Is REAPER the current best long term choice?

[rlared]

Reaper is a community developed DAW when you consider the extensions which make it really powerful. Without them most people would not have it as their first choice (I'm guessing). I personally prefer that everything in the DAW is coded by the vendor (just a personal philosophy thing) and I also prefer a DAW to be visually attractive to look at, and I prefer to work in the box as much as possible with included instruments and effects. Also I like less complexity. I've tried Reaper multiple times but it's not my cup of tea for those reasons.

[SomethingSomeone]

Thanks for all this guys, I feel inspired now. I'm feeling good about taking it on and learning something new. I did subscribe to a few youtube tutorial channels, one recommended here. I have a million projects started and ongoing in MIxcraft, so I don't know wtf I'm going to do about that since I'm assuming I can't just transfer all those tracks to Reaper. I know you can mix down to stems but those stems wouldn't then be editable in the piano roll in another daw right? It's fine I'm not dying to get out of Mixcraft, I really quite like it, just what a drag when the final stages of the song come on and it's heavy and dragging down the speed I can work in the daw.

[Smasha]

Yes,stabilty is rock solid.

It pretty much takes any plugin you throw at it.

JS plugins,amazing.

And you can customise to your liking.

Incredible DAW for the money.

The only thing is it does not look purty.

It's like your fav restaurant noone knows about because they will not enter due to the old chairs and tables insde but what you put in your mouth is delicious.

Those other DAWS are Fish and Chippery.

You know those Fish N Chip shops that charge extra because they put "pery" on the end.

Reaper is the Swiss Army knife,it can do anything.

P.S. Meanwhile Cubase,who I want to love has brought an update out that crashes the DAW and wrecks some of their Midi remote functions.

Cubase in one song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnpfP9Y8fms

Cubase can't even assign VSTi's to their proper midi input channels.

Reaper can.

Cubase plays both regardless.

In REaper,Addictive Keys ,if I set channel 10 as it's midi channel input,it only plays when I use my controller pads assigned to midi channel 10 and DOES not play on the keyboard assigned to midi channel 1.


In Cubase,Addictive Keys plays on Midi channel one when I assign it to midi channel 10.

i have gone from one daw to the other to recheck my settings and Cubase still plays on a piano keyboard set to midi channel 1 when I have the midi input assigned to midi channel 10.

Cubase users should be sent a can of bug spray on purchase,it is THAT buggy.

[Trensharo]

If you switch to Reaper, which I love and moved over to fulltime a few years ago, then I'd recommend starting with the Reaper Blog series called something like "the defaults are wrong". Kenny Gioa/Reaper Mania recently did a similar, less comprehensive series aimed more at total beginners, but the Reaper Blog one is the key one to watch IMO. Once you have it setup well, and understand the myriad of preferences, Reaper becomes a breeze to work with.

Reaper has the fewest cons of any major DAW when it comes to functionality (IMO) and performance is great. But does Reaper present everything it offers in the prettiest or slickest way? Usually not. Does it offer tools to help you compose out of the box like Chord Tracks and Step Sequencers built right in? Not built in, no (but there are scripts/extensions). Will Reaper have some quirks that annoy you? Yeah, all DAWs do. But overall, I think it's best the DAW on the market for experienced users.

The issue is not that it doesn't present everything it offers in the "prettiest or slickest way" - and, frankly, that's passing the buck of bad design to the user's preferences.

The issue is that it's a badly designed piece of software that has had extreme extensibility built-in to a pass the responsibility of crafting a decent UX from the developers/designers to the end user.

End users have better things to do with their time than to spend money to turn around and do what the people they paid for the product should have done before it released.

I understand the potential "side benefits" of this type of product management (you can ignore everything UX-related and focus on core functional areas), but I cannot endorse this development model. Open Source software has long had a reputation for having awful UX design, but in those cases the products were free (as in speech) and no one was paying for the privilege of using it. This is not the case for REAPER. It isn't an open source project. It isn't even a free product.

It's a commercial product form developers that willfully refuse to address these core issues, backed by users who tell you to "fix it for them if you don't like it."

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As for the OP, everyone has a product on the market that they will jive with. You just have to try them. It's never a bad idea to tryout different options here and there, even if you are "satisfied" with the option you're using right now. It's hard to be dissatisfied with anything if you are ignorant of what competing solutions have to offer.

This applies to all DAWs - including REAPER. The Trial is generous and you should try it. If you like it, then stick with it ... at least until something you prefer more comes along.

[Michael L]

You must customise Reaper for each use case, and at best have a 'portable install' for each.
Kenny Gioia has made eight (8) Reaper portable installs for his different uses.
This is different from how other DAWs work. Not better/worse, just different.
That approach does not fit how I work now, but maybe in the future?

[rafa1981]

When you try it, at the beginning the most important thing is to know about the '?' key (at least on Windows). That opens the action list for the window you are in.

There are all actions listed with its shorcuts among other things. So you type "mixer" in the "Filter" box you see related actions to the mixer and its shortcuts. If you type "item navigation" or "next" you can see things that can be done related to movement. E.g. my arrow keys move to next previous items on a track. I have customized what the mouse wheels do.

As said, this also works on the MIDI editor or any screen. There are different actions depending on the context you are in.

Actions can also be composed, so you can create an action that is a serial sequence of other actions. You'll discover that.

It's just a matter of trying the DAW, finding what's annoying and remap it to how you like it. If you split items often, assign a keyboard shortcut, if you join them same. At the end you are mostly navigating and working using no menus and doing a lot of stuff through keyboard shortcuts.

Expect it to be a bit distracting at first.

Save your customizations on Preferences (ctrl+p)->General->Export configuration(button), as you will be probably investing some time and don't want to redo them on new machines/installs.

This theme has also been working well for me, but themes are more to taste: https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=266755

[rafa1981]

Dupe

[digitalboytn]

I've been using Reaper as my main DAW for nearly 10 years and now when I work in other DAWs,I find them really hard work ..

Reaper is super quick once you get your head around the idiosyncrasies and the customised workflow allows me to get the job done in far less time...

I work with 3 or 4 templates with the Reaper 5 theme and moving things around inside that framework is a breeze ..

The install file has blown out to 15 MB and it's the best 15 MB I have ever invested in for the studio

[a9k1tp]

Yes, Reaper is current best long-term choice. I even love it for EDM and Hip Hop. It lacks fancy modulators, but it has automation clips which are powerful enough.

[Smasha]

Peace mod theme is great.

[ghettosynth]

Reaper is super quick once you get your head around the idiosyncrasies and the customised workflow allows me to get the job done in far less time...

Yes. I think that it attracts a certain mindset and way of working. People can go on and on about UX and they always do, but, I hope that Cockos continues to ignore those folks. There are plenty of choices if you don't enjoy a more technical way of working with an application.

For those playing the home game, why yes, I do also often prefer the command line for completing certain tasks. There is always a tradeoff between power and ease-of-use for newcomers. Reaper is the kind of tool that rewards you with flexibility that doesn't get in your way once you have learned how to work with it.

[Unaspected]

Reaper is an engineer's DAW. It does what I expect it to and also happens to be very efficient.

As already mentioned, using the action list is essential - and expanding this with SWS extensions will also make your life easier: https://www.sws-extension.org

The scope of Reaper can initially lead to DAW-blindness (so many options - everywhere) but persevere and you'll be rewarded. There are some good YouTube tutorials for each feature that you can look up as you require them. Many of the processes are very quick and painless.

[vurt]

Thanks for all this guys, I feel inspired now. I'm feeling good about taking it on and learning something new. I did subscribe to a few youtube tutorial channels, one recommended here. I have a million projects started and ongoing in MIxcraft, so I don't know wtf I'm going to do about that since I'm assuming I can't just transfer all those tracks to Reaper. I know you can mix down to stems but those stems wouldn't then be editable in the piano roll in another daw right? It's fine I'm not dying to get out of Mixcraft, I really quite like it, just what a drag when the final stages of the song come on and it's heavy and dragging down the speed I can work in the daw.

save as midi files, make presets and make notes of which presets go where.
open midi in new host, assign the relevant instrument and preset, done! just need to remix it.

[jamcat]

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.

[digitalboytn]

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.

Bullshit