Bottom line...Reaper is nowhere near being a finished product. It is nowhere near being a viable alternative to Sonar or any of the other top line DAWs. When you add to that the fact that it's basically the vanity project of a single individual who has no real incentive to continue working on it if/when he gets tired of it, it's hard to argue that it's worth taking seriously. At this point, it is only of interest to people who are idly curious about it or who are, frankly, complete noobs.

As far as the specifics of the program:

- It has very limited MIDI functionality.
- The interface has a wide range of design flaws.
- The design of the program in general--the way it works--is not well thought out. It's just a bunch of functions stacked up in menus.
- It has no "tools", a staple of virtually every windows program that does editing of any kind.
- The audio engine is of suspect quality.

I've been trying it out more since my first post, and that's my opinion. Sorry if you don't like it.

ORIGINAL: AJ_0000

Bottom line...Reaper is nowhere near being a finished product. It is nowhere near being a viable alternative to Sonar or any of the other top line DAWs. When you add to that the fact that it's basically the vanity project of a single individual who has no real incentive to continue working on it if/when he gets tired of it, it's hard to argue that it's worth taking seriously. At this point, it is only of interest to people who are idly curious about it or who are, frankly, complete noobs.

As far as the specifics of the program:

- It has very limited MIDI functionality.
- The interface has a wide range of design flaws.
- The design of the program in general--the way it works--is not well thought out. It's just a bunch of functions stacked up in menus.
- It has no "tools", a staple of virtually every windows program that does editing of any kind.
- The audio engine is of suspect quality.

I've been trying it out more since my first post, and that's my opinion. Sorry if you don't like it.

I really wish that everyone that wants to discuss a competing program do it in the competitors forum. This thread has probably cost CW money, and the CW fanboys keep bumping it to the top. If you don't understand reaper, this is not the place to discuss the problem.

No matter what the subject, when someone post off the wall garbage as fact, often another more knowledgeable, less bias person will respond to correct the inaccuracies. It's a no win situation. The only way to beat a thread like this is to let it slip on over to page 2 of the thread list.

Edit: BTW
-wrong
-wrong
-wrong
-wish it had a user defined tool bar, but no "tools" is just different. Instead of selecting a tool and click the mouse, one glides the mouse over the clip and presses a key. Still 1 click, keyboard instead of mouse.
-very wrong.

EditEdit: and reaper has way to many ctrl alt shift key combinations for a mortal to ever remember.

This forum is an important resource for Sonar users, provided by Cakewalk for that purpose. Over time, it has become clear that there are more than a few people intent on using it to advertise for Reaper, a competing product. Rather than simply ignore them, which is probably the best approach, I decided to download it and try it. My honest opinion is that it is primitive in its feature set--bare bones. It is poorly organized. It seems as if the features have just been stacked on top of each other without any real thought to how it will be used. As I've said before, I can see it having an appeal to noobs who are intimidated by full-featured products like Sonar. I can also see it having an appeal to people with old, slow computers. Otherwise, I don't think there's much to be excited about. That said, none of this is about defending Sonar. It is about trying to defend this forum from people who want to misuse it.

Hey Roflcopter Does TTS sound that much better tha Edirol VSC? Have you tried the Coyote in BaB? h

Yes, I think it sounds better than the VSC - plus, when I go into Sonar with the result I first set everything to TTS-1 there, so I get what I had sound-wise in BiaB. Stability-wise it also pans out a lot better than the VSC, at least on my setup. Had frequent crashes with BiaB with the VSC, esp when turning on/off melodies etc. Still happens every once in a while, but it's like 50:1.

Not familiar with Coyote, only found this:

http://mypeoplepc.com/members/scottnoanh/slsdiy/index.html

I've been using Reaper for a few weeks. It's a great little tool in my workshop IMO. I can use it for ease on my comp (not got the best hardware) I can record great sounds with it, have no issues as yet but that doesn't mean I'll stop using Sonar. Majority of what is recorded in Reaper gets imported to Sonar for mixing in the end.

At the end of the day, software is just another tool in your box to be used. Audacity is another great (Free) tool I use alot.

Also I like a change every now and then on my screen. As much as I love Sonar, I also like the recordings I get via Reaper.

ORIGINAL: Roflcopter

Still haven't scratched all the possibilities in the 2007 version, and the new one has multi-styles, which sounds yummy, but I'm in no rush, I'll wait until we've seen a few upgrades.

With the TTS-1 instead of the standard synth, it's pretty stable - without, not so stable, I found. But that's easily fixed.

Thanks!

Justin Frankel's past products have been popular within the piracy community. Saying so isn't really defamation of character, it's a statement of what I believe is a known fact.

You serious?

So are Adobe's products, but I don't see anyone calling them warez whores, or claiming they actually paid warez sites to pimp their product.

Maybe you are a forgiving reader, but judges usually just see what was written.

ahhh - so because A uses B´s program called C to do something you do not like then the program D of A is WHAT ????

Mosephs point about commercial cost of reaper should put an end to the "free vs. Sonar" nonsense.

I've paid for license of Sonar for two studios, the same as with Vista, if you're gonna do it do it right.

$225.00 for a stripped down audio proggy just does not make any sense for a working studio...hence my comment about serious usage.

Frankly I don't think reaper is seriously considering running with the big dogs, which is fine, there are planty of people willing to pay to use it in a non-commercial environment...but lets be honest about where the application is meant to be used.

Is Reaper the best pro DAW out there? NO

Can you make great music on Reaper? YES

Is Reaper better than Sonar, overall? NO

Can you take the recordings you made with Reaper on a USB stick to any major recording studio for a remix? YES

Is the development of Reaper a good thing for recording engineers and musicans? ABSOULTLY

The continued development of Reaper is good for Sonar, Cubase, etc... It will only make things better, and force developers to pay attention to what's going on.

ORIGINAL: Oaf_Topik

Can you take the recordings you made with Reaper on a USB stick to any major recording studio for a remix? YES

NOW this is something the CW bakers might consider folding into a future SONAR upgrade... something like a "MinSONAR" or "PortaSONAR" that was small enough file size to fit comfortably on a USB drive, and had just enough functionality to take and export the audio from a .cwp project into a third-party (read: Pro-Tools) environment. That would obviate the argument that SONAR isn't ready to run with the big dawgs because your project isn't able to be shared in a collaborative way with PT users, which let's face it, are many in number in the professional sphere.

ORIGINAL: Roflcopter

Justin Frankel's past products have been popular within the piracy community. Saying so isn't really defamation of character, it's a statement of what I believe is a known fact.

You serious?

So are Adobe's products, but I don't see anyone calling them warez whores, or claiming they actually paid warez sites to pimp their product.

Maybe you are a forgiving reader, but judges usually just see what was written.

Keep in mind that at the time WinAmp came out, there was no such thing as paying for an mp3. I think it would not be unfair to say that WinAmp and Gnutella were both created with the full knowledge they would be used for piracy, if not created for the specific purpose of facilitating piracy.

Justin has said at least two times in the last month or so in an IRC channel I was in that "if his efforts with Reaper would cause other DAW software to improve for the end-user, then he has succeeded." (paraphrased) To me that says a lot about his character and his motivation behind Reaper. He doesn't want to take over the world with Reaper as some people seem to believe. He just want's DAW programmers to step it up. (Competition is good for everyone, you know.)

There are some things that Reaper does better (and more easily) than just about any DAW out there, but you have to spend time with the program to realize that. There are also (of course) lots of things Reaper doesn't do or do as well as other DAWs.

Already, Reaper has caused Cakewalk to take notice with the recent multi-core processing balancing results. Because Reaper kicked Sonar's rear in this area, I'm sure that Sonar will be improved to be as good or better. (Just maybe not as fast as it would be if it were turned around.)

I hope that the Bakers will realize they can't just tack on additional synths/plugins with each new version. IMO, Sonar needs an overhaul (more efficient audio/processing engine, UI design, etc.)

As to the comments about Reaper not being used in serious and/or professional studios. I know for a fact that's BS just from who I know in the Reaper forums/IRC that use it (and only it) in their pro studios.

Oh, and I agree with tomflair... there's way too much religion in DAW discussions. It's ridiculous, frankly.

I use Sonar/Reaper/Cubase/Audition/Sound Forge/Audacity/......

yeah probably that argumant against reaper is one of the silliest and most unrelated arguments i have ever heard....(at all) not only in this dicussion :-)


ahhh i got a even better one: dont support reaper cos it it has an inherent morbid name which could affect life of sensitive users...they should rename into "creator" that would be positive

ORIGINAL: HotCoollMusicGirl

ORIGINAL: AJ_0000

Keep in mind that at the time WinAmp came out, there was no such thing as paying for an mp3.

Ok, I'm keeping it in mind. But now can you explain what it means, exactly, and what relevance it has to Reaper or Sonar or anything, really.

And why the irrational fear of Reaper and the need to denigrate its developer as a criminal mastermind, its users as unambitious "noobs," and all those who find anything positive to say about it as infiltrator "pimps"?

You realize don't you that all you're accomplishing is getting people interested in what's all the hubbub, bub?

Maybe I haven't been clear. I have no "fear" of anything associated with this stuff, irrational or otherwise. I have no vested in interest in defending Sonar as a piece of software, other than my opinion that it's the best option out there, which is why I use it. I guess there are just certain things that are "pet peeves" to me. One of those is people who destroy constructive discussion with some kind of dishonest agenda. I don't know why the people pushing Reaper on here are so fanatical that they feel the need to bring it up over, and over, and over again, and I don't really care. The only justification that would hold any water would be if the program is really exceptional, so I took a look at it. It isn't. The only thing that's "exciting" about it is that it's non-expiring shareware and it has a small footprint.

Maybe I just need to put a finer point on it. I consider people who post here with the goal of promoting or advertising for Reaper (or any other competing product) to be spammers. If that doesn't make my POV and my irritation clear, I don't know how else to express it. In any event, I'm going to do what I should have done in the first place, which is to ignore Reaper spammers/trolls from now on.

Maybe the real problem is that this has very little to do with music recording/production. It's another one of these worn-out leftover 90s computer nerd crusades. I have the exact same problem with people who come on here spreading a bunch of false information about Vista because they hate Microsoft. I have no reason to spend my time defending Microsoft, but you know at some point, these people are just going around disrupting the forum and intentionally misleading people. In other words, spam, trolling whatever you want to call it.