Just had a demo of Cockos - Reaper

[h_double]

I'm very impressed with Reaper. Incredibly stable and very featureful in most of the important ways, and an incredible value.

60 dollars is for the non-commercial license. If you plan on selling your work (more than a dozen copies to family and friends etc) you are supposed to pay for a commercial license at $250.

Commercial license is $220 and you don't need it as long as "you are an individual or business, using REAPER for commercial use, and the yearly gross revenue does not exceed USD $20,000."

[leedsquietman]

Thanks for the info. Of course, I make way more than 20k a year (in my dreams )

[4.33]

what reaper really shines in (compared to live):
- customizable key commands
- audio editing

[IP]

IF!
i rewire live into reaper
and tweak some parameters in live

then will reaper's undo/history tool catch the changes i made to live?

If yes i could buy reaper only for that ... 60 dollars for a proper undo/save/history handling !!

*i could try it myself but i need to rtfm first about rewiring :p

[Cryptic UK]

I think Reaper sounds better than Live

[logic_user99]

Just DL'ed Reaper 3.35 Intel beta (AFAIK I don't have an x86 chip in my Macbook so the 64bit version is no good for me... although it is an Alpha)

Gonna try it out again over lunchtime. I need a decent tracking DAW.

[KrisM]

I keep wanting to like Reaper, but every time I sit down with it I just can't bring myself to customizing the interface and menus. Maybe one day. I definitely appreciate what they're doing with it.

Just DL'ed Reaper 3.35 Intel beta (AFAIK I don't have an x86 chip in my Macbook so the 64bit version is no good for me... although it is an Alpha)

Gonna try it out again over lunchtime. I need a decent tracking DAW.

MacBook = Intel x86. If it's an original MacBook from early 2006, then it's a Core Duo (32-bit). In late 2006 they moved to the Core 2, which is 64-bit.

[ethios4]

Wow, they have really brought Reaper up! Looking pretty amazing, gonna demo it now!

[housemusiclover]

i could see myself switching as soon as previewed loops are automatically synced and stretched ala Live (or did one of the gazillion updates bring that feature already?)

[elxicano]

There really is a lot to like about the direction of Reaper... I own a non-commercial license for it. I don't do any music production in Reaper, but it has helped me with troubleshooting plugin compatibility issues.

I do like the price model and think the 5MB model is absolutely great and even better considering the small footprint on your system. As mentioned before... there are lots of useful plugins (some of which can be used freely in any host: http://www.reaper.fm/reaplugs/ ) and the fact that this doesn't come with all the extra samples is sort of a breath of fresh air... but I have to admit that maybe I feel like that since Live is my primary host.

Anyway, I definitely look forward to wherever they're taking this. Mac users, don't count this one out so soon... the Mac version is relatively new.

[delicioso]

i could see myself switching as soon as previewed loops are automatically synced and stretched ala Live (or did one of the gazillion updates bring that feature already?)

I thought Reaper already has elastique audio stretching built-in? Seems like the big thing it misses compared to Live is the session view.

[nathannn]

the stuff i think makes reaper so intriguing is:

people dont ever shut up about how great it is

people will demo it and say "wow after hours of twiddling around i can customize it to do exactly what i am already doing in my current daw"

64 bit summing yes!... now what do i do with this... i know! i will waste more time reading the manual to see that i can already do this.

reaper is confusing and has so many options that most people dont need so it must be better right?

reaper's price is great and sound on sound told me it was great.

reaper loads so quick.. if it loads that quick than surely i will be able to pump out hits even faster than on my current daw.. that is of course after i spend the next month customizing .

oooh after hours on hours i finally found a tiny feature that my current daw doesnt have... of course i never knew i was missing this feature until now.. the next release of my current daw better have this feature that i will use for novelty sake.

yeah.. theme!!!! instead of making music i can now apply a theme that slightly makes the daw look like my current daw.

reaper's dl size is so tiny... the code must be "tight" right?....that must mean its better or something.

i can route any track to any track... of course my current daw allows me to do the same thing but reaper has a routing matrix...

with all these wonderful routings i can now pretend that i am in a huge analog studio....whipppeeee!!! now i can spend hours routing crap to other crap... i could just drag and drop effects here and there or use abletons racks... but piss on that... there is a routing matrix!!

if i ever come up with an idea for an effect i can code it myself.... an easier way would be to use effects i already have and apply them to something like abletons racks and use a simple routing function.... but why??? i now have the ability to write my own effect that will most certainly sound like something that i could have done in 4 minutes of effect chaining.

i can now mix everything i made in my current daw into reaper... all audio has been recorded in my current daw but i am bypassing my current daws audio engine by mixing in reaper! right?... no???

i can trigger loops in lives session view and then use reaper to arrange.... of course i cant use any vst's nor vsti' through rewire and re route only routes lives master track... but maybe i will bounce all the stems from live into reaper and arrange this way... of course its the same as using lives arrange view but reaper has that one feature that live doesn't.. i dont know what the feature is good for nor how it can be implemented but its there.



people people people!!!!!!

you get no benefit in rewiring or rerouting live into another program at all!!!!!!... you actually lose functionality by doing this..

if you want to mix into another program the only benefit you get is looking at another programs mixer thats it!

i can see the benefit in editing in another program just to be able to do something simple like fade one piece of audio into another.
even people that record into live and are mixing into something else because they think it sounds better are getting no benefit because everything was recorded into live in the first place.


if you read on reapers web site it says something like "check the program out... there may be features in there that your current daw already has"..... ok.... so then why not just use my current daw...

reaper has no transient based time stretching.
reaper has nothing like session view
reapers alternative to racks is effect folders which take a hell of a long time to configure basic needs"

another thing..
reaper has no official user manual.
down loadable user manual is some times annoying because it will say something like.... reaper offers wonderfull routing possibility's... we wont get into them now but they will be touched on some where else in the manual.... im not even joking about this...this example happens several times in the user manual.


as it stand right now..
reaper is very capable of becoming a great program in the future. but the current version of reaper does not really offer any great new features. all of reapers wonderful features have been available for a while within other daws.


if reaper had 360 degree panning than i would say... ok reaper is better than my current daw... or if reaper surpassed session view i would say the same.. but it has neither.


i do like cockos copy protection policy and it sounds like they are nice guys... but this program is no different from what you are used to using. trust me on this.. i have been checking this program out quite frequently since 2006...
nothing has made me want to switch yet.

today i deleted everything reaper related off my hard drive and decided not to piss around with it until they do add something that not every other daw already has.

[IP]

The point is not to compare reaper with live or to try to prove that is the best daw or something.

the point (of my topic) is that ...

HEY!
we have a new big player here (and is growing faster than anyone else)...

pros/cons opinions etc


*people are great*

[leedsquietman]

Live has it's own strengths and Reaper (or a trad linear DAW) are things which can COMPLIMENT Live.

You shouldn't think about chucking Live away with the bath water.

When it's customized Reaper offers a much more intuitive mixing environment than Live, as does Cubase, Logic, etc. Live's biggest strength is in it's compositional tools, session view, and tweakability for live performance. You can mix in it, but it's fiddly and not having proper dual monitor support of session and arrangement makes it less appealing for mixing. It also tends to use more CPU overhead than trad DAWS meaning you have to freeze more tracks, bounce files, or use fewer FX.

It doesn't do automation as well as trad DAWS and it is more fiddly to do detailed audio editing. Reaper has the Elastique Pro timestretching algorithm, it had it before Live - it has great slicing options and some ability with warping although less flexible than Live. Live has always had a market because of it's many warping modes and such, which obviously is huge for DJs but many musicians wanting to record a band or record their softsynth parts into a digital tape machine type recorder don't require that type of functionality, they just need solid performance and the ability to edit audio and MIDI and use plugins. Live in it's current incarnation doesn't provide universal stability and it's audio and MIDI editing could be better.



Then again, nothing beats Live for coming up with tunes from scratch, improvisation and having a blast.

[nathannn]

When it's customized Reaper offers a much more intuitive mixing environment than Live, as does Cubase, Logic, etc.

like what?
i seriously dont understand what these other daws have for mixing that live lacks..
is it how live handles inserts?
is it metering?
i really don't see a difference.

maybe its because i dont come from a traditional way of sequencing that i cant see how live lacks in the stereo mixing department.

It doesn't do automation as well as trad DAWS and it is more fiddly to do detailed audio editing. Reaper has the Elastique Pro timestretching algorithm, it had it before Live - it has great slicing options and some ability with warping although less flexible than Live. Live has always had a market because of it's many warping modes and such, which obviously is huge for DJs but many musicians wanting to record a band or record their softsynth parts into a digital tape machine type recorder don't require that type of functionality, they just need solid performance and the ability to edit audio and MIDI and use plugins. Live in it's current incarnation doesn't provide universal stability and it's audio and MIDI editing could be better.

i agree that midi editing within live could be better but reaper definitely does not excel in this area either.

also everything you mentioned above that reaper has live also has.

reaper may have had elastic pro first but big deal.. live has it now and i still dont use it.

it seems like everyone that is using dual apps with live is really missing out by just using live to fire clips..
how boring.
live is alot more than just session view.
and like i have already said.. what good is lives session view if you cant use it to its full potential by adding vst's and vsti's
live becomes nothing but random clip firing....

its like alot of people are still looking at live how it was looked at around version 2.
just for live use pissing around firing clips.

if this is what live is intended for than surely they would have just made session view as a vst and left everything else out.


whatever...
i guess if people want to use two daws at the same time then thats up to them ,but it really seems like a waste of money and time.

seriously though how is mixing better in another program than it is in live?

the only reason im going off like this is because, once every couple months some one post on here about the extreme benefits of using reaper.
its very annoying especially when i have sat with reaper customized it blah blah blah and just realized that i am doing everything in it that i can already do in my daw of choice.. i have a feeling that is what most people also do when they start using reaper. they customize the hell out of it and in the end it does nothing more than there current daw already does.
i really think reaper is being hyped because of the price... lets be honest they are pretty much giving it away.