First off, You can install REAPER as a PORTABLE APPLICATION by CHECKING the BOX from the installation file. 
 
I am using Sonar Platinum, and I have every intention to stick with Sonar Platinum forever to record my music. It just works for me and has everything I need to do so. Hopefully my backup play will work, but if it does not then I will move over to the Reaper Daw. 
 
I have NOTHING to do with REAPER or their SITE OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT!
 
Or that is : I AM NOT TRYING TO SELL YOU ONE WAY OR ANOTHER ON A DAW!!!! Over the years I have come to know many of your that I chat with in emails and over these forums, so I thought I would try and provide some information that might help you if you feel you need to change DAW's. 
 
A while back I piddled with Reaper, and I found that it could pretty much do anything and everything. I am a Sonar Fan, it does everything also for MY NEEDS. But I do realize some of you need to move forward and to a DAW that has support. 
 
I just wanted to offer some tips and links if you want to give the Reaper DAW a try. 
 
Keep in mind first and foremost, you can install Reaper as a portable DAW, you just need to PAY ATTENTION when installing and select the right CHECK options. You can install it on a Flash drive or whatever if you want by doing so. 
 
Using the Reaper Daw : 
 
One thing you will find switching from Sonar to Reaper is the menu's have every option under the sun on them. You can simplify them by adding the EASY MENU, the DEFAULT options are still there, they are at the bottom of every drop down menu. 
You can get the Easy  Menu's here :    https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=58672&highlight=menu
 
Make Reaper Look like Cakewalk Themes : 
As for Cakewalk looking THEMES, Here's a couple of links for that, although I caution you that it's best to learn the standard REAPER theme before you go making changes on themes because if you don't know what your doing from the start selections might be irritating if changes themes.  
 
Two Cakewalk based Themes : 
 
The Triton : STONAR THEME : You can get it here, scroll to the bottom of the screen to see the option to get it. 
http://tritonreaperthemes.webs.com/free
 
There is another them called Alternative here that looks a lot like Cakewalk themes : https://stash.reaper.fm/theme/1385/Alternate.zip
 
For those wondering about vocal pitch correction, you can do all of that in Reaper, it's built in and simple to do. Here's a link to how to do that : https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=AVd8xpZ6rNU
 
You don't need Melodyne, Although Reaper announced recently from what I heard that they will be soon supporting ARA. And I should mention that if you have Melodyne Essentials, it works fine for now in Reaper, it just does NOT have ARA with the current version. 
 
As for Notation, That is a feature I never used, but here is a video link that will tell you more on that feature in Reaper. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dO6doe5hw4
 
If I were you, and you try out Reaper I would create a TEMPLATE for your basic use and save it and build off of that. It makes things easier when you are trying to start again after trying to learn a new DAW. 
 
Reaper can do anything that Sonar can, as far as I know. The thing that so many people miss are the JS scripts, there are a TON of them. 
 
I would suggest that you install the SW for REAPER from here for your PC : http://sws-extension.org/ 
 
After doing so, run Reaper and check out the JS plugs, it's insane at how many actions there are for that. 
 
LOOK : I am not trying to sell you one way or another on any daw, But I know a lot of you are looking to change and I thought I would offer a little bit of advice for those looking a the Reaper daw to make things perhaps a bit easier. 
 
For me I plan on sticking with Sonar Platinum, but Reaper is my backup plan just in case. 
 
As for those of you wanting to know more, or see more in action, you can find out about anything you want to know HERE : 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq297H7Ca98HlB5mVFHGSsQ/videos
 
Happy Holidays everyone! I hope this helps someone, and that is my sole purpose!
 
Bobby
 
 
 

Something else to THINK about.  The way REAPER handles FOLDERS is a bit confusing at first. When you create a FOLDER and add track to it in Reaper it makes it a BUS, so you need to select the FOLDER track and change the SEND options to where the "MASTER SEND" is not checked, that way it doesn't control the volume for EVERY SINGLE track in the FOLDER. 
 

Serious_Noize!
Something else to THINK about.  The way REAPER handles FOLDERS is a bit confusing at first. When you create a FOLDER and add track to it in Reaper it makes it a BUS, so you need to select the FOLDER track and change the SEND options to where the "MASTER SEND" is not checked, that way it doesn't control the volume for EVERY SINGLE track in the FOLDER.

This is of course if you are trying to make REAPER work like SONAR, which you CAN do.  Alternatively, you could allow REAPER to function like REAPER works natively, and might find out that you like it.  That's what I did.

the_user_formally_known_as_glennbo

Serious_Noize!
Something else to THINK about.  The way REAPER handles FOLDERS is a bit confusing at first. When you create a FOLDER and add track to it in Reaper it makes it a BUS, so you need to select the FOLDER track and change the SEND options to where the "MASTER SEND" is not checked, that way it doesn't control the volume for EVERY SINGLE track in the FOLDER.

This is of course if you are trying to make REAPER work like SONAR, which you CAN do.  Alternatively, you could allow REAPER to function like REAPER works natively, and might find out that you like it.  That's what I did.

Good point. That's the great thing about Reaper, you can make it work however you want. 
 
Bobby
 

If you want to make Reapers cursors like PT you can find out how at this link. 
 
 
https://forum.cockos.com/showpost.php?p=505736&postcount=508
 
 

Another tip for Reaper, not sure what the keys are for Mac. But if you are using Windows and Reaper and you have several theme's and want to switch between theme quickly then 


Hold CTRL + ALT and press PgUP or pgDn to quickly change between the various themes you have installed. 
 
 

Serious_Noize!
Something else to THINK about.  The way REAPER handles FOLDERS is a bit confusing at first. When you create a FOLDER and add track to it in Reaper it makes it a BUS, so you need to select the FOLDER track and change the SEND options to where the "MASTER SEND" is not checked, that way it doesn't control the volume for EVERY SINGLE track in the FOLDER.

Sorry, I could not follow that... if you uncheck "MASTER SEND" in the FOLDER track, till included tracks already have extra sends, you just get no sound from them.
 
But I agree with the confusion after Sonar. The first think I hit in Reaper was "where can I select the OUTPUT bus for a track ???".
 
Since Reaper has almost endless flexibility in routing, at the same time intuitive and with perfectly working defaults (once you understand general approach of routing in Reaper) and Sonar has old "dogmatic" schema extended with hacks like folders/aux tracks, there is absolutely no reason in attempt to mimic that aspect of Sonar in Reaper.
Note: it IS possible to make exact "Sonar folder" in Reaper.
 

azslow3

Serious_Noize!
Something else to THINK about.  The way REAPER handles FOLDERS is a bit confusing at first. When you create a FOLDER and add track to it in Reaper it makes it a BUS, so you need to select the FOLDER track and change the SEND options to where the "MASTER SEND" is not checked, that way it doesn't control the volume for EVERY SINGLE track in the FOLDER.

Sorry, I could not follow that... if you uncheck "MASTER SEND" in the FOLDER track, till included tracks already have extra sends, you just get no sound from them.
 
But I agree with the confusion after Sonar. The first think I hit in Reaper was "where can I select the OUTPUT bus for a track ???".
 
Since Reaper has almost endless flexibility in routing, at the same time intuitive and with perfectly working defaults (once you understand general approach of routing in Reaper) and Sonar has old "dogmatic" schema extended with hacks like folders/aux tracks, there is absolutely no reason in attempt to mimic that aspect of Sonar in Reaper.
Note: it IS possible to make exact "Sonar folder" in Reaper.
 

I apologize, I haven't set that up for a while and made a mistake. 
 
When I first tried Reaper it took a while for me to get used to right clicking over Record for audio tracks to select "Monitor Input & or Monitor Input when recording" because in Sonar you have an icon there you can click for that. 
 
For most it's easier just to have the Folder as a BUS. But for me I prefer to have the Folder track just be a track that does nothing but holds the folders for better organization and route the individual tracks to the Master. It's whatever you would like to use, that's just my personal preference. 
 
If you want the Folder track to just be a FOLDER track and send your individual Child tracks in that folder here's how I do that. You are correct, you have to create the BUS track.
 
If you make say 3 audio tracks, then you select the icon option on the top track to make that track a folder track, the tracks below it become the child tracks for that folder and all the sound from the child tracks will go through the Folder track as it is a BUS for the child tracks at that point.
 
If you don't want that, and would prefer the FOLDER track to work like a folder track where the volume control for the folder track has no effect on the child tracks "Although keep in mind MUTE on the folder track will still MUTE the child tracks, the volume control wont do anything".
 
What you can do is create an audio track bus, CTRL+T or Right Click "Insert Track" and name it "MASTER BUS", when you create that track to be your master bus you will need to drag it all the way to the bottom so that it isn't in that track folder.  
 
On the "MASTER" bus track you created select "ROUTE" and make sure "MASTER SEND" is checked.
 
After doing that go back to your Folder track and select "ROUTE" and uncheck "MASTER SEND".
 
Next step is to go to both the Child tracks in the folder and select "ROUTE" and make sure that "Parent SEND" is "UNCHECKED".
 
After doing this while still in "ROUTE" select "ADD NEW SEND" and have the child tracks send to the "MASTER BUS" you created earlier. Do that for all the Child tracks you wanted routed through the Bus you created. 
 
It's important to note that if you are RECORDING audio that "Input Monitoring needs to be on for the Child tracks" if you don't have that selected you wont see anything that your RECORDING showing on the meter on the bus it is being sent to while you are recording, but that all depends on what you want to do. 
 
It's a bit confusing, and I hope I explained what I was talking about better here. 
 
There's other options and ways to do things. You don't have to open ROUTE every time you want to make a change, you can just right click over it and do some things that way. 
 
 
For me, the first thing I did was to get everything set up and save it as a basic template so the next time I want to record I wont have to do that again.
 
The better menu SET that I mentioned earlier can be very helpful in finding things, but at the same time if your watching the Reaper tutorials and your menu is not the same as theirs it can make finding things harder. Although the good thing with the better menu set is on each drop down menu at the bottom there is always the "DEFAULT MENU :" that you can access to see everything for that drop down menu as it normally is. 
 
 I use Addictive Drums 2 in Reaper, but when I do that I have all the drums on individual tracks in the AD2 Folder, but I leave the Folder track as the Parent BUS. 
 
It's just however you want to work with it. 
 
 
 
 
 

First thank you NOIZE /Bobby and all for this kind very informative and much needed post.
 
I so badly needed this pointer as I am totally devastated being a Sonar Platinum User who invested a "fortune" from his very meagre amount of earning to buy most of the Cakewalk Products with a hope to earn some extra money from his home studio to meet up the ever increasing medical expenditure. Unfortunately everything ended in smoke. 
 
I am giving Reaper a try. I found this very stable, light weight and highly customizable alternative to Sonar.  
 
Could you kindly suggest how to substitute the premium Pro Channel modules of Sonar ( viz. Concrete Limiter, Console Emulator, Some compressors, the Flyout Eq)? Is there any free Reaper compatible alternative of those, especially the "concrete limiter"? 
 
Regards,
Som
 

On of the positive things about the native function of folders in REAPER is that for instance, if you put Kontakt on a track, and designate that track as a folder, then all the child tracks in the folder are instantly sending midi upward to Kontakt, and together they all make a nice neat self contained instrument/audio/midi structure.