Amicus717
Well, I fired up my copy of Reaper today, and wasn't impressed by the experience. For whatever reason, Reaper has decided that my Oxygen49 controller is no longer responding, and throws up this message:
 
"The following MIDI output device is not responding: Oxygen49
REAPER will wait for it to resume, but it may require a disconnect/reconnect"
 
This dialogue box won't go away, no matter what I do -- disconnect the keyboard, reconnect it, whatever. And while this box is up, Reaper won't let me access anything else. I have to use Task Manager to close the program. And every time I fire up Reaper, I get this same message. I searched the Reaper message boards for any solutions, found the question being asked a few times over the past year, most with no answer, or only a few half-hearted responses.
 
Not impressed. 
 
And the keyboard, for the record, is working perfectly in every other DAW I currently have on my system, including SO3, Sonar and Samplitude. Glennbo, have you come across this behavior from Reaper at all? Right now, my only option is to ditch it, I think...

A quick search turned up this thread, where a user of an Oxygen 49 tried some of the suggestions, and resolved the issues.
 
Edit: crap, the forum software won't let me post a link. Take the spaces out of this URL.
 
h t t p s : / / forum . cockos . com / showthread . php ? t = 146026
 
Bottom line is, get the shoe that fits your foot. My point in even posting about REAPER was to share my own experiences with it. I've used REAPER  since 2005, with five or six different machines, and watched Justin respond to the requests over the years, like adding musical notation in the last year or so. If something else floats your boat, you should definitely get that. It won't make any difference to me whether anybody decides to try or buy REAPER, I don't need any validation for my use of it. On the flipper, it would be a disservice if I didn't share my experience with it, when so many people are trying to get educated about DAWs other than Sonar.
 
Peace

Thanks, appreciate the link and advice.

In my 'panic', I purchased the $60 Reaper just to see how it felt.  After about about an hour f***ing with it, I decided that it probably wouldn't be much of an improvement on Mixcraft.  Just looking at the interface, I realized that I would need to RTFM.  For me, that is a no-starter.  I wasn't even able to produce the DAW equivalent of "Hello world" in that time.

mosspa
In my 'panic', I purchased the $60 Reaper just to see how it felt.  After about about an hour f***ing with it, I decided that it probably wouldn't be much of an improvement on Mixcraft.  Just looking at the interface, I realized that I would need to RTFM.  For me, that is a no-starter.  I wasn't even able to produce the DAW equivalent of "Hello world" in that time.

You can probably watch 20 minutes worth of video and get basics. Not saying you will instantly fall in love, but the basics can be done without reading manual.

Reaper is well worth the initial effort getting your head around it.

michael diemer
I find Reaper adequate for my needs. My only criticism is that some of the text is too small for my 60+ eyes. Which causes eyestrain, which limits how long I can work.

Try going into the "Options - Preferences... - General" dialog box and clicking on the "Advanced UI/system tweaks".
There is a "scale UI elements of track.. (etc)".    You can put in a multiplier to make things "bigger".  You have to check the box and put in something like 1.25 (125%).  Then restart.
 
Not sure if it helps but does make it bigger.
 
REAPER is pretty amazing. Can do just about anything, but you have to dig sometimes and "roll your own".  But the "license" is the old style license dat - so not dongle or challenge response.  Also, you're not paying for bloat bundles.
 
They even added notation (getting better and better) after users begged for it - can't say the same for other (cough) companies.
 
 

After many, many years of using Sonar, it came to a cross-roads for me many months ago. Suffice to say I became unhappy with both the direction Sonar was moving in and it's performance and decided to make the break.
 
At the time I tried just about every DAW that offered a trial version and spent some considerable time with each. The last on my list and one I nearly didn't "Bother" with was Reaper, after all how can a DAW costing £45 ($60) be even worth considering against the big-price-tag companies. To my total amazement and disbelief, for me, the absolute winner by a large margin was Reaper. Then I read about Justin Frankel and his mission.
 
Interestingly, the DAW in last place for me and one I would never get was Cubase, other people might may have different thoughts but this is how it was for me.
 
It is true to say that Reaper does have a learning curve where things are done differently or different terms for the same things used in Sonar. However, with patience and perseverance and a superb community, I soon became familiar with Reaper's ways and found my enjoyment and trust of using a DAW returning. Reaper is outstanding.
 
Oh .. I nearly forgot to mention that for the best part of a year I've been using Reaper, it has not crashed, frozen, crackled, failed to render and hasn't audio-dropouted not even once in all that time .. and this is with 8-10 hours continuous use some days.

One more point I realized hadn't been mentioned and that is that REAPER has a FULLY FUNCTIONAL Mac version, and a portion of their user base have been running REAPER on Macs for a few years now. This is not some smoke and mirrors emulation or something. It's a true Mac version that is essentially the very same program as the Windows version.
 
There is also a native Linux version, but it is limited on things like plugins, although all the plugs it comes with work, and some Windows plugs have been known to function sans-graphics. REAPER has such a light CPU hit, that some folks run it on Linux in WINE, and gain better Windows compatibility, trading for a bit of efficiency.
 

I just downloaded the trial for Reaper today and I have to say I'm just as confused as I was when I first started using Sonar.
I've only been using Sonar for about a year and I'm still confused on how everything works. I have been getting a lot of help from the forums when needed, and I hope the Reaper forum is just as helpful and friendly.
 
I don't know what the future holds for the Sonar software, but I'm young enough in my D.A.W experience that the transition shouldn't be too bad.
The price is defiantly right for what I intend to use it for.

What I like most about sonar is how easy it was for me to learn and use. For whatever the reason I found it to be the best DAW for me in this respect. What I haven't liked about it is it's performance. For whatever reason sonar always gave me crashes or pops and crackles when using softsynths and if I had 15 or more plugins with lets say 20 to 30 tracks. I would have  to raise up the buffer as high as it can go. When tracking I still could not track with low buffers like 96 or 128 if I was using softsynths. This has always been the down side for me but i like Sonar so I worked it the best I could.

To be fair, Studio One wasn't much better in performance either. Slightly better but no WOW factor. I chalked it up to my PC not having the power needed to run these programs Efficiently.

So now here we are with this surprising situation of Cakewalk going by by. Sad day for sure. Everyone is searching for a new DAW in case Sonar goes demo on us. Like most here I go searching and I download the Reaper demo. This is what I like about Reaper so far.

The look. I find it very easy on the eye's. I like how you can customize it. I found the learning curve not so hard with the guidance of the videos. Reaper does everything I need a DAW to do so far. I don't care about Melodyn because I never use it. I don't do loops and never installed them in Sonar. I don't do extensive midi editing or clip editing. I never used most of the features in Sonar so I won't miss them in Reaper. I know many here utilize most features in DAW's so you have to choose a DAW the has the features you need.

The best thing to my surprise with Reaper is it's performance. I did a test where I imported 25 audio tracks, 4 softsynths and 58 cpu sucking plugins. The project sample rate is 4800 with a buffer of 96. NOT A SINGLE AUDIO ENGINE DROP OUT, POP, CRACKLE OR CRASH.. I could never achieve this in Sonar. I was amazed. So is it my PC or is the other DAW's that are the reason for bad performance? I don't know and I don't care. I found a DAW that is more than reasonably priced that does what I need it to do and performs very well. I have a good feeling I will start and finish a project without a problem. My fingers are crossed.

I am not giving up Sonar or Studio One but I am sure i won't be using them as much anymore.