DeeringAmps
BobV,
I think its time to change the title of this thread.
Reaper is an awesome DAW; PERIOD!
It has nothing to do with the fact that it only costs $60.
This thing is well worth the $255 charged for the commercial license; at $60 its a steal.
Just my nickel98, YMMV; but I doubt it!
I won't cut and run anytime soon, but I'm confident that Reaper will do everything I'll ever need it to.
Thanks to all for the "heads-up"!
T

I agree, It is and awesome DAW period.

Didn't read thru the entire thread (but in case it hasn't been mentioned)...
ARA is coming to Reaper.
Those making extensive use of Melodyne can put Reaper back on their short-list.

azslow3

subtlearts
And hey, Alexey, if you're going to port your control surface plugin over, that will make it that much more interesting for me! Seems like the right new home for it for sure.

That is the plan

That, for me, is very good news. I have been the happy beneficiary of your work with the plugin up to now, have it running on three surfaces in Sonar (Alphatrack, which it effectively rescued from obsolescence, Kore, which I learned some basics of the plugin on, and TouchOSC on a tablet, for which I had to dig deep and learned much more) and I have an inkling of the power and potential it has - I think in the context of Reaper it will be even more powerful and I have a feeling you'll likely find the community more receptive there, as soon as people realize what the plugin is capable of, just because people are more wired to a DIY kind of modality. I'll be on board anyway, though I'm not much use for any kind of programming... 

Reaper is already advanced in communications, they have powerful web based interface and OSC/MIDI script based engine, in addition to direct binary API and some projects with it. I mean, unlike with Sonar, there is a strong "concurrence" to AZ Controller, which exists for years. But I have interesting ideas how to advance AZ Controller from where it is now, also its already existing strong side is "interactivity", which I do not see in other solutions.

Jim Roseberry
Didn't read thru the entire thread (but in case it hasn't been mentioned)...
ARA is coming to Reaper.
Those making extensive use of Melodyne can put Reaper back on their short-list.

Hey Jim, long time no see.
 
The REAPER devs are pretty quick at making stuff happen too. It was not that long ago that there was no musical notation in REAPER, but they jumped right on that and are improving it more with every release. Their pre-release area on the web forum lets anybody who wants to, be a beta tester, and as such with so many eyes on folks using the pre-release stuff, they get a lot of help fixing things and implementing new functions.

Aha - is that where you disappeared to Jim? Makes sense. Been demo'ing Reaper again after a few years absence and holy freholi, is it looking great. I am seriously impressed...

subtlearts
Aha - is that where you disappeared to Jim? Makes sense. Been demo'ing Reaper again after a few years absence and holy freholi, is it looking great. I am seriously impressed...

My kid has a bunch of your albums and picks some of the songs out on piano.  I told him you were checking out REAPER and have been using Sonar to produce your albums.  He's a computer geek and uses both Sonar and REAPER, and has been playing around with the native Linux version of REAPER lately.   :-)

If scook and azslow will be using REAPER as a primary DAW, I guess I'd better follow their lead.

Hi-
 
I've been using REAPER for about 8 years and stopped using SONAR altogether I guess about a year and a half ago. I started using Cakewalk when it first came out for DOS and upgraded religiously until then. It's not important now why I stopped using it, but this is definitely the end of an era for me and of course so many others. I wish all Cake employees the very best.
 
The REAPER developers are extremely responsive (witness their recent reversal on whether or not to support ARA) and the forum members are very helpful, much as everyone here has been.
 
Regarding the colors & general look, I don't personally like the default theme, but there are many user-designed themes & they (like pretty much everything else) can also be tweaked. The flexibility & customizability is really amazing, so if you don't like the way something looks or works, chances are you can change it. Being able to make your own custom actions is another big plus for me.
 
It does take some getting used to coming from SONAR, but as mentioned, there are excellent videos and the User Guide (written by former SONARite Geoffrey Francis) is outstanding. Edit: Oh, and also the SONAR to REAPER Quickstart Guide: https://www.reaper.fm/guides/SONARtoREAPER.pdf
 
My $.02-
 
-Susan

I agree Reaper is an awesome DAW that just keeps getting better. As a RX user, I was excited to see them add spectral editing earlier this year - and now ARA! Lot's of resources available such as SWS Extensions that allow functionality like region playlists for working out arrangements. I agree the default theme isn't much to look at but there are tons of additional themes available - personally I like the Logic based themes.