the_user_formally_known_as_glennbo

AdamGrossmanLG
lol, i do love options, but this product just seems cumbersome and not attractive.

For me the importance of things in a DAW are in this order.
 
1. Speed/Efficiency The more plugins I can glob on before I bring the DAW to it's knees the better, and I frequently use 100+ FX with 30+ tracks. I NEVER change the latency on my system for any reason. It's ALWAY set to 64 samples latency for 2.4/2.0ms latency in the DAW.
 
2. The Color!   <GGG>

me too, but this is much more than color.  the interface looks confusing.  the product just seems overly cumbersome

Matron Landslide

the_user_formally_known_as_glennbo
  it looks like the image I posted back on the first page of this thread.

 
What is that theme by the way?
 
I have tried a lot of themes over the years, but mostly I end up back with the default. Unlike SONARs custom themes, which are basically the same thing with different color schemes, I do like REAPERs custom theme ability because it can change the entire look of everything and not just be the same old same old with a different color scheme.
 
After 3 years away from SONAR, (Moved to Studio One 3) I honestly can't stand the look of SONAR, especially that light grey/silver/blue Mercury, Tungsten was a bit better, but it still looks like crap to me, I hate being in its environment. I fired up X3 the other day to check something for someone and it almost made me physically ill just looking at it, SONAR looks so old to me now days

That theme is called LSC-Mod-Short_V3.0_Dark, and is based on White Tie's "Imperial" theme. I like it because it sits on my single 40" monitor pretty well, is easy for my old eyes to read, and can display 26 tracks on the mixer at the bottom, and still leave enough space at the top for zooming in and out for working on envelopes and clip edits.
 
 

One more thing I thought I'd add is that when I moved to REAPER from Sonar, I exported several of my in-progress projects using the virtual ASIO driver that comes with REAPER along with a virtual midi cable (I think I used MidiOx).  The virtual ASIO driver that REAPER includes called ReaRoute can be set on both Sonar and REAPER, and to as many audio tracks as you need to bounce between the two.
 
I set each audio track in Sonar to individual ReaRoute channels, and then in REAPER I set the input on an equal number of tracks, each assigned to receive from the channels that Sonar was sending on. With the virtual midi cable, I did the same thing in both DAWs, and lastly I set REAPER to be the master clock, and Sonar to slave to it, so they would be in perfect sync.
 
In one pass, I pulled all the audio and midi from Sonar to REAPER. I chose to kill all the plugins in Sonar and then reinstate them once all the audio and midi was pulled over to REAPER. It took a bit of work to set it up initially, but then I put a bunch of tracks into record ready in REAPER, hit record, and both DAWs started rolling at the same time, while moving all audio and midi data over in one real time pass.

Very interesting.  Great thread for bringing Reaper to the front.  Thanks.

Hmmm...just d/l the Reaper demo and it was QUICK to install. Recorded a couple of muck around tracks too REAL quick....no problem using the V700R.
Looks interesting for sure...time to dig a bit deeper.
Thanks for all the info...and big shout to Glaz in Tassie....long time mate.
Cheers.

Aye! As long as you don't make it Big Time, a snip at $60, and I bought it in 2015 because of that, and out of curiosity.

Reaper is in many ways a gem. It is always the suggestion I make to people that want to start get into recording music. It's cheap with a great value for the money and allow you to try it out fully for a long (eternal?) time.
As a long time user of Sonar and being a recording engineer/producer since '92, I do find some issues with Reaper tho.
BUSSES. Yes you can set a workaround with tracks corresponding as a bus or an aux return. It is not very straightforward or easy IMO. Instead you use folders as busses. I want to be able to use folders as folders (grouping tracks) and busses as busses.
The console in Sonar works as a console is expected to work.
ROUTING AUDIO is extremely free and versatile, but also a hassle if you are used to just point a tracks' or bus' output to a new bus or a physical output. 
 
The freedom to tweak almost anything is both a blessing and a curse. It's a quite complex machine to get under the hood, but if you do, I'm sure it's worth it. I only have limited interst in doing that.
 
A thing that is nice in Reaper (and have its equivalent in Reason) is to work with blocks or parts to arrange a song. Something that is overlooked in most DAWs incl Sonar.
 
The problem for me is that I was just on the step to upgrade fom Sonar 8.5 that I have used for many years now in my studio, and get the latest Sonar on a new powerfull computer. I actually was looking for some black friday deal when I stumbled upon the message from Gibson. 
So I'm not even sure if it is possible to even buy a full version of Sonar any more. I have the demo installed.
As I understood, buying it from a third party retailer won't gurantee me all the plugins and intruments as it is downloaded from a now closed server. 
Another issue is of course pricing. Included in the price for buying Sonar is also support and updates, which are zero at the moment.
 
At the moment I consider continuing with Sonar if it is possible to get all the extras, Reason if I come to terms with how that one works (a lot of issues there too) or Reaper, which I have the basic hang of.

No need to panic!
Sonar is a very well appointed DAW and has years of life in it yet.
But in the interim Reaper is a new DAW and does not take long to learn the basics.
Like any DAW you got to memorize the shortcuts.
Reaper also utilizes multi cores better than any other DAW as of a year or so ago and probably still leads. 
 

Ive tried reaper before as well and liked it a lot.
Thing is, I do use a lot of the features/extras in Sonar like Region FX, Drum Replacer, Fx chains, Pro channel, exc.
So I might use Reaper in the future but for right now im not going to be in a panic and go buy a DAW just because Cakewalk will not be updating Sonar anymore. There are users using Sonar 8 still now.
I used to laugh at those people but I just might become one of those people.

The downloaded 64 bit installer for REAPER is a whopping 11 MB. This is NOT because it is a limited software. It is because REAPER is strictly MEAT with a small side of POTATOES. There are no samples included. No fancy face graphic plugins, or anything else besides a lean and mean DAW with a small selection of extremely useful staple FX like EQs, multiband compressor, compressor, Etc.
 
At first I wrote the FX that come with REAPER totally off, because they are deceptively plain looking, but after seeing user after user praise them, I finally started checking them out more in depth. Turns out they are actually very high quality plugins and will perform extremely well for most of your essential needs. Note that the screen cap I posted on the first page of this thread is using ReaEQ on every track, plus the master. I'm also using ReaXcomp (the multiband compressor) on my kick, snare, and toms. I have plenty of other EQs, and multiband compressors, but those are my go to tools because they do exactly what I need them to do.
 
The way folders work as busses has been mentioned a couple times. I personally love the way a folder is a bus, but if you really want a folder to just be a folder, all it takes is one click of the item "Master Send" on the Sends/Receives panel of that folder.
 
If you disable a folder as a bus, and then want to create your own bus, you would simply designate a track to be the bus, and then drag-n-drop from the "Sends/Receives" buttons of the tracks you want to send, over to the track you designated as the bus.
 
I think of it as pulling a virtual patch cable, and this technique is also how you lace other things up in REAPER, like sending from a track to another track or bus for routing midi or audio. It is extremely efficient to use and quite fast. For example, lets say I put a reverb on a track and want to send several things to it from other tracks. I would just drag from the "Sends/Receives" button of the tracks I want reverb on to the track with the reverb. Once you drop, you will get a popup panel that lets you adjust the level you are sending if needed. This panel also lets you do things like assign a different channel than the default for midi or audio, which is useful when sending a bunch of midi tracks to a single multi-timbral instrument like Kontakt. For audio, changing the default channel from the normal 1-2 stereo to say, 3-4 lets you easily send down a pipe that will be used not for what you hear, but for what will be used as detection on a plugin, as is the case for side-chaining. I hope this clears up some of the confusion.
 
REAPER is simple to use, but only after you get familiar with the paradigm it lives in, which is not like most other DAWs.