Thread: Reaper!! New, almost free DAW

It's been around for a little while now. It certainly deserves your support and mention. ;)

Justin is the founder of Nullsoft and the creator of the original WinAmp. He does this for the love of coding and the challenge of creating. He deserves the success he gets. :D

His personal interaction with his client base and his inexpensive license make this a no-brainer recommendation for people looking for an entry point into the world of computer-based recording. And who knows? In another 2 years of maturity and with the collaboration of a hardware company, he might very well end up producing the next professional app, too!

Greg

There's a few of us that think Reaper's better than the other Daws already

Each to their own, I tried them all and I'm so glad I found Reaper. The speed it loads (2 seconds) and edits, and the extreme personal customisation possible makes it a definite heavyweight contender. It's audio engine is the stablest I've seen (along with Samplitude), it's really geared for fast audio recording and editing.

Anyone sick of bugs and waiting for update fixes to be released, or just waiting for your Daw to load, should definitely check out Reaper. It may not have the huge feature list of other programs, but it's developing fast and it's quite unique and ground breaking in some fields eg routing and keyboard control.

Plus it's got an excellent community behind it :

http://www.cockos.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=20

I hope that wasn't too over zealous, I'm sure you love your daw too...

Reaper is not a fraction of other DAWs. It can't perform/interface with and control gear in a professional studio...yet. It is a good novice/hobby tool.

Originally Posted by sheet

Reaper is not a fraction of other DAWs. It can't perform/interface with and control gear in a professional studio...yet. It is a good novice/hobby tool.

Yet is the operative word, it won't be too long before we get the ping function, Justin can code pretty much anything even without manufacturers cooperation. And for mixing in the box, it rocks! Faster than any other daw I've tried...

What part of the mixing in Reaper is "faster"?

I read something about reaper along time ago. Someone claiming almost the same thing.
Out of curiosity I downloaded reaper..................

My conclusion was, Samp or Sonar is light years ahead of Reaper. Reaper is not even in the same ballpark. JMHO
Peace..........Scoobie

What part of the mixing in Reaper is "faster"?

Well, I meant editing as well as mixing. It opens up in 2 seconds, that's fast. Also many instances are possible, can be set as a fast external editor to open up an item solo. It almost never crashes, if somehow it does it's a fast reload. That's a fair chunk of time saved already. Then we have strip silence and tab-to-transient together for fast drum editing, plus a new audio quantize feature. You don't have to grab the mouse much, almost everything maps to the keyboard. Don't have a mixer, no problem, I have 20 tracks of mute/solo on the F and number keys (I love this feature!), you can have 64 if you want.

You can set mouse behaviour to mimic your favourite daw so you're not bumbling around, the navigation (which I think is ultra important) you set up how you feel comfortable. It's pretty deep if you look in the menus, things like duplicate the complete track including plugins, and changing the order of plugins with a single drag, complete routing changes with a few quick clicks...too many things to list here. Less reliance on the mouse is excellent in my view. Maybe these features don't interest you, that's cool, but it's speeded up my workflow no end. I haven't seen all these things together on the one daw, some aren't on any.

Originally Posted by Scoobie

I read something about reaper along time ago. Someone claiming almost the same thing.
Out of curiosity I downloaded reaper..................

My conclusion was, Samp or Sonar is light years ahead of Reaper. Reaper is not even in the same ballpark. JMHO
Peace..........Scoobie

A long time ago is nearly a different program. I've been using it for 4 weeks, it's changed a lot just in that time. Bug fixes come out almost instantly!

I like Samplitude, I still have it set as a secondary external editor just in case I need it, but I hardly ever do. But for many reasons, I prefer Reaper for basic audio recording and editing, it just works better for me. I really don't care about the price, it's just a very nice bonus.

We have pro users from Sonar, Samplitude, Pro Tools, Nuendo, Logic...they prefer Reaper. You might not, but that's just personal taste, nothing to do with Reaper being a "hobby" program. It's 64 bit, low latency optimized and burns to CD...sounds like a contender to me. Once the midi and hardware latency compensation is completed, along with anything else that's lacking, it'll be very hard to fault IMO. It probably won't be that long at the current rate of development, Justin never sleeps!

I'm not trying to start a flaming war here, just keeping people informed of developments...use whatever daw you prefer

Cheers

Originally Posted by Scoobie

I read something about reaper along time ago. Someone claiming almost the same thing.
Out of curiosity I downloaded reaper..................

My conclusion was, Samp or Sonar is light years ahead of Reaper. Reaper is not even in the same ballpark. JMHO
Peace..........Scoobie

Can you give any examples of what you felt were missing?

Also: "a long time ago" in Reaper-world means you know little if anything about Reaper today. I don't know what Reaper was like "a long time ago", but I know that right know, if Justin gets it working perfectly with UAD-1 , I'll have a hard time finding ANYTHING I like better in Nuendo 2.11! (intensive focus on this particular issue is scheduled to begin any day now, as Justin is borrowing a UAD-card from a troubled user for a couple of weeks, so that he can perfect it)

Apart from the lightning startup and virtually inexistent footprint, I really like the way plugins are handled. You can have as many as you want, drag'n-dropping them is really quick, saving and retrieving chains of plugins, changing the order of plugs - it's all lightning fast. Mixer is quick and reconfigurable, can have more than one row of faders/meters.

So many things you (or at least I) realize are unnecessary with other DAWs. For instance: choosing what kind of track you want to create - midi, audio, group/bus, fx-return or something else....why bother? In Reaper, a track is a track, and everything else is just a waste of time.

No tools or modes - you don't need them, you just think you do. I guess the MIDI-part is still a little behind the majority of the competition, though it's enough for what I do.

I can't imagine what computing in general would be like, if Justin had done the main OS on his own... :shock: ...thanks, Bill! :roll: