Is REAPER the current best long term choice?

[Michael L]

As far as I'm aware, I don't think any other DAW is run by such a small "boutique" operation.

MuLab and MetaSynth are by solo developers, along with a few others:
viewtopic.php?t=568791

[NAD]

lol I should've known better...

[gentleclockdivider]

Reaper seems to me to be shareware that you have to spend all your time modding to make it usable, instead of writing music.

Right out of the gate, the plugin menu looks like it’s straight out of 1998, and it only gets worse from there.

Studio One, on the other hand takes zero setup time and your audio track is created with plugin-chain in place, and ready to record in one click. So if you’re more interested in getting on with making music than in customizing UIs and writing scripts, then Studio One is going to be a better time.

Or you customize ONCE to your liking and that's it .
You always seem to end with your mantra : " either make music or tweak settings."
It's not just black and white ..sometimes a bit of tweakng will benefit in the long run .

[jamcat]

You always seem to end with your mantra : " either make music or tweak settings."

That is a bit of a theme I suppose.
It seems to me that a lot of musicians fall into the trap of focusing too much on the tools and the process and not enough on the song and the melody. Especially round these parts.

[ghettosynth]

As far as I'm aware, I don't think any other DAW is run by such a small "boutique" operation.

MuLab and MetaSynth are by solo developers, along with a few others:
viewtopic.php?t=568791

Yes, but, you don't get the impression that they don't care about making money. I agree with the previous poster here. Cockos is really pretty unique as far as that goes. That could be taken as a point against them in terms of long term stability.

[Michael L]

Yes, but, you don't get the impression that they don't care about making money.

I have been using them for many years and I DO get that impression.
MuLab and MetaSynth are serious labours of love (and genius).
Remember, they have been around much longer than Reaper!
Here are some recent albums by Eric the developer, in MetaSynth:
https://purplemazes.band

[digitalboytn]

As far as I'm aware, I don't think any other DAW is run by such a small "boutique" operation.

MuLab and MetaSynth are by solo developers, along with a few others:
viewtopic.php?t=568791

Yes, but, you don't get the impression that they don't care about making money. I agree with the previous poster here. Cockos is really pretty unique as far as that goes. That could be taken as a point against them in terms of long term stability.

Justin Frankel made many millions of dollars when he sold Winamp,so he doesn't really need the money...

Reaper is also a labour of love and it shows

[Michael L]

You always seem to end with your mantra : " either make music or tweak settings."

That is a bit of a theme I suppose.
It seems to me that a lot of musicians fall into the trap of focusing too much on the tools and the process and not enough on the song and the melody. Especially round these parts.

Here's a recent Reaper video about that very thang:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGANjbiysRE

Reaper is also a labour of love and it shows

Nice to see posts about how the values of the developer influence software design.
Not often talked about, but so true!

[whassup]

You always seem to end with your mantra : " either make music or tweak settings."

That is a bit of a theme I suppose.
It seems to me that a lot of musicians fall into the trap of focusing too much on the tools and the process and not enough on the song and the melody. Especially round these parts.

Here's a recent Reaper video about that very thang:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGANjbiysRE

Reaper is also a labour of love and it shows

Nice to see posts about how the values of the developer influence software design.
Not often talked about, but so true!

Kenny is so cool. Quirky, cool, full of so much detailed knowledge. Don't be fooled. He is badass. He is very laid back and has good perpective.
So having said that: Y'all now NEED Reaper. Only pro choice. Pro Base is dead. Bit One is lame. There you have it. Cheers.

[ElVincente]

One thing that force respect about reaper is how far they get the retrocompatibility working with old OS all kind of plugins and on old machines. Most environment friendly Daw maybe in that sense.
Now they lost me to bitwig for music making since I use poly at and mpe so much, and it's Pita to edit with reaper.

[Trensharo]

One thing that force respect about reaper is how far they get the retrocompatibility working with old OS all kind of plugins and on old machines. Most environment friendly Daw maybe in that sense.
Now they lost me to bitwig for music making since I use poly at and mpe so much, and it's Pita to edit with reaper.

Honestly, if you're having trouble on pretty much any other DAW your PC must be so old that you aren't going to get far on REAPER, anyways.

System requirements for Music Production are not dictated by the DAW you use. It is dictated by the plug-ins, virtual instruments, sample libraries and soft synths you use.

Using REAPER isn't going to make Serum or iZotope plug-ins use less CPU, so this idea that REAPER can magically just run more plug-ins is intellectual dishonesty, because no DAW has such massive baseline CPU utilization.

PCs have been overpowered for several years now. You can still produce music pretty comfortably on 7th-8th Gen i7 and 2nd Gen Ryzen CPUs. Running on 10 year old machines is a cool marketing point, but it's impractical on a professional level as those machines are simply not viable for decently sized projects without massive amounts of workarounds (which are available in other DAWs) - unless you're just recording lower bit-rate audio into the DAW and use a lot of outboard hardware.

The reason why people get new computers is to eliminate the need for that, so they can focus on things more directly related to the music - not housekeeping.

-----

Beyond that, the issue is not just the UI/UX and organization thereof. It's also the feature disparities which force users to go out and seek tons of scripts/plug-ins to patch those holes - and this never feels as good to use as software that was designed around the incorporation of these features as a point of project management.

REAPER is like the DAW version of Finale. Yes, you can get Scripts and Plug-ins for Finale to bolt on functionality that Dorico or Sibelius offers out of the box, but the workflow is never going to be as homogeneous as a result.

Cockos can definitely keep "ignoring" those people, but perhaps the people who want them to can stop talking down to people who stay on Pro Tools or whatever because they don't want to deal with it. Not everyone is impoverished, and some people would rather exercise the choices they are given to avoid having to do grunt work to enable them to make music productively.

(Personally, I think the REAPER community is does more of the pushing away than it's UI/UX, these days.)

[sQeetz]

(Personally, I think the REAPER community is does more of the pushing away than it's UI/UX, these days.)

yes.

[jinotsuh]

Many words

Well said, spot on

[jinotsuh]

(Personally, I think the REAPER community is does more of the pushing away than it's UI/UX, these days.)

Yes, yes, oh God yes.

[toffo]

No tweaking needed. Works fine out of the box. The only thing I did on mine is replace the skin, because I wanted to. Those SWS extensions are available too but not essential. You're paying well under $100 for very well maintained, pro product.