Reaper - my 18th anniversary summary

[VOODOO U]

The amount of time most spend bickering about crap that doesn't make them any better songwriters/producers could be spent customizing a DAW.
It's not like it takes *months* to customize for fux sake.
Just get offline and use that time to customize Reaper. Save the file and voila, done. No need to redo over and over.
As you go, if you decide extra customizing is necessary, make the adjustments, override save, done. It's not a big deal.
For me personally, Reaper out of the box needs lots of customizing. So I spent a little time making the adjustments and have been a happy customer since.
Complaining about customizing a DAW....well, what else can one expect from gamers.

[heliacal]

The REAPER is mighty!

But it CAN be a trap, so keep your focus in the MUSIC, not customizing!

We are supposed to create music? I thought the modern composer was just a builder of complex systems with little to no musical output?

[Boone777]

The REAPER is mighty!

But it CAN be a trap, so keep your focus in the MUSIC, not customizing!

We are supposed to create music? I thought the modern composer was just a builder of complex systems with little to no musical output?

Yes and don't forget to to spend your days here collecting all those shinny plugins with warmth and 3D !

[J Veronica]

I've just reinstalled Reaper and I'm leaving it on the Default 7 theme.

I spent hundreds of hours messing around with themes and scripts last year and finished no songs, lol.

My brain needs limits for creativity. It's why I also deleted all my plugins and only installed one Channel Strip eq, one 1176, one 2A etc.

[summer2000]

My brain needs limits for creativity. It's why I also deleted all my plugins and only installed one Channel Strip eq, one 1176, one 2A etc.

This has been a goal of mines for some time now. I get easily distracted and lose creativity due to countless options.

[Danilo Villanova]

I'm limiting myself to TDR Molot GE and Slick EQ GE for my channels and the same plus TDR Nova and Kotelnikov for busses. That's my "channel strip", and I plan to use that, and nothing else, for the rest of my life/career.

The whole industry is built to extract money and attention from you. If you became the best musician you could be, you would be buying a lot less plugins, so the industry has an interest in keeping your creative dreams frustrated.

You have ONE job and that's to FINISH tracks. You are an EXPORTER OF WAVS, that's your sole function in opening your DAW.

[Songwriter101]

I'm limiting myself to TDR Molot GE and Slick EQ GE for my channels and the same plus TDR Nova and Kotelnikov for busses. That's my "channel strip", and I plan to use that, and nothing else, for the rest of my life/career.

The whole industry is built to extract money and attention from you. If you became the best musician you could be, you would be buying a lot less plugins, so the industry has an interest in keeping your creative dreams frustrated.

You have ONE job and that's to FINISH tracks. You are an EXPORTER OF WAVS, that's your sole function in opening your DAW.

[J Veronica]

You have ONE job and that's to FINISH tracks. You are an EXPORTER OF WAVS, that's your sole function in opening your DAW.

Now that's a quote

I need to read that every time I go down a rabbit hole of irrelevance.

[writheuk]

That's just all cobblers....

[Starbright]

Disclaimer up front:
I don't want to start a DAW war, nor will I engage in one nor do I want you to feel bad about your choice of DAW.
Sometimes people have reasons to look for a different DAW (as I was 18 years ago) or want to choose their first one. Just my thoughts, so maybe this is interesting for you. If not, cool. Be my guest.


My first version of Reaper I remember using was 1.882.
Fun fact for that version, it says on the website:

REAPER v1.882 - July 31 2007

So today is "my 18th anniversary" with Reaper.
During that time I bought 4 licenses.
That amounts to $240.

I spare the tears of all users of a certain DAW that I used before by not telling you which one that was and by not directly comparing it to the upgrade prices I would have paid since. But I will do some math for myself for the personal fun of it.
I invested the "change" that I didn't spent on upgrading that competing DAW into many plugins and other music software.
Only to find out that most of that was not necessary or is unwanted now for various reasons. But that is another topic.

Today Reaper can do most of the things that I can think of that I would want to do.
Unlimited of anything: Tracks, plugins on a track, instruments, sends, folders, etc.
Automation is great, Editing is great.
Midi is still one of the weaker points but it does most things that I want and even there I didn't customize everything that I could to improve workflow even further.
Scripts, Macros, almost everything can be assigned to key commands.
Mouse modifiers to deeply modify workflow.
Thousands of possible customizations for almost everything.
I could go on and on like that.
Reaper does a lot. For a very small price.

Reaper is one of those things that defy normal money/value/cost logic.
There are other DAWs that can do certain things that Reaper can't. Or at least to my knowledge.
But after those 18 years I have customized Reaper to such an extent that I guess that it would take me quite some time finding all these functions in other DAWs if they are even available or if they are available by customization as they are in Reaper.

So cheers!
A BIG Thank you to
Justin Frankel the man himself,
all the Reaper devs,
the extensions heroes,
generous free plugin devs,
awesome YouTube contributors, explainers, turorial creators, etc.,
all other contributors that I don't actively think of right now,
and last but not least the awesome Reaper forum community.

Nice, congratulations!

To be honest I'm a reaper user myself, though as time goes by I'll turnmyself more and more towards Ableton and Logic.
Reaper is a curse and a blessing:
featurewise - yes
layout - it's hell

As an educator I clearly would never again recommend reaper for composers or newbies, but for experienced users from other daws... anytime.

tiny disclaimer:
I really hate the overclutted menues in reaper nowadays and i think they Reaplugs need a facelift and some bugfixes (especialy the reverbs).
But overall it's still amazing for mixing and monitoring stuff.

[whassup]

Nice, congratulations!

Thanx!

tiny disclaimer:
I really hate the overclutted menues in reaper nowadays

Yeah, the menues.
They were the latest thing I started to customize.

[Alexander_D]

I heard so many good things about Reaper. But how about film scoring in this DAW? It's not so easy....

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I wish users could share all their settings as a template ( remote install), to save time customising.

You can. One person can back up their Reaper settings (See the link I added in my post above). That person can then send the customizations to another person who can import them.

Great. Kenny told me that was not possible because each computer system is different.
Is there a forum where people share their settings for different use cases?
[/https://www.kvraudio.com/more/8875-116627-1quote]

You can absolutely do this. You can export/import Configurations, which are all the settings. What Kenny may have been alluding to is that there may be differences like drive configurations or differences between the OS'es in how folders are handled. That's really the only part of the export/import Configuration piece that doesn't translate very well. But otherwise, it's a great feature.

You export a Reaper config, then import that config on another computer, and just remember to unf*ck the folder settings on the new computer, and you're done! The Configurations can include all settings/preferences, toolbars, scripts, GUI, FX chains, keyboard shortcuts, mouse modifiers, etc.

Another tip I'd give to all Reaper users is: find the ReaperBlog video series called something like "the defaults are wrong". It's a 3 parter. It covers close to 90% of the settings I ended up changing and landing on in my first 18 months or so of Reaper when I was still learning how to set it up. For a music production workflow, the setting changes Jon goes over in that video series will act as great defaults and save a lot of time and aggravation.

[Michael L]

. . . save a lot of time and aggravation.

Thank you so much!
Is there a Forum where peeps share Configurations for various workflows?

I will check out those videos.
It's the ReaperBlog Fresh Start series, "what I would change from REAPER's default settings":
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... Fujap8cDNo

[Stirner]

I like Reapertips, for example
https://www.reapertips.com/post/best-se ... r-reaper-7
and a free eboook:
https://www.reapertips.com/resources/the-perfect-setup