OT...please forgive...just curious...

Just took a look at Reaper for the first time with a friend....anyone have experience using it, how it acts, pros, cons, etc.? I really know anything about it and a friend is looking to use it and I want to help him make a good decision as to which DAW software is right for him. He has been using Logic for years and his system took a big dump...if I'm in the wrong forum for this please forgive, but I trust you guys on here...thanks!

Your friend should try the 30-day free trial before making his decision. I tried it when X1 was very unstable for me, and found it too deep (too many customizable options), which led me to Studio One.

I really know anything about it and a friend is looking to use it and I want to help him make a good decision as to which DAW software is right for him.

And you didn't recommend Sonar X2 to him? Traitor!

I have sat down with Reaper on four separate occasions, once for every major revision. The first time I was disappointed by the lack of features. The second time I was impressed with how far they'd come. The third time I started to consider it as a viable alternative to SONAR but found many routine actions to be overly obtuse and awkward.

The fourth time was this past month, when I took Reaper with me on holiday along with how-to documents and videos. I spent three weeks in the shade of a mango tree getting cozy with Reaper, determined to grasp the mindset of its developers. And I had an epiphany: I realized that the program's greatest strength and greatest weakness is that it was created by programmers serving as their own market research team. Consequently, they designed a program that's ultra-flexible and makes perfect sense - if you're accustomed to thinking about the world in terms of programming objects.

Now, I've long despised marketing people and thought of them as leeches earning a paycheck on the backs of the real talent, the coders. But the truth is that programmers, left to their own devices, will create user interfaces that make sense to them but not necessarily to anybody else. It's the non-techs who have to maintain some kind of linkage to the real world.

It wasn't until I put on my bit-flipper hat and approached Reaper like a coder that it suddenly made perfect sense. At that moment I also realized why Reaper isn't for everybody.

Frostysnake


I have also been looking to branch out a bit myself, so his situation has made me do some thinking and looking as well:-) 

That's good, Frosty. It's like visiting a foreign country and learning both the good and bad sides of your country in an objective perspective. Anyway, if you are wondering whether your A-800Pro works with other daws, I can tell you it works really great with Studio One (surprisingly, better than with Sonar). The following link explains how it works with S1, but the first two sections might also help when using it with Reaper.
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2819727&high=

I now enjoy using both daws but learning two different hosts seriously wasn't an easy thing...