Polarized opinions about Reaper

[LawrenceF]

Yeah, it's kinda like a car wreck, where even those not directly involved in the strong disagreements can't look away, also stay engaged, traffic wise anyway.

[Winstontaneous]

6 years into Reaper and I was still customizing it to get it to work the way I wanted, still only going "oh so close but not yet, just one more..". It is definitely feature packed, no comparison there. But the menu and overall UX clusterf*ck got to me.

So … Reaper is Emacs?

Ha! But in fairness Reaper actually is a functional DAW while Emacs could really use a decent text editor. Interesting how a lot of hardcore programmers I read about with chronic RSI (including Richard Stallman) are chronic Emacs users, I don't think it's a coincidence. Yes, I know everything can be re-written in Lisp, there's Evil mode, and you can get a different keyboard, but stock Emacs is an ergonomic nightmare.

Back OT, Tycho talks a lot about using Reaper in his Tape Op interview.

[jancivil]

Polarization occurs when people tell other people what their actual thought is; and now there is the thing of acting like you want to know but reality is you've dismissed that out-of-hand so that is just another opportunity to state your disposition.

I don't have any opinion on 'you want these things from your experience', but the thread is 'Polarized opinions about Reaper' which translates to 'KVR polarization due to a certain quality of REAPER fan activity here' really.

Frankly i don't know what you mean.. i use forums mainly for learning.
it is very easy to skip pass threads that are basically argument for arguments sake? the net is full of such stuff, just ignore it. i don't really care if someone is just venting/hating about reaper/fl studio etc. it is trivial, meaningless. it's just so much a part of the scenery. i have learned a lot from the reaper forums as i have from various others like Fl Studio.

It's a thread about stuff that goes on here, which I kind of summed up. Who cares? It's nothing to me. And do not misconstrue this as me caring either, but I can't help but note it's a thread which you feel you're above yet here you are.

[jonljacobi]

Polarization occurs when emotions come into play. For some reason some users go tribal about the whole deal, and there is no shortage of button pushers to exploit that. Billions of dollars are devoted to invoking emotional responses in order to sell people shit. Including political agendas and wars.

Reaper is a very powerful DAW whose UI seemingly fascinates some and daunts others. These people vent and voila! Flame wars.

[gentleclockdivider]

If I said Black & Decker makes the best tools someone would disagree and want to argue it for 10 pages.

Everybody knows Festool is the best ,

[machinesworking]

The things in Reaper that turn me off when I open it up are pretty simple really.
Both OSX and Windows have a fairly similar set of common commands, in most DAWs I've tried these react how you would expect inside that DAW. Option/Alt click dragging something like audio or MIDI in the arrange page makes a copy of it etc. Not in Reaper.
OK open up a tracks volume automation lane, nothing obvious in the UI gets me to the pencil tool if there is one in this DAW, so I'm going to spend 5-10 minutes sorting through how to do this simple thing.

Routing is extremely powerful in Reaper, it's also not that transparent. I'm looking at the Tracks window in DP9 and it's mapped out for each track exactly where the signal is going, in Reaper you're looking at diving into a few menus to find out what a track is mapped to.

I'm not giving up on it, but if there's anything to complain about in Reaper it's the UI, it's simply not anywhere near as transparent as most DAWs, all of them have a few things that buck conventions in some way for some godawful reason, but Reaper has quite a few.

[EvilDragon]

Ctrl+drag on envelope lane to freehand draw.

in Reaper you're looking at diving into a few menus to find out what a track is mapped to.

Or use the extended mixer mode which also shows sends, so you can easily see where each track routes to.

Or use the routing matrix.

[machinesworking]

Ctrl+drag on envelope lane to freehand draw.

in Reaper you're looking at diving into a few menus to find out what a track is mapped to.

Or use the extended mixer mode which also shows sends, so you can easily see where each track routes to.

Or use the routing matrix.

Thanks, compare that to DP9, in the Tracks window you see the routing, it's right there.
In DP, Live, Logic etc. on the interface somewhere are clues as to how to draw automation, a menu or even a graphic with a pencil tool is visible. Like I said, if I was to complain about Reaper it would be it's UI, it's simply not laid out in any way shape or form for someone to walk up to it and understand it, the anti-Ableton approach.
It's obvious it's powerful, but just like some business software that's been around for years the interface isn't designed to get you up and running, it's designed over time to accommodate improvements the customer base asks for. Excel comes to mind.

[elxsound]

Polarization occurs when emotions come into play. For some reason some users go tribal about the whole deal, and there is no shortage of button pushers to exploit that. Billions of dollars are devoted to invoking emotional responses in order to sell people shit. Including political agendas and wars.

Reaper is a very powerful DAW whose UI seemingly fascinates some and daunts others. These people vent and voila! Flame wars.

This is why I don't have emotions. I got rid of them a long time ago. Life is mostly better now, but I sort of get emotional just thinking about what life was like when I had emotions.

[elxsound]

Ctrl+drag on envelope lane to freehand draw.

in Reaper you're looking at diving into a few menus to find out what a track is mapped to.

Or use the extended mixer mode which also shows sends, so you can easily see where each track routes to.

Or use the routing matrix.

Its funny because Reaper's routing (via extended mixer and routing matrix) is one of my favorite things about Reaper. I didn't like it on a single screen, but when the Mixer has a dedicated monitor, its lovely (for my purposes).

[jancivil]

Yeah, it's kinda like a car wreck, where even those not directly involved in the strong disagreements can't look away, also stay engaged, traffic wise anyway.

it's like that, yeah

[Aloysius]

Polar Bears have a Polarized opinion about everything.

[inkwarp]

It's a thread about stuff that goes on here, which I kind of summed up. Who cares? It's nothing to me. And do not misconstrue this as me caring either, but I can't help but note it's a thread which you feel you're above yet here you are.

Where did i state that i am 'above' the thread?
Quit whilst your behind mate.
Oh but i forget, you DON'T care... :hihi:

[DrFolder]

Routing is extremely powerful in Reaper, it's also not that transparent. I'm looking at the Tracks window in DP9 and it's mapped out for each track exactly where the signal is going, in Reaper you're looking at diving into a few menus to find out what a track is mapped to.

If you enlarge the mixing window docked or undocked by grabbing the top part of the window and dragging then the inserts and sends will appear. You will see all the sends on each track. You can just drag a send "box" to the desired track you want to send too and select pre or post, which output to send and if you want just midi to send or just audio or both. Very flexible. When the mixer is docked down the bottom of the main screen it doesn't show the sends and inserts, kind of like Cubase's docked mixer except instead of having to switch view pages to see the inserts and sends you can just make the window taller.

[jancivil]

It's a thread about stuff that goes on here, which I kind of summed up. Who cares? It's nothing to me. And do not misconstrue this as me caring either, but I can't help but note it's a thread which you feel you're above yet here you are.

Where did i state that i am 'above' the thread?
Quit whilst your behind mate.
Oh but i forget, you DON'T care...

Right here:
"Frankly i don't know what you mean.. i use forums mainly for learning.
it is very easy to skip pass threads that are basically argument for arguments sake?"
I'm behind what, now? We're both arguing for argument's sake, or you now seem to think there's something at stake. I admit I didn't like the condescension and I noted the pointlessness of it. And you doubled down on it. It's that kind of thread, though isn't it. Cheers.