Reaper 4.5 is out..

I have Sonar X1/X2.  I have Ableton 8/9 and Reason 7.
 
Don't need no mo' stinkin DAWs.
 
TOOO MUCH TO LEARN!!!!!!!!!!
 
Reaper looks nice though and the list of bug fixes is quite nice.

Reaper is my 2nd DAW.. although I don't use it much, compared to X2, I bought it just for one feature. It can rewire to both 32 / 64 bits apps. I used it to rewire to Vocoloids (32bits) successfully.

Looks like they finally worked on the midi editor...
"support for 14-bit CC messages in piano roll and event list"
that is a nice add-on

Hmmm... tempted to give Reaper another try, but I'm kinda like MachineClaw, I don't need it and I don't know if I'm up for learning another DAW.  But then again maybe Cakewalk has kept me in long enough because I'm too lazy to learn a new way of doing things.

Machine,
 
Maybe more than a starter DAW.
 
I use two softwares to get work done, Sonar and Reaper. Regressed back to Sonar 8.5.3.
 
There are midi functions that are superior in Sonar and functions like notation that Reaper does not have. Everyone here knows how to fire up Sonar, but not necessarily aware of what Reaper offers that Sonar cannot.
 
I'm not a fanboy of either, just a hobby guy objectively looking at the features needed in my workflow, and my setup means **** to a tree to the next guy, so mileage may vary...
 
The Reaper advantage kicks in for keyboard players.
 
Greatest respect for the developers and forum warriors for each DAW. Some severely bright souls carrying on the battle in both realms.
 
My objective and isolated opinion...  Reaper is a bit more stable against crashes but not immune. Also, gone are the days when the dev would personally dive into your feature request and fix things for you. Had to happen as a few cultists turn into a flood of users.
Reaper is progressing rapidly, but the devs march to their own drummer. Irritating and deep bugs are there for years without fix or acknowlegement. In some ways no better than here.
 
For the keyboardist, the ability to chain synths and route the midi flow is way beyond Sonar. We've asked for this for years in Sonar, falling on deaf ears.
 
The structure of vst/vsti browser banks is refreshing and way advanced over Sonar, as well as no limitation on the number of plugs used by those of us functioning in excess.
 
Learning curve is steep, but worth the time to comprehend what the program is doing.
 
$60 is cheap for a license and masks the fact that this level of functionality cannot be gotten elsewhere for any price. Still looking, but for me, the combination of Sonar and Reaper cover it all.
 
The Reaper guys are on the same moral hi ground as Sonar, not punishing their users with dongles and other activation ****. Takes a couple minutes to download the Reaper DAW and (with a bit of struggle) personally evluate what the hype is about. Keyboard players will not be let down.
 
http://www.reaper.fm/
 
Blessings on the devs and forum members for both killer DAW's.
 
John
 
 

munmun
Is Reaper VST3 friendly?

Yes it is...

EDIT..you can use VST 3's...but it does not have full VST 3 support yet that I'm aware of..
 
However, you can sidechain ANY plugin...even if it doesn't support Sidechaining...

Love Reaper, thanks for the heads up.

Thats why I love reaper, plus I can install it on a flash drive.

I ended up trying it out for a couple of days and liked it enough that I went ahead and paid the $60 for the basic license.  (Already had an update between the time I installed the demo and the time I decided to buy it too.) 
 
I'm not ready to drop SONAR and start using Reaper all the time, but it's cool to have another DAW option to play around with.  If I can figure out how to route BFD2 the way I do in SONAR, I'll be tempted to use it more.  (Need to read up a bit I suppose.)

Thanks Larry.  I figured out how to do it the way I like it.  I don't want to have everything mapped to a separate track but I like to group my outputs from BFD2.  I do a few things in the BFD mixer and use the DAW mixer for subgroups of similar drum elements.  So I have a mono kick, a mono snare, and stereo mixes for cymbals, toms, and the various room sends.
 
I was trying to start with the basic layout and add the few tracks I needed, but I ended up inserting all of them like you said and deleting the 20+ tracks I don't need.  Saved it as a track template and made a starting project template with that layout and a few guitar and vocal tracks that are grouped in folders with submixes going on. That tends to be the main layout I use for the guitar stuff and I'll add various soft synths to get different sounds.
 
Their concept of sub-mixes is a lot different than SONAR, so I hope I did it in the most efficient way.  I'm kind of just jumping in without reading anything and figuring it out as I go along. (The way I do most things. LOL)  I think I need to read up on their concept of folders and mixing groups and things like that.  Also, if they do track layers better than SONAR, I might switch.  I hate the lanes in SONAR.

This is pretty kewl...I have it installed and it looks awesome...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAGb2pnEXlU

 I really like that Theme....very kewl....

I've been trying to figure out the side-chaining using compressors that don't natively support side chaining and there is just something I must be missing.  Got it to work using the Reaper compressor and Cakewalks CA-2A, but I haven't been able to make sense of getting it to work with UAD compressors.  I've read that it is possible, but don't quite get how to assign the trigger channels in the plugin.  I'd like to compress my bass and trigger the compression off of the kick for example.  Any tips?

I think I sort of got it to kind of work, but need to try another compressor and see if it works better.  I found some info on the Reaper forum that showed a right-click menu that I had overlooked.  It shows the inputs for the channel and you can route channels 3&4 to trigger the compressor, but it also uses the bass signal that's coming in to trigger the compressor.  It appears that it mixes the two signals and just adds a slight pumping on each kick hit, even when you crank the level of the send up all the way.
 
Naturally it works perfectly with the CA-2A or with the compressor that comes with Reaper, and I think I have a few more that actually have side-chaining, so it's kind of a non-issue. 
 
Would post more, but since this is the Cakewalk forum I'll just say that X3 better be mind blowing if they want me to spend more for the upgrade than I just spent for Reaper and the next two full version upgrades.