Heresy alert: You left REAPER and went to...

[headquest]

Well, at least the bug has been found and is reproducible from Chris' side, so it will be fixed sooner or later.

That's a good thing

+1

And AD is NOT responsive to problems, at least in my case. There was no help at all and it was not easy to get an simple answer by email.

From what I've seen AD are responsive in the sense that once a bug is identified they are quick to fix it, but I have no idea about their email response times, etc. I think it's just two guys though, right? Even so, sorry to hear about your experience with them.

In any case, as I said in the previous post, I don't use many VST (and in fact I don't use any AD ones at all)... the crashes I got in Reaper versions 1, 2 and 3 are down to Reaper (for whatever reason) not playing well on my system. Not a problem, because there are plenty of other sequencer/audio recording options from the major vendors that are absolutely fine on my system.

I take the view that its good Cockos supply a full-functioning demo so that users can find out for themselves whether it is stable for them, whether they like its workflow, or find it fuggly, etc. I prefer Cubase by a long stretch (quite apart from the fact Reaper was not stable here, I prefer Cubase's workflow and toolset)... but Cockos have a nicer ethos in terms of offering the demo, good pricing, etc, which is great.

[bullshark]

I think problems arose when Justin stopped designing an unconventional DAW and became influenced by, what seems to me, a musically conservative user-base. Even so some of the innovations - such as the JS scripting and extensions - are impressive. However the attempt to make Reaper run a mixing desk / analogue studio metaphor have led to a confused design in my view.

Not the way I remember it. A traditional/analog mixing desk always was the goal of Reaper, but you have to remember what a mixing desk was for the most part of the history of audio recording; audio engineer traditionally build their own, and even when commercially built one became available, they were most often heavily modified to fit studio needs, often before the first track was ever laid down. So, along with the mixing desk, Reaper gave you, the audio engineer, a soldering gun, solder and wires to mold it the way you need it to be. The scripting and SDK is a continuation of that theme IMO, in fact, everything Cockos does seem to me to be, for better or for worst(for better if you ask me, of course), a continuation of that theme.

Now, the userbase might be musically conservative, or not, I don't know, but a quick peruse through the FR section of the forum tell me that, as customizable as Reaper is, user ask for even more customization possibilities, so there doesn't seem to be a conflict there.

[aMUSEd]

seems odd that Cockos are unwilling to work constructively with them to fix the issue.

Doesn't look like they were. From reading the various threads it looks like they hit the nail on the head re the cause back in July and Chris has stated himself they have been helpful in identifying it. The later AD plugins use a graphics lib Reaper doesn't - that's why it doesn't seem to appear in other hosts but the bug is due to the plugins unloading that library twice which is something they shouldn't do - that is not (and could not be) Reaper's fault as it doesn't even use that library.

[Crandall1]

Just for the record, John was very helpful when all was said and done, and Cockos worked with Audio Damage to hunt down the issue with AD stuff (which turned out to be a bug in the version of VSTGUI we were using.) As I mentioned in the last thread on the subject, all Audio Damage products that exhibit the behavior will be revved in the coming weeks. The first one is actually coming here in about 2 weeks. (We're rolling in other fixes and updates at the same time, so it's going to take a little while for each one.)

[sinzero]

I think problems arose when Justin stopped designing an unconventional DAW and became influenced by, what seems to me, a musically conservative user-base.

musically conservative

wtf does that mean?

[dgkenney]

I think problems arose when Justin stopped designing an unconventional DAW and became influenced by, what seems to me, a musically conservative user-base.

musically conservative

wtf does that mean?

I think it means songs performed by Bush or Rush.

Dan

[bullshark]

I think problems arose when Justin stopped designing an unconventional DAW and became influenced by, what seems to me, a musically conservative user-base.

musically conservative

wtf does that mean?

Asking myself the same question, I'm not familiar with that genre. I've heard just about of everything on the Reaper board, from funk to rock to metal to R&B and jazz, from electronic, dance and classical, heck, even religious hymns, but not once have I heard something I would have classified as conservationism.

[ariston]

Just for the record, John was very helpful when all was said and done, and Cockos worked with Audio Damage to hunt down the issue with AD stuff (which turned out to be a bug in the version of VSTGUI we were using.)

In that case, I take back what I said earlier about Cockos refusing to look into it (it seemed that way last time I heard about this). Still, it doesn't change the fact that Reaper is infuriatingly unstable on my rig. I will continue to use it for audio, but my midi recordings will take place elsewhere.

[headquest]

Doesn't look like they were. From reading the various threads it looks like they hit the nail on the head re the cause back in July and Chris has stated himself they have been helpful in identifying it. The later AD plugins use a graphics lib Reaper doesn't - that's why it doesn't seem to appear in other hosts but the bug is due to the plugins unloading that library twice which is something they shouldn't do - that is not (and could not be) Reaper's fault as it doesn't even use that library.

That's cool. I've not followed the AD/Cockos thread, so was going by the statement somebody made above - and has now just withdrawn. It certainly would have been odd if the two were not working together to solve issues, because both are always so keen to fix issues quickly

As for why Reaper has never worked well on my PC, who knows? As I have other software, I never made it my concern to investigate the cause of crashes or report them - I was demoing the product as a potential buyer, not a frustrated user who had already put down the money

[swivel]

I think problems arose when Justin stopped designing an unconventional DAW and became influenced by, what seems to me, a musically conservative user-base.

musically conservative

wtf does that mean?

Asking myself the same question, I'm not familiar with that genre. I've heard just about of everything on the Reaper board, from funk to rock to metal to R&B and jazz, from electronic, dance and classical, heck, even religious hymns, but not once have I heard something I would have classified as conservationism.

I can't speak for shallow, but I have found the same thing, reaper was developed as something you can use to replace protools with and so it is primarily designed for users who want to record musicians, or bands into a multi-track digital recorder. If you read the forums, this seems to be how the majority of users use reaper, and it tends to produce a certain kind of style of music where the same fairly limited set of instruments plays from the start of the song to the end (granted a wide variety of music).

On the other hand, there are a lot of musicians who use sequencers without recording anything, entirely in the box. I'd call this sample-based, or looped based music encompassing everything from hip-hop, electronica, drum'nbass, house and so on, and reaper isn't totally suited for this. You can use reaper in this way, but it wasn't designed from the ground up for this kind of method of working like say Ableton Live, Acid, Renoise, or FL Studio were. There are a growing number of such "electronic" musicians using reaper, but anytime FR's are made in the reaper forum to improve this aspect of the program there's usually one of the traditional users who posts something to the effect of "keep your beeps, bleeps and shit out of my rock solid DAW, I have no use for what you're proposing". So that's the conservatism, the reaper devs have to keep this contingent happy (and I think Justin comes from the guitar-recording angle anyway). Reaper has to work well in a traditional studio mixer situation, but this limits its ability to push new ideas and ways of making music.

[bullshark]

I must confess, I don't use audio loop at all. But wasn't there a whole bunch of Acid like functionality added to Reaper for version 3?

[EvilDragon]

Yes, it was.

[siriusbliss]

I must confess, I don't use audio loop at all. But wasn't there a whole bunch of Acid like functionality added to Reaper for version 3?

many hosts, including even Magix Music Maker have had Acid loop functionality for years.

Credit goes to Cockos for so rapidly emulating all the other more mature hosts on the market.

G

[bullshark]

I must confess, I don't use audio loop at all. But wasn't there a whole bunch of Acid like functionality added to Reaper for version 3?

many hosts, including even Magix Music Maker have had Acid loop functionality for years.

Credit goes to Cockos for so rapidly emulating all the other more mature hosts on the market.

?!? What's your point?

[siriusbliss]

I must confess, I don't use audio loop at all. But wasn't there a whole bunch of Acid like functionality added to Reaper for version 3?

many hosts, including even Magix Music Maker have had Acid loop functionality for years.

Credit goes to Cockos for so rapidly emulating all the other more mature hosts on the market.

?!? What's your point?

My point is that Reaper is good, but still evolving and still lacks many features that are found in other hosts.

It's not a bad thing, just the status of the program.

Greg