well said yep.

Not to mention the fact that Sonar struggles with being a tad on the bloated side at times. Reaper and other lesser know DAW programs have a niche with the non pro studio guys, tracking there own or a friends band, or making personal music. Sonar is puting upwards pressure on the likes of Profools. Yet even in this forum we have heard rumbling of fear that Sonar is growing to large. As a long time Cake fan and user, i find myself using an indie program (multitrackstudio.com the most solid and stable program out there) more these days because simplicity rocks. Time will tell if reaper will continue to grow or hit aspot and the developer will move on to other projects. It certainly is a great option for the user that does not want to spend $500 on a software program, after all the lower end of cakewalk (MC) could use some help it is not all that stable.

It's not the cost of something. It's the worth of something.

ORIGINAL: Howdy
Unfortunately, as you delve into the program, there may be more such oddities. Depending on his responsiveness, it may or may not be worth the effort to get involved. And, with such a project, you probably would need to get involved, rather than just use it, because it is most definitely a work in progress.

True, but getting involved and offering those (good) suggestions is a small price to pay for a free DAW host. Even if I end up never using it, I'd still like to help 'em out with suggestions/reports if for no other reason than that I like their power-to-the-little-guy philosophy.

Woohoo! It not only loads Kontakt 2, but it does program changes in VSTi mode! LMAO!

Time to get down with the manual and see what this thing can do...speaking of which, I couldn't help but notice the manual is almost 5 times the size of the installation file. Now that's efficient!

I have Reaper installed and I am exicted about this program. I see using it for a number of different task including initial tracking in some instances. It is so lean and straight-forward. Fun would be a word that comes to mind.

What first led me to become more interested was a task I have of transferring analog songs to Sonar. I need to use Win98 (if MOTU would better support the SMPTE box I have - I would not need to do this). Reaper does support Win98 and to top it off it is free. On an odd note - I have Logic loaded on this Win98 box (long time usuer -Notator to Logic 5.51) and I decided to go with Reaper for this task. Imagine the indignation at Apple.

Now with that said - I love using Sonar5PE and it will remain my primary DAW for recording and mixing. Reaper is not there yet - nor does them competing with platforms like Sonar interest me all that much. I like Reaper for it's simplistic nature - (turn it on and go) - I like their excited user base who seem bent on keeping this program lean and high quality. I think it is cool that Justin is dedicated enough to respond to questions/issues directly. All very cool stuff. However, I have little desire to invest the learning time that I already have invested in Sonar if Reaper becomes a complex tool to use. There would be little time for music and no real benefit at this point. Sonar does 95% of what I want it to do and in many areas surpasses what I expected and now consider SOP in a DAW.

ORIGINAL: Howdy

My initial impression was how unintuitive it is. Want to quantize? Don't press ctrl-Q in the main window. That will close the program. Open the editor window, and you can now quantize with ctrl-Q. Great.

So because it doesn't work exactly like Sonar it's unintuitive? Even the simplest programs are going to come with some learning curve. This one's a DAW for Pete's sake, and it's not even at version 1.0 yet!

ORIGINAL: jmarkham


for my usage, it's waveform and midi editing capabilities are too rudamentory ...
but, given time, it may well have the basics.

jeff

Jeff, I'm just wondering what you considered too rudamentory on the audio editing side of Reaper? I've been using Reaper and working with Justin going on 7-8 months now, and my main focus has been on the audio editing capabilities of Reaper. Justin has been listening, and I am currently not finding Reaper to be anything basic about it's audio editing capabilities. I have used Sonar and at this point I find Reaper has surpased it on the audio editing department. I also find it has surpased Sonar on it's audio recording capabilities as far as punch-in on the fly and auto-input monitoring, and multiple take options. Reaper has also surpased everything out there as far as audio routing capabilities.

I think Sonar has Reaper beat on the midi sequencing department at this point, but midi just started to be developed on it not too long ago. If it's midi sequencing features aren't up to par for you now, then don't worry. Justin has informed us, that they will continue to be developed after the v1.0 release with regular updates like we are currently seeing. So you won't have to wait for over a year for any feature updates like all the other S/W companies do.

Maybe you might be new to Reaper, but a few of us long time Vegas, Cubase, Samplitude, and Sonar users have been working with Justin for quite some time now and discussing implementations that would make us all happy. That almost seems like an impossible task in itself, but Justin usually comes back with something that exceeds all of our expectations within a week or 2.

If you are finding Reaper only rudimentary in it's audio editing capabilities at this point, then I suggest you take a look at the keyboard short-cuts. I'm certain you will find that this is not the case. Currently it has Nudge Event Left/Right/Up/Down, Slip Editiing, auto-crossfade of events, Slide Edit point via either with or without a crossfade intact, keyboard short-cut event edge trimming. In other words....need to trim a tad off the right side of an event, then jump to the right edge via a keyboard short-cut and use the trim keyboard short-cuts and trim it to the left or right, then jump to the other edge and do the same thing. I haven't figured out how to crossfade 2 events and move the edit point between the 2 events while keeping the media in place in Sonar yet, or do edge trimming on an event without doing a lot of mousing around, so I would have to say Sonar is a bit rudimentary to me at this point as far as editing capabilities. I would like to be wrong, because the first things I tried out where these items when I was using Sonar and I found it a bit tedious with a lot of extra mouse moving around.

The routing can be a tad confusing at first when you come in with a background of how it works in other apps. At least that is what I found.

The way to think of it is that a "track" can be used as a bus. This is one thing that opens Reaper up to it's total routing flexibility. So say you want to create a bus and route multiple tracks to it. In Reaper, what you do is create a new audio track, then you can route multiple tracks to that new audio track. That track can be routed to any output or multiple outputs, or even other tracks. Thus a track is a bus. Now along with having the usual bus functionality, it additionally has a tracks functionality. Thus you can route those multiple tracks to it, and then record enable that particular track and record all the grouped signal being fed to it. Reaper also has folder tracks, but I'm not totally up to speed on that functionality yet.

Here's a link to the Reaper quick start and other documentation.
http://www.cockos.com/wiki/index.php/Reaper_Documentation

Here are some tutorial videos if you are more of a visual learner.
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=deadbeef

Here's where you can download the videos.
http://www.reaper.fm/~pipeline/REAPERVideos/basics/

and more mixing toot videos in the works location, with an actual project:
http://www.reaper.fm/~pipeline/REAPERVideos/Rib%20Calendar%20Project/

Cheers,
Red

Thank you ... I think I'll spend a few hours today exploring this ....
Geoff


On Edit: Well, my first attempt at creating a bus caused Reaper and the PC to hang while the sound card uttered a frightening spluttering noise. Seems it let me create a feedback loop. Just a tad too flexible for my liking. Think I might pass on that one!

A year or two ago, Live and Tracktion were the programs that were supposed to make Sonar obsolete in the near future. They had a fresher interface and seemed to do an impressive percentage of what the established hosts could do within their first few versions. We heard these same rumors of world domination then, before reality sank in. It seems that even though it's a great package, users are a little more underwhelmed with every new version of Live, which seems to be a common sentiment among Tracktion users, as well (even though I imagine they'd do anything to get a new version). As a programmer, I'm sure that a lot of it is just one of those facts of life in software development - at a certain point, adding a few simple features can increase the complexity and length of a program by several orders. I don't code anything like these audio apps, but I can tell you that the easiest part of writing a piece of software is always the beginning. Once users start demanding those tricky-to-program FRs, things will go much, much slower.

So regarding REAPER, my guess is that it'll be fun to watch for a few more months, at which point, releases will be much farther apart (I think Tracktion's history will be the closest analogue). And anyone expecting it to come anywhere near the big DAW apps in the next few years is kidding themselves. Like every fledgling DAW, it will do one or two things cooler than other apps, but will be missing an alarming number of things SONAR users take for granted for several years, if it survives that long.

When it comes to competing apps, the ones I'm most interested in are the next versions of Cubase and Logic, both of which have been a long time coming. I think the user communities for those apps have been vocal about making the software more ergonomic and useable, so I'm curious where they're headed.

Yes, you knew it was coming, pipelineaudio is here LOL

Lots of mean sprited YUK going on here

Its EXTREMELY poor taste for me to come in and advertise (if you could call essesntially a free deal advertising buyt hey) REAPER in SONAR's forum, and Im not here to do that. Just to offer some clarity

You guys who know (and those who dont could check my post history) I didnt sign up to sonar forums to schill this app, Im more of a convolution junkie and seeing Voxengo's impulse stuff show up in sonar is the impetus that nailed me to here, but I digress

A LOT of the push for REAPER on the users' end came from the Crossfade forums ( http://www.crossfade-forums.net/ )
This forum was made up in a large part of Vegas renegades who had been thrown out of the Sony forums or who just wanted a place to air their grievances without punishment. Of course its also a SERIOUS information powerhouse for both audio and video, but hey

We needed a new app, Vegas 6 wasn't cutting it. A LOT of us turned to SONAR and samplitude. Sonar's lack of mouse wheel zoom, while a minor issue to some, was an absolute showstopper for a large chunk of us. Sam had its own issues, but we had to go somewhere so many have and ARE going the sonar route

But along comes Justin, and we feel like we say "what would YOU do to have the ultimate app" and then we get 99% of it! NUTS

Vegas guys were used to insanely fast editing, that SONAR is lately pretty capable of except with the mouse wheel zoom thing. But we desired SONAR's MIDI, and SONAR's ability to have multiple tempos per song

But one thing we professionals have always lacked from app manufacturers was real routing. A patchbay. But Justin didn't give us a patchbay, he gave us a soldering iron, some log taper pots, some jacks and a centerpunch and said "here you go, make your OWN routing system". If you preview reaper for one thing, and you are from the tape machine and console days, you will get a warm feeling of fuzzies when you see the routing.

Those who know me, know Im a ****

Yes, Im terrible, even my drum sample and impulse packs come with rants against software manufacturers

So it wasnt easy for me to really jump behind a coder like this, but I can say for once Im truly happy.

For those quick to dismiss naysayers, who think you couldnt use this in a pro situation, heres a thread of me and Justin at Cherokee Studios in LA where I was mixing an album http://www.cockos.com/forum/showthread.php?t=536&highlight=justin

Note the PTHD system and the 2" machine sitting idle

Note the automated Trident A being used as a monitor stand for my REAPER screen

Those who know me, know I always have an up to date PT system (PTHD5 Accel right now) and also know that I only have it to say "yes we have PT" and to rent it out to CONservatory kids

I needed something a LOT better than PT to get my work done. Vegas usually cut it in most respects, but too many nagging issues. SOnar could have with some real estate fixes and mouse wheel zoom, Samplitude starting from V7 had a lot going for it as well

But if I put all my favorite things into one app...I'd end up with REAPER

Its updated a LOT because chasing UBER-ness is a lot of trial and error, unlike how these other apps are NOT updatred a lot, and when they finally are, they dont fix the major gripes anyway, but this is getting ugly so Ill shut up

Anyhow, go ahead and try the thing, at a 1 meg download what do you have to lose

Many of SONAR's best and brightest are in fact driving this application, and a trip to the REAPER forums will show you names you are all familiar with

ORIGINAL: Rednroll
This is something that I feel is currently really wrong with the entire audio software developers. It's a lack of communication with their customers and if there is anything the internet has done, it has allowed companies like Cakewalk the ability to communicate with a large segment of it's potential userbase with very little resource efforts or costs.

Not only audio software developers, alas. But I feel it's getting better. I even vaguely recall being invited (along I'm sure with multitudes of others) to take part in an on-line Sonar about such things as what I'd most like to see new/changed in Sonar. Don't expect I'll get it though.

Go to Options | Preferences | FX Plug-ins and put a check mark at both options next to Automatically resize VST/ DX Config Windows. Now the plugin window sizing should work more to your liking.

Bill