Reaper vs Studio One

[LawrenceF]

Ya. The Reaper core engine and routing and license with S1's ease of use and design clarity and fluidity with PT's general automation and VCA's, and Cubase's midi depth and Live's performance tools and Logic's instruments and Samp's object editing and Bitwigs ... erhm... well... the cool new stuff there that we can't really try yet.

That would be a Godzilla of a DAW product.

[lfm]

Ya. The Reaper core engine and routing and license with S1's ease of use and design clarity and fluidity with PT's general automation and VCA's, and Cubase's midi depth and Live's performance tools and Logic's instruments and Samp's object editing and Bitwigs ... erhm... well... the cool new stuff there that we can't really try yet.

That would be a Godzilla of a DAW product.

Do you realize how many would loose their jobs if that were possible?

I found S1's way of getting around the mixer by expanding, collapsing like crazy were really cumbersome. How is that for ease of workflow??

S1 screwed up one of my midi ports so I didn't bother more than a days testing though. I had to reboot computer after S1 was started to use that port in another host as well. Not my cup of tee.

And I will describe Reapers flexibility and customizability as something for other to follow. And on top of that nice extensions and ability to write your own midi plugins with very little training. Reaper floors competition in most areas.

Maybe Reaper is just a little bit naked from start as installed and some has to go some extra miles to get it as they want it. But that's the only downside I found. I would have liked the toolbars filled with buttons - it's much easier to remove stuff than getting into the nittygritty details how to do it from scratch.

[LawrenceF]

I found S1's way of getting around the mixer by expanding, collapsing like crazy were really cumbersome. How is that for ease of workflow??

Use the full mixer? Not sure why you'd have to collapse or expand anything unless you choose to ignore the other obvious option of just not using the short mixer with side panels. Reaper themes have optional side panels also. It's just an option.

As to "getting around the mixer" ... well... jumping over 100 channels without scrolling to get to track X, having a list of every source for every destination, to jump to, creating busses for selected channels very easily. Calling hidden channels from a drop down list on the bus, showing and hiding entire groups of sources at once with a single click directly from a bus. Double clicking a send to call the FX chain being sent to from 50 channels away. Seems to me that the scales are tipped way in favor of the positive for "getting around the mixer".

Just saying. For me personally, both S1 and Reaper's mixers are very workflow friendly imo... neither is perfect (what is?), but both are easily better than most DAW mixers I've used in a number of ways... as relates to workflow and navigation and user friendliness.

MMV as usual.

I personally found the software mixers in most of the more specialized DAW's (and some major conventional DAWs) really cumbersome in comparison to Reaper or S1, really inflexible, much harder to work with... tons of scrolling left / right, very little (if any at all) workflow logic in their designs. Some don't even Tab to the next channel when renaming channels.

As DAW software mixers and "general workflow" goes, I (mmv of course) personally consider those two among the "best in class", if not the best in class. Of course, that doesn't imply they do - everything - better than every other mixer, just that overall the designs are collectively very friendly to workflow.

P.S. Probably not a coincidence, with those being the two newest designs it was likely intentional, to make something better in many ways.