sharke
I don't know why the need to pooh pooh videos in general though. They have their place and are definitely better than a manual for certain things.

i consider videos supplemental to a good manual (or two - user guide and reference), for demonstrating particular things - but stepping through a detailed written "how to" and executing each step yourself provides a deeper learning experience that watching someone else do it... good technical documentation is becoming a lost art
 
and you can't watch a video in the bath (well, ok... )

abacab

sharke
 
I've set up the synths in Reaper with a view to recording them again with Reaktor set to 96Khz, and I'm finding that I can play the project just fine with nothing bounced, even at a lower buffer size. It's incredible that such an amazingly powerful and snappy DAW is only $60 and is developed by a company with only 2 programmers. 

All that in an 11MB installer...  Amazing!!! 

 
I'm guessing that 11MB installer is also downloading extra data as part of the installation though? 

abacab
i guess so, since the installed Reaper.exe is 12.2MB and the entire Reaper folder is 61.6MB.  Gonna need a new hard drive for all that, LOL!

If you are shopping for a new hard drive, please consider larger one in case you plan to open Sonar projects in Reaper. That extension is huge. It is already 70kB and you will not believe it, it is still growing! I do not exclude that when it is able to convert everything, it can cross 100kB border!
 

Speaking of Reaper, why is it so efficient with CPU use? A friend who is a programmer said it may be because it was built on assembly language. I don't know if that's true or even what that means. But it must be doing something under the hood. I also have been using Samplitude, but it's a hog on resources compared to Reaper. 

The man behind Reaper (Justin Frankel) is a genius when it comes to software/programming.
No different than a musical prodigy...
Take that skill... and start with a clean slate. 
Take some of the best bits from all the top DAWs (especially early on) and put an improved spin on them.
Reaper started as a "spin-off" of Vegas Pro (Justin was frustrated with lack of audio specific features/development when Sony bought it and shifted focus to Video).
"Necessity is the mother of invention"
 
Small dynamic company that can incorporate changes/improvements quickly.
Their situation business-wise is very unique.  They're not reliant on Reaper turning X amount of profit.

azslow3
Their situation business-wise is very unique.  They're not reliant on Reaper turning X amount of profit.


I mean from what I can see in Reaper, the biggest investment of Justin into it is his own time.
There is no sky buildings with ebony furniture, no "investors" which want profit just from money and there is no "top managers", which understand nothing in music, nothing in programming but always claim own super importance (even when business is going down, as the result of "top management").
I mean I can imagine Reaper is profitable, in terms of money, for developers. And I can not care less about anyone else.

FWIW, I didn't say Reaper isn't turning a profit.  
There's little overhead...
But I seriously doubt Justin is overly concerned about it (as long as it's not losing large amounts).
 
If you read about Justin's background, unless he has an absurdly lavish life-style, I don't think he needs to worry about money.   
That's a *drastically* different situation than most DAW software companies... and their employees.

I think ... No. But ... what is god?
Comparing DAWs is like looking for the best looking girl ever.
 
For me Cubase is the best choice. For you? Maybe Audition, Harrison Mixbus? I don't know, because it's YOUR turn to find it out.
 
No other DAW is comparable to Sonar, no other DAW is comparable to Cubase, no other DAW ist comparable to S1. More?
 

Sry, Justin made me laugh ;) His product is far away from a to-go-DAW. No audio-editor, less intense for an usable gui, dialogs like Win 3.11 for workgroups, obsessive usage of one track type only, no usable drum-editor and so on and so on ...

awake1994
Sry, Justin made me laugh ;) His product is far away from a to-go-DAW. No audio-editor, less intense for an usable gui, dialogs like Win 3.11 for workgroups, obsessive usage of one track type only, no usable drum-editor and so on and so on ...

I've been using Reaper on a project for just a few days and in that time I've already decided that it's light years ahead of Sonar in terms of design, usability, stability, bugs etc. And that's just with the default theme. Just compare the track managers for the two DAW's for example. Reaper's may have an "old" look about it, but it terms of functionality it's so much better (and actually works properly, unlike Sonar's). 

After digging in deep on the program for about 3 weeks, I can easily duplicate and even expand on my workflow from SONAR.  The fact that a track is a track is a track with Reaper may seem off putting at first, but the extra flexibility that it gives you is amazing. You can set up all kinds of default track templates and effects chains to make things easy for you as you see fit. I just started working with mouse modifiers (thanks Alexi for the tip) and that has made certain other things easier.  Can't beat the CPU usage either. It doesn't even blink when I start loading up Kontakt. I've been slowly migrating over at my home studio and will probably push to get additional licenses at my work now that I know this will do the job we need. 
 
 

Yeah I can imagine that if you're just starting out then Reaper's "bare bones" install is probably a little off putting when other DAW's are an all-in-one package. But over the years I've accumulated a pretty solid set of tools, including just about every kind of plugin effect available, countless sample libraries, a couple dozen synths, drum machines & sequencers, analysis tools and everything else. Plus I have an Adobe subscription and can use Audition if I need to do any kind of fine grained audio editing or processing. So a bare bones install is actually a plus. 
 
After having used Sonar for years it's been great to discover that there are better ways of doing things. The "one size fits all" track philosophy of Reaper is a real no-brainer - Bitwig has it as well. It makes you think, why would it be any other way? Bitwig is a really cool program as well, it's almost like a mini-Reaktor with a DAW built in. The sound design possibilities are endless, and it has some really useful features, like being able to set a track's waveform as the background for the piano roll so that you can line your notes up using an audio track as a visual guide - I believe Ableton and FL Studio has that as well. 
 
I now believe that Sonar was just trying to be too many things at once and consequently never really excelled at any of them. I'd really love to see it come back with a lot of the chaff cut out, and streamlined into an exceptional audio-oriented DAW. Whenever I hear people say that Sonar is the greatest DAW hands down, it's usually people who use it to record and mix audio, they barely touch upon 30% of its features and never experience the awful problems with stability and bugs that heavier users experience. Get rid of the Matrix view, maybe even the step sequencer, forget about the notation view and everything else that only a tiny % of users cared about. I can't imagine how many expensive development hours were wasted by Cakewalk in upgrading and maintaining features that hardly anyone used. 

∞

Jim Roseberry

sharke
I can imagine that Justin is selling a lot of licenses at $60 a pop. Even if he's only selling 10 a day, that's $4200 in revenue a week, more than enough to sustain a comfortable lifestyle if your overheads are low (and as far as I'm aware he's not shipping out boxed copies or spending a ton on Facebook advertising). 

I believe Justin made ~90M when he sold WinAmp... and he was what, 19 years old?
I think he's OK.  

Wow I did not know it was the same person!

Woops, wrong thread. Ignore
 
I agree, Cubase is a bit overpriced at 600.00. But companies charge what they want, what they think they the product is worth, and what they think they can get for it. Some are always higher than the rest, even when there is no real reason in terms of the product. It's the same in sample libraries. East West has great 50% sales. Vienna has 15% sales. And their stuff is priced higher to begin with. But they stay in business. Consumers have choices. If you have the bucks/euros/pesos etc, spend what you want and get what you want. Or if you don't, shop around. It all works out. Except when it doesn't, and a great product goes tits up (sound familiar?).

I got a subscription to Spotify a few years ago and have never looked back. Have never used a media player since. Jeez I remember spending endless hours curating and tagging my MP3 collection back in the day, and I haven't even opened the damn folder for about 7 years!