. It is what it is and it ain't what it ain't.

You know you can use image files, right?

Of course. That doesn't change anything of what I said. I don't know why anyone would think it does. Having an image of what? A button? A fader? Exactly how does that get anyone except 40% of reaper users and 5% of DAW users a new experience without coding? Swapping buttons images and positions and reshaping the console, putting things in other places, is not exactly doing "what ever you want". It's advanced skinning.

[simmo75]

If you’re working on large projects and using cpu intensive plugins, Reaper cannot be beaten for its performance. Fact!
Ableton Live feels like a slug compared to Reaper, Bitwig is slightly better than Live and Studio One is slightly better than Bitwig but compare the performance of those against Reaper and they’ll fail miserably, fact!

[TheMaestro]

That there, is your ignorance.
You can make Reaper look like what ever you want. Skin it, color it, make the layout the way you want.
And your horrible taste in GUI's doesn't matter to me anyway.

Not true.

Yes it is.

Nope. You can't. You can re-theme it based on your graphic coding skill, not based on what your heart desires. Themes are not unlimited in potential and the Theme Tweaker is helpful to the end user but very basic, not chameleonic. Skinning and recoloring are skinning and recoloring, changing the jacket and making it another color. Very nice but hardly "what ever you want". Are you fluent in theme coding? Can you do Walter? Know what Walter is?

If you say, Yes it is to this I'll know you haven't created any themes in the Stash and just use something available.

And I'm a fan of Reaper and daily user, registered for 10 years. It is what it is and it ain't what it ain't.

You know you can use image files, right?

Of course. That doesn't change anything of what I said. I don't know why anyone would think it does. Having an image of what? A button? A fader? Exactly how does that get anyone except 40% of reaper users and 5% of DAW users a new experience without coding? Swapping buttons images and positions and reshaping the console, putting things in other places, is not exactly doing "what ever you want". It's advanced skinning.

Why are you going on about who can code? That wasn't the question.