jerrypettit
What a great idea, and I hope more DAW manufacturers will do this.  I worry about backup issues.

DAW manufacturers have at least several reasons not to do this:
1) $$$
2) if they provide a converter FROM own DAW, they kind of invite customers to leave
3) if they provide a converter TO own DAW, they can be legally accused. Since they are concurrents and can "steal" customers doing that.
 
Some common interchange standards like OMF are not a problem and many DAWs support more complicated export than just rendered WAV and MIDI. But without project/DAW specific details.
 

Retired lawyer here, and I can't imagine ever getting in trouble over any "illegality" of it.  Who would gripe besides Gibson?  I'll bet if you asked nicely, their lawyers would send you a letter saying "Go for it!" in any event.

Thanks for the opinion. Especially valuable since you was a lawyer. Unfortunately, even in general kind Cakewalk representative has written (in another thread on this forum) that is not welcome.
 
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For testers (but can be interesting to know for other...).
 
Till now, I had no crash reports. Pre-alpha test without crashes is boring 
So its time for the first "crash festival"! No, I do not expect the converter crash, but at least some plug-in probably will.
 
Its time for FXbin and Synth rack, b10 is uploaded. DX(i), VST2(i) (also bridged), VST3(i) should be converted, with saved presets. I have (shortly) tested what I have in Splat.
RapturePro does NOT restore preset. I need more statistic (with other failing plug-ins) to decide how I should workaround that.
 
Note: some plug-ins do not work well in Reaper. VST3 compatibility is going to be improved in the next version, f.e. at the moment ST3 does not work right as VST3. Some Sonitus effects are known for crashing in Reaper, f.e. Compressor. FXChain is not a plug-in, it can not be loaded in Reaper. Sonar locked plug-ins will load, but display warning and refuse to work correctly. All that is outside of my influence...
 
Since I do not have real routing yet, the synth rack is converted as a set of separate tracks, one per synth. Real synth tracks (from the project) are also visible but not yet connected. I have enabled all tracks, even without clips. So you will get much more tracks then before (including some "system" tracks you do not see in Sonar). But you still will not see buses. That mess will be cleaned once routing is converted (the very next task).
 
Also note updated instructions for alpha testers on my forum (how to report problems with plug-ins).
 
Happy testing! 

I've been following this thread, this is brilliant. I'll be purchasing Reaper shortly. AZ, you are one very talented and generous person. Thank you.
 
Rocky 

Rocky,
 
There is a donate page to support Alexy.
 

Thanks for all the work on this. I'm about 8 hours away from being able to do any testing but will report back after that on loading projects with fx.
 
bluzdog, you'll love Reaper once you get past the learning curve. I never took the program seriously, but that was because I hadn't messed with it since 2012 or so. It's come a long way and with some patience, it's well worth it.
 
 
 
 

Some Sonitus effects are known for crashing in Reaper, f.e. Compressor
 
The compressor issue may due to it's sidechainng features. This was discussed a while back by Craig Anderton and others.
 
 

b10 works like a champ emwhy. I did a quick test this morning. It even created a track for my Aux tracks in this somewhat mammoth project I test (53 audio tracks, a gazillion plugs and 4 aux tracks). No MIDI in this project but I have others that I test for that.

VST3 compatibility is going to be improved in the next version, f.e. at the moment ST3 does not work right as VST3
 
Might this be because vst3 support was not fully implemented with SONAR until X3? I think you said you're developing this on X2.
 
Just Another Bloke....you can bet I'll be on it tonight! If it wasn't for this little annoyance I have here called a day job I'd be testing it now 

You can call me JAB 

bluzdog
I've been following this thread, this is brilliant. I'll be purchasing Reaper shortly. AZ, you are one very talented and generous person. Thank you.
Rocky

Thanks
 
Small quiz for programmers: yesterday I was puzzled by the way Reaper encodes VST3 id into presets. 2 hours I was looking at these numbers. VST3 is identified by 16bytes GUID. The field is 4bytes long. What can it be? 
Please do not cheat looking in my post on Reaper forum...

Latest update. It will load MIDI projects but splits the synth track and the MIDI data into 2 seperate tracks. I had to go to the track outputs and reroute them to the various soft synths.
It did load a track with some vst effects but they were also seperated into what Reaper called a Matrix track.