# Cubase vs Reaper for composing. Is the grass greener?



## thevisi0nary

I’ve been using reaper for years now and am fairly comfortable with it, although not a pro by any means. I use it primarily for midi composition.

I have always heard that reaper is “bad for midi work”. I personally do not really have problems, but I do run into little things that annoy the hell out of me and confuse me.

I am just curious, what would I stand to gain by moving to something like cubase? Is it really that much better for midi? If so in what way?

I plan on doing the demo with the E licenser, I figured it can’t hurt to ask this as well.


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## fretti

Well I never used Reaper, only Logic before so I can’t tell you directly how different everything is there...
For me though the most advantage was the ease of using the instrument rack and with that being able to load multiple instruments in one Kontakt instance.
But if you already are comfortable with Reaper I‘d really go for the trial version before buying, because there are always things (key commands, where things are „hidden“, Mixer etc.) where you first have to get used to. E.G in the beginning it was „really“ hard for me to get used to the whole routing thing in Cubase as there are no effect possible for Midi-Tracks, in Logic I always only used the „normal“ instrument tracks where you can just add effect how you like. On the other hand I have now built my perfect setup for my workflow where everything is layed out, routed etc. How I like it. In Logic I Never even began to build a setup as it would have taken me probably a year to load everything in...
No DAW is perfect for everyone so it could be (like in my case) a huge step forward in terms of speed and usability. Can be though that you first need a couple of days with frustration and YouTube videos so you find everything (was for me the case with Midi-Tracks as I had no idea how to load a Kontakt patch there and it wasn‘t really a plug and play situation in the beginning, like Logic really is). The midi editor itself is great as you have „infinite“ possibilities, but for a real comparison of the differences between Reaper Midi and Cubase Midi there should answer someone who recently used/uses both, as this was more a general thought of switching DAWs...
Maybe watch some Cubase Midi Tutorials on YouTube first now to get a general overview of what you would get into and how different everything works to how you are used to (could be you don‘t want Cubase after the first 15min; or that you want to switch as soon as possible) all a matter of personal taste there


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## gregh

thevisi0nary said:


> I’ve been using reaper for years now and am fairly comfortable with it, although not a pro by any means. I use it primarily for midi composition.
> 
> I have always heard that reaper is “bad for midi work”. I personally do not really have problems, but I do run into little things that annoy the hell out of me and confuse me.
> 
> I am just curious, what would I stand to gain by moving to something like cubase? Is it really that much better for midi? If so in what way?
> 
> I plan on doing the demo with the E licenser, I figured it can’t hurt to ask this as well.




What sort of things are annoying you in Reaper? There may be simple workarounds or add-ons that could help. For example it might be cheaper and easier to pay someone to script something you really want rather than buy Cubase


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## joebaggan

I have Cubase and Reaper. I use Cubase for all things Midi because it is so full featured in that area. The Midi menu has tons of functions for manipulating Midi, the Expression Maps are key for orchestral work, the Logical Editor and Project Logical Editors allow you to manipulate just about any Midi element in a query/batch sort of way, Note Expression gives you CC control on each note if needed, and the Score Editor is as full featured as you're going to find in a DAW.


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## thevisi0nary

joebaggan said:


> I have Cubase and Reaper. I use Cubase for all things Midi because it is so full featured in that area. The Midi menu has tons of functions for manipulating Midi, the Expression Maps are key for orchestral work, the Logical Editor and Project Logical Editors allow you to manipulate just about any Midi element in a query/batch sort of way, Note Expression gives you CC control on each note if needed, and the Score Editor is as full featured as you're going to find in a DAW.



This sounds awesome.


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## thevisi0nary

gregh said:


> What sort of things are annoying you in Reaper? There may be simple workarounds or add-ons that could help. For example it might be cheaper and easier to pay someone to script something you really want rather than buy Cubase



I am sure that at least some of it I could find solutions for. My two main things is finding that the midi handling in general is a little finicky (One example being issues with perspective with the piano roll, which becomes EXTREMELY annoying), and the other being a lack of envelope style CC editing within the midi editor. Yeah you can add an insert and control CC through automation, but I don't like doing this separately from the midi editor window.


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## thevisi0nary

fretti said:


> Well I never used Reaper, only Logic before so I can’t tell you directly how different everything is there...
> For me though the most advantage was the ease of using the instrument rack and with that being able to load multiple instruments in one Kontakt instance.
> But if you already are comfortable with Reaper I‘d really go for the trial version before buying, because there are always things (key commands, where things are „hidden“, Mixer etc.) where you first have to get used to. E.G in the beginning it was „really“ hard for me to get used to the whole routing thing in Cubase as there are no effect possible for Midi-Tracks, in Logic I always only used the „normal“ instrument tracks where you can just add effect how you like. On the other hand I have now built my perfect setup for my workflow where everything is layed out, routed etc. How I like it. In Logic I Never even began to build a setup as it would have taken me probably a year to load everything in...
> No DAW is perfect for everyone so it could be (like in my case) a huge step forward in terms of speed and usability. Can be though that you first need a couple of days with frustration and YouTube videos so you find everything (was for me the case with Midi-Tracks as I had no idea how to load a Kontakt patch there and it wasn‘t really a plug and play situation in the beginning, like Logic really is). The midi editor itself is great as you have „infinite“ possibilities, but for a real comparison of the differences between Reaper Midi and Cubase Midi there should answer someone who recently used/uses both, as this was more a general thought of switching DAWs...
> Maybe watch some Cubase Midi Tutorials on YouTube first now to get a general overview of what you would get into and how different everything works to how you are used to (could be you don‘t want Cubase after the first 15min; or that you want to switch as soon as possible) all a matter of personal taste there



This makes sense. I think I am ultimately going to have to try the demo before knowing how I will really feel about it.

So wait, you can't add ANY fx to a midi track?


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## fretti

thevisi0nary said:


> This makes sense. I think I am ultimately going to have to try the demo before knowing how I will really feel about it.
> 
> So wait, you can't add ANY fx to a midi track?


You can but you have to rout it to an Kontakt output track (wich have to be activated in Kontakt and then again in the instrument rack in Cubase, and the midi tracks have to be routed to the correct output-track) so at least for me in the beginning a little complicated because I never really worked with those things. But now for me actually works better...


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## EvilDragon

Routing-wise Reaper is just so much better than Cubase, it's not even a contest.


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## thevisi0nary

fretti said:


> You can but you have to rout it to an Kontakt output track (wich have to be activated in Kontakt and then again in the instrument rack in Cubase, and the midi tracks have to be routed to the correct output-track) so at least for me in the beginning a little complicated because I never really worked with those things. But now for me actually works better...



I meant you can’t add fx directly to a track that has midi?


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## thevisi0nary

EvilDragon said:


> Routing-wise Reaper is just so much better than Cubase, it's not even a contest.



I definitely wouldn’t doubt it. Reaper feels incredibly flexible in most ways which I’m surprised doesn’t completely apply to the midi editor. Would really just like a midi editor that feels a little bit more rounded if you will since it’s what I’m working with now 80% of the time.


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## Parsifal666

I don't know f#$% all about other DAWs. I just know I've loved Cubase for twelve years...it just seems right to me.

I wouldn't doubt there are terrific DAWs besides...I'm just perfectly happy with what I have. 

That said, I'm still on 8, never cared much about the upgrades.


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## Rasmus Hartvig

I agree. Reaper's midi editor lacks a few nice things that Cubase has. For me it's mostly down to CC editing that feels clunky. The rest of the stuff I missed I've been able to customize and script myself out of.

On the other hand, Reaper has some stuff that you just don't get with any other DAW. The fact that a track can hold both midi and audio makes it incredibly easy to bounce, say, a pre-recorded string run. The item will stay exactly in place on the same track the midi was on, have the same routing and fx as the midi on that track, and is now a snap to timestretch to sync perfectly up. In Cubase doing something like that is incredibly cumbersome, and involves multiple tracks and takes many more mouse clicks to accomplish.
Timestretching a group of midi notes in the piano roll is another thing that I love that Reaper can do. In Cubase you can't (only in a very cumbersome way in the arrange view).

I'm still hoping for refinements to Reapers midi editor, but I think I'm at the point now where the productivity boost of using Reaper definitely outweighs the few gripes I have with it.


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## J-M

When I started making music in my bedroom I tried Reaper, didn't like it and I've used Cubase ever since. FYI, the composer for the new Call of Duty used Reaper so it's certainly good enough for professional work.


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## lucor

EvilDragon said:


> Routing-wise Reaper is just so much better than Cubase, it's not even a contest.


How so? (Genuine question)


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## DS_Joost

EvilDragon said:


> Routing-wise Reaper is just so much better than Cubase, it's not even a contest.



I would agree, and yet I've tried both programs and have settled on Cubase. Because, when I'm composing, I'm not using that kind of complex routing. I just use instrument tracks and sends and FX returns, so nothing crazy.

I find that from time to time Reaper offers me some function I can't find anywhere. Like Audio Event FX with the automation on the event itself. Beautiful. Or the fact that I can select a portion of a clip in the browser and only import that.

When you are doing Sound FX work on a movie, those features are enormous time savers.

But for composing with midi, I find the workflow in Cubase so much more rounded and streamlined than Reaper.

Reaper can do everything that Cubase can, but not as fast and intuitive, at least on the midi front. The fact that I have to install dozens of scripts to even get that midi editor up to par speaks volumes for me. I was trying to get the midi editor to behave easily and intuitively but I always felt that I ran into walls with scripts all the time. Like, there's a script that can subtract -10 from CC7. But then you need another script for CC11. And another for CC1. And three others for +10. I got a headache from trying to manage and update all the scripts, putting them in the appropriate contextual toolbars, having them working in the right context, troubleshooting, messaging with script creates because of errors and bugs...

I'm sure that, if you take the time to customize it, Reaper can be heaven. But for me, for serious composing work, I just like Cubase more because it offers me a brilliantly thought out workflow that is easy to learn, deep to master, and once you master it, it is pure bliss.

The only program that kinda offers the same streamlined workflow when it comes to midi that I know of is Studio One (it might be even more streamlined). But alas, Studio One can't handle very large disabled templates and I'm sure as hell not going back to VEPro anymore.

So right now I'm on Cubase. And loving it. I'm keeping a side eye towards both Reaper and Studio One, but both need the following to really get me to switch:

1) Reaper's CC editing needs to become more intuitive. Those scripts need to become native, and have to become much more integrated to the point where the same command applies to all CC's instead of having multiple scripts for CC1, 7, 11, 21, 2, and so forth. I want to be able to copy and paste CC's using CTRL+C, CTRL+V, no matter what CC, no matter where. I want handles on the sides of selected CC events to visually stretch, compress, expand and increase or decrease them. Julian's scripts come very close, but a likewise solution needs to become native, and much more streamlined. And not 20 different scripts for different functions. That is, for me, the number one thing keeping me away from Reaper. In my opinion, Reaper needs to be much more consistent instead of feature rich. It may have almost all the features in the world for everybody, but as a MIDI composer, for me it lacks where it matters the most.

2) Studio One needs a timeline to cut up video (I can already see the use with those sweet, sweet scratch pads).

3) Studio One needs to be able to handle massive disabled templates. It chokes after a certain amount of tracks.


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## d.healey

I used Cubase for many years, I think I started with Cubase VST. Then in 2013 I switched to Reaper and haven't looked back.


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## aaronventure

lucor said:


> How so? (Genuine question)


Every plugin has a pin connector for routing. 




Swapping channels, having only one channel and multiplying output is incredibly easy. Sending different channels is all done in the "Send" window. It's like analog routing with cables. 

One of many, many examples: there's no such thing as an insert reverb without an EQ in Reaper. Insert your reverb, have it output to 3/4 only, add whichever EQ or processing you want and have it only process 3/4 -> 3/4, then mix it back down into 1/2.

Or you have a general reverb on receive, and you want to send your violin but with extra high end. Drop an EQ on the violin, adjust high boost, click on routing, remove 1/2, add 3/4 and send channels 3/4 to the reverb. Violin dry plays normally, but it sends to the reverb with extra highs.


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## EvilDragon

lucor said:


> How so? (Genuine question)



Well anything can route to anywhere without any special track types and somesuch shit which limits you. You can pick which channels from which track to route into which channels on other track(s), which is great for multichannel work obviously. And any track can become multichannel ANYTIME without you needing to create a new track with a different track type, etc. You can even create feedback loops if you want. You can load an effect directly on a track that has MIDI, no need to create sends for that if you don't want to, etc. Folders operate as both summing busses and organizational tools, it's great.


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## FriFlo

I would like a DAW that has a developer team with the spirit like the reaper guys have with the aesthetic, features and focus on midi composition like Cubase combined with a deep custmizability integrated into the program. I love max/msp, so max for live is what I would love, but Reaper seems to be pretty deep there, too.
Unfortunately, no existing DAW does fulfill all of those whishes. Cubase and Reaper both come close, but fail in different aspects. Let's face it: there is not a single DAW around that really make composing with samples as easy as it actually could be. There is no boldness to create standards for working with these kinds of DAWs. No integration of tablets to control all paramet for example. There are ways of course, to do that yourself, but you always realise there are some limitations that actually prevent you from getting what you want to do.
In terms of editing, Cubase is pretty much perfect. I looks like a mess, to start with. Editing has to do with looking ar something, so, while I don’t care little for design, it has to be a functional design you don’t get eye cancer by looking at it for a long time. Every time I tried reaper the midi editing bothered me, although I have looked into the customizability. It just seemed like a big step back from Cubase in spite of the sympathy I have for Reaper in regards of their business model and company spirit.


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## fretti

thevisi0nary said:


> I meant you can’t add fx directly to a track that has midi?


Midi FX yes,
Audio FX (reverb, eq etc.) no. Only in the Kontakt Output Tracks


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## EvilDragon

...and that's what's lame about Cubase's routing.


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## aaronventure

You can also load FX per audio clip, or load MIDI FX per midi clip like arpeggiator, scale lock etc.


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## d.healey

You can also create your own effects and scripted macros!


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## robgb

Rasmus Hartvig said:


> For me it's mostly down to CC editing that feels clunky.



I've never really had a problem with clunkiness. I'm not quite sure what people are having such a hard time with, but everyone has their own preferences. If you want to you can use the CCEnv scripts and record CC info to envelopes that may be more in keeping with the Cubase style of CC editing.



MrLinssi said:


> FYI, the composer for the new Call of Duty used Reaper so it's certainly good enough for professional work.



This strikes me as a bit backhanded. Reaper is more than "good enough." Feature for feature I'd put it up against any DAW out there.


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## robgb

FriFlo said:


> Let's face it: there is not a single DAW around that really make composing with samples as easy as it actually could be.


I ask this in all seriousness. How complicated does it need to be? Maybe I'm missing something, but I just load the samples and play, either using key switches, an articulation switcher (reaticulate), or on separate tracks. If any CC events need adjusting, I go in and adjust them. If something needs quantizing, I quantize it. Frankly, I'm not really sure what else needs to be done. But then maybe I'm doing it wrong...


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## InLight-Tone

I've used both pretty extensively and my vote goes to Cubase. No DAW is perfect, they all have their idiosyncrasies. But as far as composing for samples, Cubase wins out by far. To me, something about Reaper feels unfinished, shaky, like a home made go kart your neighbor built. It'll get you around but the driving performance is hardly a precision ride. You can patch it up McGyver style with all sorts of creative scripts, but it's no Lamborghini by any stretch. You can get your track done, but it's fraught with peril...

Cubase is a smooth high performance machine when it comes to recording, writing and editing midi. You can take the turns at high speed without fear. It's got its drawbacks for sure, sure as their silly Plugin Sentinel that scans and blacklists your plugins on every start up. The non standard menus, and window system WTF? 

I also gave Studio One a shot, but how can anyone look at that busy flat GUI for and hour or two without it all melting into an incoherent mess. The features are there but I can't look at it...


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## EvilDragon

InLight-Tone said:


> but it's no Lamborghini by any stretch.



Except it is where it matters: CPU usage.


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## fretti

To OPs FX question (again):
Cubase offers both:
-Instrument tracks (like Logic or Pro Tools):you load in on track with one specific VI (Kontakt, Play, HZS, Zebra etc.), there you can normally adjust volume in dB and add also audio FX
Midi Track: only for midi. Can be routed to any VI Output track and VI („multitimbral“ Kontakt or Play eg). Has no direct Audio FX and no dB in mixer. It’s only for Midi Data.
If there are any big advantages in terms of speed, CPU use etc. I can‘t tell as that is not my field


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## InLight-Tone

EvilDragon said:


> Except it is where it matters: CPU usage.


I don't disagree in principle. Cubase has an annoyingly SLOW startup and shutdown time. Media Bay is always indexing your material and has you pausing while searching. But, as far as track count and being stable, I personally am satisfied with the trade offs as on my moderate quad core, I can write tracks of moderate complexity without running out of juice. Writing, recording and editing midi is my focus and Cubase does that right, and it's fast, efficient and elegant...


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## DS_Joost

InLight-Tone said:


> I don't disagree in principle. Cubase has an annoyingly SLOW startup and shutdown time. Media Bay is always indexing your material and has you pausing while searching. But, as far as track count and being stable, I personally am satisfied with the trade offs as on my moderate quad core, I can write tracks of moderate complexity without running out of juice. Writing, recording and editing midi is my focus and Cubase does that right, and it's fast, efficient and elegant...



Indeed. Cubase might be slow to start/shutdown but it stays extremely stable under very high load pressures. One of the only DAWs that really does that. Some are faster at startup, some are more efficient at low CPU consumption (Studio One, for example), but fall apart under extreme pressure (again, Studio One does this, it performs great up until a certain invisible wall and then drops off a cliff). Cubase just stays humming along, not choking under any circumstance, with a low buffer size and a really high amount of really beefy VI's and plugins. On my last project, RAM usage was 48GB and CPU around 60/65%. And this is with around 35 demanding VI's (Omnisphere, Play hosting string legato instruments, etc). I also mixed the project without having to bounce down one track. I'm sure there are over hundreds of plugin effects in there working together. All the while showing video in the same instance, tempo changes... you name it. That's insane in my book, seeing as I don't sport the newest CPU, a I7 5820k running at 3.30 ghz (not the worst either, but still).

I'm sure Reaper is really stable and efficient too, but I'm being honest if I say that I've never really put it under really high stress.


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## JEPA

InLight-Tone said:


> Writing, recording and editing midi is my focus


i do all this efficient and elegant in Reaper with great satisfaction..


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## MarcusD

Rasmus Hartvig said:


> I agree. Reaper's midi editor lacks a few nice things that Cubase has. For me it's mostly down to CC editing that feels clunky. The rest of the stuff I missed I've been able to customize and script myself out of.
> 
> On the other hand, Reaper has some stuff that you just don't get with any other DAW. The fact that a track can hold both midi and audio makes it incredibly easy to bounce, say, a pre-recorded string run. The item will stay exactly in place on the same track the midi was on, have the same routing and fx as the midi on that track, and is now a snap to timestretch to sync perfectly up. In Cubase doing something like that is incredibly cumbersome, and involves multiple tracks and takes many more mouse clicks to accomplish.
> Timestretching a group of midi notes in the piano roll is another thing that I love that Reaper can do. In Cubase you can't (only in a very cumbersome way in the arrange view).
> 
> I'm still hoping for refinements to Reapers midi editor, but I think I'm at the point now where the productivity boost of using Reaper definitely outweighs the few gripes I have with it.



Actually you can just "Right click" and select "Render in place" and Cubase will do just that. You even have the option to be pre or post fader for effects. Personally, I never use MIDI channels in Cubase. I purely use Instrument Channels because it's much easier to do and requires no further routing.


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## Rasmus Hartvig

MarcusD said:


> Actually you can just "Right click" and select "Render in place" and Cubase will do just that. You even have the option to be pre or post fader for effects.


I know about Render in place. In Cubase that will create a new audio track. My point was that since midi and audio can co-exist on the same track in Reaper, the render in place process is less messy.


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## chrisphan

I use the inspector panel to insert effects in Cubase and find it very convenient. You can insert audio effects while selecting a MIDI track that way.


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## MarcusD

Rasmus Hartvig said:


> I know about Render in place. In Cubase that will create a new audio track. My point was that since midi and audio can co-exist on the same track in Reaper, the render in place process is less messy.



Ahh, now I understand what you meant! I can see how that's handy, but for the sake of 2 seconds It's hardly a qualm. You can still get from A to B just as quick. When people compare Reaper and Cubase its mostly nitpicking, the only thing I think's good in Reaper (that I would like in Cubase) is the ability to do Feedback loops. Apart from that, I never really see any worth in it as a DAW, especially for MIDI work. Cubase has really great MIDI features built in, which is the soul reason why it's so good for composing on.


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## SchnookyPants

No promises or anything, but if you can be a little patient, your wishes may soon be granted, because I doubt that it'll be too long before we have REAPER v 6. We're currently at 5.80, and at the rate we get updates...

Fingers crossed that many MIDI editing dreams will be answered.


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## EvilDragon

I've no problems with MIDI in Reaper. At all. Perhaps articulation mapping would be cool but it's not a dealbreaker for me. It's absolutely worth the time setting Reaper up to your own workflow, IMO. I'd feel way too limited in Cubase in other areas.


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## Jeremy Spencer

InLight-Tone said:


> To me, something about Reaper feels unfinished, shaky, like a home made go kart your neighbor built. It'll get you around but the driving performance is hardly a precision ride. You can patch it up McGyver style with all sorts of creative scripts, but it's no Lamborghini by any stretch. You can get your track done, but it's fraught with peril...



Ha ha! Great analogy. During my "test drive" with Reaper, this is pretty much how I felt about it as well. It sort of reminded me of a virtual Fisher-Price toy. I'm sure it's a good DAW, just personally didn't like it at all.


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## EvilDragon

It is VERY far from a toy.


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## Jeremy Spencer

EvilDragon said:


> It is VERY far from a toy.



Of course, it was just my initial impressions. I have no doubt it's amazing.


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## J-M

robgb said:


> I've never really had a problem with clunkiness. I'm not quite sure what people are having such a hard time with, but everyone has their own preferences. If you want to you can use the CCEnv scripts and record CC info to envelopes that may be more in keeping with the Cubase style of CC editing.
> 
> 
> 
> This strikes me as a bit backhanded. Reaper is more than "good enough." Feature for feature I'd put it up against any DAW out there.



I didn't mean my comment to say that Reaper is somehow inferior to other DAWs. Should have worded it more carefully. But I do see a lot of people bashing Reaper because a) it doesn't cost as much as the major DAWs, or b) because it isn't as common as the major DAWs.


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## Dewdman42

I'm a tinkerer and one of these days I will sit down for a while and try to learn Reaper to see what it could do for me. Every time I try to do that its apparent to me that it won't be a short process to learn my way around it...I do not feel it is as immediately intuitive to learn and use as other DAW's I have tried. I also do not much like the idea that i will HAVE to customize it in order to get it to the level that I'm used to with other daw's, according the reports of others. That being said, I still will definitely give it a go one of these days to see what I can do with it.

I definitely do not think its a toy, but I do think the GUI is kind of overwhelmingly complicated at first glance and a bit crude looking. There are a tons of themes I know, but I find most of the ones I have tried problematic too. 

The other DAW's tend to guide me in the right direction and get me going with an elegant UI that makes sense for it. But nobody can argue that the customizability in Reaper is very interesting to investigate...and after all this talk about all its routing flexibility, I want to see about that too.


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## robgb

Dewdman42 said:


> I'm a tinkerer and one of these days I will sit down for a while and try to learn Reaper to see what it could do for me. Every time I try to do that its apparent to me that it won't be a short process to learn my way around it...I do not feel it is as immediately intuitive to learn and use as other DAW's I have tried. I also do not much like the idea that i will HAVE to customize it in order to get it to the level that I'm used to with other daw's, according the reports of others. That being said, I still will definitely give it a go one of these days to see what I can do with it.
> 
> I definitely do not think its a toy, but I do think the GUI is kind of overwhelmingly complicated at first glance and a bit crude looking. There are a tons of themes I know, but I find most of the ones I have tried problematic too.
> 
> The other DAW's tend to guide me in the right direction and get me going with an elegant UI that makes sense for it. But nobody can argue that the customizability in Reaper is very interesting to investigate...and after all this talk about all its routing flexibility, I want to see about that too.


It really helps to start with Kenny Gioia's tutorial videos on the Reaper website. They are invaluable.


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## Dewdman42

someday.


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## robgb

InLight-Tone said:


> To me, something about Reaper feels unfinished, shaky, like a home made go kart your neighbor built. It'll get you around but the driving performance is hardly a precision ride.


I have to ask when was the last time you used Reaper, because I don't get that impression at all. I've used all the major DAWs, spent a lot of time in Cubase, then Logic, then Studio One. Reaper is the first time that I felt that I had finally found a DAW that will work around my workflow rather than the other way around. The only imprecision, in my estimation, is the user, not the DAW.


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## d.healey

Yeah Kenny's Groove 3 tutorials are how I got started. His ongoing YouTube series is very helpful, as is the Reaper blog.


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## Rapollo

robgb said:


> I have to ask when was the last time you used Reaper, because I don't get that impression at all. I've used all the major DAWs, spent a lot of time in Cubase, then Logic, then Studio One. Reaper is the first time that I felt that I had finally found a DAW that will work around my workflow rather than the other way around. The only imprecision, in my estimation, is the user, not the DAW.



I had similar experience. I've demo'd Cubase the last 3 versions and its felt like a dinosaur every time for what I've been used to (came from Mac Pro Tools to Logic to Windows/Studio One/FL to demo'ing Reaper/Cubase) and Reaper has always won out in everything except the midi - but again, I do simple VI work so it does what I need. What scares more people I feel is that aesthetically it looks and feels more like "audio software" than a kinda music playground kinda like Cubase, Logic, Ableton or FL. Which is why I laugh when people refer to it as anything like "toyish", considering its the leanest powerhouse currently about. 

The guy discussed earlier, Wil Roget or something who did the CODWWII ost did it all in a single project which was about 4 hours long or something. On a mediocre/average machine (i7, 24gb ram). A detail that should not be overlooked when talking CPU efficiency lol


----------



## fretti

Just upgraded to Cubase Pro 9.5 and also got the Edu subscription for Pro Tools to get more into Audio and Mixing. So no need for the next 2 or 3 years. But maybe until then Reaper will make huge steps forward in terms of design, as this would be the only thing for me where others are ahead. Hate me for it but Design and Optics in products is something I really care for and wich is an important thing for me...obviously everybody likes different things though


----------



## robgb

fretti said:


> Just upgraded to Cubase Pro 9.5 and also got the Edu subscription for Pro Tools to get more into Audio and Mixing. So no need for the next 2 or 3 years. But maybe until then Reaper will make huge steps forward in terms of design, as this would be the only thing for me where others are ahead. Hate me for it but Design and Optics in products is something I really care for and wich is an important thing for me...obviously everybody likes different things though


You do know that Reaper has hundreds of different themes, right? The default design is not the only one available.


----------



## InLight-Tone

robgb said:


> I have to ask when was the last time you used Reaper, because I don't get that impression at all. I've used all the major DAWs, spent a lot of time in Cubase, then Logic, then Studio One. Reaper is the first time that I felt that I had finally found a DAW that will work around my workflow rather than the other way around. The only imprecision, in my estimation, is the user, not the DAW.



I used it a year ago pretty extensively, then recently gave it all my attention for another go for 2 months straight. Despite my theming, mouse modifier adjustments, custom keyboard shortcuts, custom scripts and toolbars, I even bought OTR to force myself to adapt, which I quickly abandoned to create my own template system from the gorund up, there's something off-putting about it FOR ME! 

Everyone is different, in Reaper I just don't feel stable or comfortable writing music for whatever reason. I don't like the midi editor at all, the zooming, the weird track manager, the way the mouse behaves, the way it responds to input, I can't put my finger on it, just a personal feeling that makes me not want to use it. It feels chaotic...

For better or worse, I get things done in Cubase and I'm the worst procrastinator in the business. Your snarky put down at the end was un-called for though. I respect Reaper and the awesome community behind it but I am particular about my DAW since I'm going to be using it the majority of my day. It's gotta be comfortable and fit right or I'm not wearing it...


----------



## EvilDragon

MrLinssi said:


> But I do see a lot of people bashing Reaper because a) it doesn't cost as much as the major DAWs, or b) because it isn't as common as the major DAWs.



Which are both some of the most inane reasons to bash something for, don't you agree?



InLight-Tone said:


> the zooming,



What about the zooming? (BTW current prereleases are exactly dealing with zooming/scrolling in MIDI editor when editing multiple items and when linking item selection from arrange to visibility/editability... some neat improvements there.)


----------



## robgb

InLight-Tone said:


> Everyone is different, in Reaper I just don't feel stable or comfortable writing music for whatever reason.


Yep. To each his own. I'm sure it's obvious that I absolutely love Reaper and couldn't ask for a better DAW.


----------



## fretti

robgb said:


> You do know that Reaper has hundreds of different themes, right? The default design is not the only one available.


I guessed so as there is not THE Reaper GUI picture around.


----------



## InLight-Tone

EvilDragon said:


> Which are both some of the most inane reasons to bash something for, don't you agree?
> 
> 
> 
> What about the zooming? (BTW current prereleases are exactly dealing with zooming/scrolling in MIDI editor when editing multiple items and when linking item selection from arrange to visibility/editability... some neat improvements there.)


I'm keeping my eye on it for sure, it's an engineering marvel. Mind you I spent a lot of years in Linux and Emacs most of my day so I know where it's coming from...


----------



## J-M

EvilDragon said:


> Which are both some of the most inane reasons to bash something for, don't you agree?



Well yes, but then again, some people can't think for themselves.


----------



## benmrx

I think the longer you stay with one DAW the greener the grass gets.


----------



## Bender-offender

benmrx said:


> I think the longer you stay with one DAW the greener the grass gets.


This is absolutely true up to a point of knowing your green grass so well that you begin to notice some of it is weeds.


----------



## StephenForsyth

Y'all better get used to reaper it's going to be a significant portion of the market in 5-10 years. 

Lots of people my age grew up on it.


----------



## MarcusD

Anyone would think the second coming of the messiah is on the horizon... A DAW is a DAW, the music that comes out is exactly the same. Having one feature another DAW doesnt, dosent stop you achieving the same result. Everything is down to the user, thier workflow preference and knowledge of their chosen DAW.


----------



## CoffeeLover

been on protools for 15 years 
was my main songwriting tool at the time
i got pro tools because i thought it was logical cos all the recording studios used it and im a regular client in pro studios
when version 8 and upwards came 
i experienced massive stability issues and reaper saved the day always and what a breeze and such stable daw i fell in love
then at pro tools version 12 i got stability back
but pro tools could not give me all the track counts i needed as my usage of virtual instruments grew aaaand reaper did the work again for me.
but jumped on cubase wagon 6 months ago after a year of research
i am still learning it for and it is a wonderfull tool that ill be using as my main writing daw and 
pro tools for polishing and 
reaper for emergencies and mobile studio. 
these 3 daws are all good with their strengths and weakneses.


----------



## robgb

MarcusD said:


> .. A DAW is a DAW


Well, no. Having extensively used most of the major DAWs, I have to say that just isn't true. While the music might be the same, getting there can be a headache if you choose a DAW that isn't right for you.


----------



## Nite Sun

The routing in Cubase is actually pretty flexible if you switch to direct routing (summing mode). Then any kind of track can send to up to 7 other destinations. My favourite mixer routing implementation has to be FL Studio


----------



## MarcusD

robgb said:


> Well, no. Having extensively used most of the major DAWs, I have to say that just isn't true. While the music might be the same, getting there can be a headache if you choose a DAW that isn't right for you.



A DAW is a DAW - A tool for creating music. Anything else is personal preference.

I've used most major DAWs for years. They all offer you the same basic tools to create music. The only differences are the company philosophies on audio, design and creativity. All of which influence how the tools are packaged & presented to you as a consumer. If their design choices or the way in which their tools work, don't appeal to you, then that's a matter of personal preference. They all allow you to get the same end result.


----------



## novaburst

The most important part of your DAW is your midi work since that's the area you will spend most of your time,
It needs to work well with Hardware controllers, and 3rd party software example VEpro that opens up even more options and potential, when choosing your DAW it should be based on the midi work.

Any other thing is all secondary or less important since you can pretty much master in any thing you choose, eg Wave labs, or mastering software on your DAW.

For those mostly recording audio, eg live, there are DAWs that are preferred even Cubase, Nuendo, Reaper, Pro tools Logic, Mixbus and more.

Many go with the industry standard Pro tools used with hardware Console


----------



## BlackDorito

Dewdman42 said:


> I'm a tinkerer and one of these days I will sit down for a while and try to learn Reaper to see what it could do for me. Every time I try to do that its apparent to me that it won't be a short process to learn my way around it...I do not feel it is as immediately intuitive to learn and use as other DAW's I have tried. I also do not much like the idea that i will HAVE to customize it in order to get it to the level that I'm used to with other daw's, according the reports of others. That being said, I still will definitely give it a go one of these days to see what I can do with it.
> 
> I definitely do not think its a toy, but I do think the GUI is kind of overwhelmingly complicated at first glance and a bit crude looking. There are a tons of themes I know, but I find most of the ones I have tried problematic too.
> 
> The other DAW's tend to guide me in the right direction and get me going with an elegant UI that makes sense for it. But nobody can argue that the customizability in Reaper is very interesting to investigate...and after all this talk about all its routing flexibility, I want to see about that too.


As someone who just started working with Reaper, this sums up my attitude as well. There are a lot of good tutorials and I'm slogging through them. Thinking about all the things Reaper *can* do is both an energy spark and an energy drain. I've been all set to join the cult .. looking forward, in fact. But then I get into the MIDI editor and I can't copy-paste CC data with the normal Ctl-C / Ctl-V paradigm ... why not? I haven't learned how to simply insert a single Modwheel value in the CC lane .. I need to go into the Event List. These things are part of the 'energy drain'.


----------



## EvilDragon

Inserting a single event in a CC lane is just a double-click, that's it. No need for Event List. CCs do copy via Ctrl+C/V, the paste is applied at edit cursor, and it does work in multiple lanes. Not sure how you managed NOT to do it.¸


----------



## BlackDorito

Well .. I should probably not divert this thread with newbie issues. I'm glad to see that Reaper can do what I need ... although my mouse menu buttons do not seem to operate like yours - neither of those operations work for me (Copy is grayed out). EvilDragon, I see you are a Reaper whiz who has answered many questions on this forum and others .. so as a new Reaper person, I will thank you in advance for any future help. I usually compose in notation ... I am trying to determine if starting with a piano sketch and then expanding to a full orchestration by entering notes directly into Piano Roll (instead of Sibelius) could become natural for me. This is my quest.


----------



## EvilDragon

Double click to input a single CC is the default... Ctrl+C/V also just work as above shown by default...

BTW how do you have your MIDI editor set up (Preferences->Editing Behavior->MIDI Editor)? Post a screenshot.


----------



## InLight-Tone

BlackDorito said:


> Well .. I should probably not divert this thread with newbie issues. I'm glad to see that Reaper can do what I need ... although my mouse menu buttons do not seem to operate like yours - neither of those operations work for me (Copy is grayed out). EvilDragon, I see you are a Reaper whiz who has answered many questions on this forum and others .. so as a new Reaper person, I will thank you in advance for any future help. I usually compose in notation ... I am trying to determine if starting with a piano sketch and then expanding to a full orchestration by entering notes directly into Piano Roll (instead of Sibelius) could become natural for me. This is my quest.


I don't see how ED has time to compose. He's on every forum with copious replies daily and his profiles all say some 15,000+ posts EACH FORUM?!? (Oh wait only 4000+ on VI, slacker...


----------



## robgb

MarcusD said:


> A DAW is a DAW - A tool for creating music. Anything else is personal preference.


I certainly understand what you're trying to say, but I think it downplays the importance of personal preference. I could just as easily say a string library is a string library, it all comes down to personal preference. EVERYTHING comes down to personal preference.


----------



## EvilDragon

InLight-Tone said:


> I don't see how ED has time to compose. He's on every forum with copious replies daily and his profiles all say some 15,000+ posts EACH FORUM?!? (Oh wait only 4000+ on VI, slacker...



I don't compose much (or at all, since I got a son), because my main line of work is not composing (it never was), it's Kontakt scripting. Composing would be a pastime for me. Nonetheless, that doesn't mean I'm not efficient when doing it. Reaper allows me that efficiency. 

Also regarding forums, perhaps also check the join dates for a particular forum, it might put things in a bit more perspective (especially the posts per day count - on Cockos forums it's about 6.4 per day, on KvR it's 4.72, on NI forums it's 3.14 posts per day, on GS it's 2.91). Forum posting is hardly a time sink by those metrics.


----------



## BlackDorito

EvilDragon said:


> Double click to input a single CC is the default... Ctrl+C/V also just work as above shown by default...
> 
> BTW how do you have your MIDI editor set up (Preferences->Editing Behavior->MIDI Editor)? Post a screenshot.








My difficulties have been with editing an item with only CC in it - no regular notes. I now realize that double click DOES work to create a CC value .. I had been clicking outside of the range of the media item and merely had to drag the size (editable region) to be bigger.


----------



## EvilDragon

Unrelated to the CC thing (which BTW also by default just works even without any notes entered, you can copy paste them just the same with Ctrl+C/V as anything else), I suggest disabling "Only MIDI items on the same track as the active item are editable" and if you work on more than one monitor and you put MIDI editor on a separate monitor, this one as well: "Close editor when the active item is deleted in the arrange view". This way MIDI editor will always be open

Other than that, this is how I have MIDI editor set up as well exactly (except I increased the number of CCs per quarter note to 128).


In any case, we can carry this over to PM since you already did that.


----------



## pderbidge

InLight-Tone said:


> I used it a year ago pretty extensively, then recently gave it all my attention for another go for 2 months straight. Despite my theming, mouse modifier adjustments, custom keyboard shortcuts, custom scripts and toolbars, I even bought OTR to force myself to adapt, which I quickly abandoned to create my own template system from the gorund up, there's something off-putting about it FOR ME!
> 
> Everyone is different, in Reaper I just don't feel stable or comfortable writing music for whatever reason. I don't like the midi editor at all, the zooming, the weird track manager, the way the mouse behaves, the way it responds to input, I can't put my finger on it, just a personal feeling that makes me not want to use it. It feels chaotic...
> 
> For better or worse, I get things done in Cubase and I'm the worst procrastinator in the business. Your snarky put down at the end was un-called for though. I respect Reaper and the awesome community behind it but I am particular about my DAW since I'm going to be using it the majority of my day. It's gotta be comfortable and fit right or I'm not wearing it...


LOL. I think the reasons you liked Cubase are the reasons I didn't. Horses for courses. Cubase was always too rigid and not flexible enough for me. I love how I can write a part,write some more parts and then later down the line decide I don't like that one part in the middle and easily get rid of it with just a few clicks and everything past that part stays in tack and snaps back in place without a lot of hassle.Or I can decide to add a part in the middle of a song and easily create a space for it without too much massaging. Something like this takes way more time and care in Cubase. Still, I think the midi editor in Cubase has some great features and I am one of those looking forward to Reaper doing a little more refinement of the midi editor but I've been pretty satisfied with it up til now.

Like someone else mentioned. It's the music that matters so whatever enables you to write better music is all that matters.


----------



## joebaggan

Cubase started out as an industry leading Midi sequencer long before it got into Audio. So, the Midi features are full featured, plentiful and proven over many years. There's little if anything you can't do with Midi using Cubase Pro. Contrast that with Reaper which started out as primarily an Audio DAW. Midi features were an afterthought for Reaper, not built from the ground up, so is still a work in progress. Cubase has more Midi features easily accessible, in addition to Logical Editors, Expression Maps, and a Score Editor that is more mature than their equivalents in Reaper. But for 60 bucks, can't complain really.


----------



## Phillip Dixon

thevisi0nary said:


> I’ve been using reaper for years now and am fairly comfortable with it, although not a pro by any means. I use it primarily for midi composition.
> 
> I have always heard that reaper is “bad for midi work”. I personally do not really have problems, but I do run into little things that annoy the hell out of me and confuse me.
> 
> I am just curious, what would I stand to gain by moving to something like cubase? Is it really that much better for midi? If so in what way?
> 
> I plan on doing the demo with the E licenser, I figured it can’t hurt to ask this as well.


Hi if you do go down this route i'am selling cubase pro 9.5 just put on the for sale board save yourself a couple of 100 euros
Cheers phill


----------



## Tod

joebaggan said:


> Cubase started out as an industry leading Midi sequencer long before it got into Audio. So, the Midi features are full featured, plentiful and proven over many years. There's little if anything you can't do with Midi using Cubase Pro. Contrast that with Reaper which started out as primarily an Audio DAW. Midi features were an afterthought for Reaper, not built from the ground up, so is still a work in progress. Cubase has more Midi features easily accessible, in addition to Logical Editors, Expression Maps, and a Score Editor that is more mature than their equivalents in Reaper. But for 60 bucks, can't complain really.



Ha ha, this is somewhat all true. 

I've been into midi almost since it started back in the mid 80s. Most of my midi experience in the mid 80s was "Sequencer Gold" then in the early 90s I switched to Cakewalk. 

Over the years since Reaper first started, I always kept an eye on it, but it's midi just sort of didn't exist. Then when Sonar went from Sonar-4 to Sonar-5 leaving all kinds of bugs behind, I started looking elsewhere. When I checked out Reaper, I saw it had progressed in midi a great deal so I decided to give it a real try. 

To make a long story short, over the last 8 years, I kind of fell in love with Reaper. The shear ability to customize is enough, but the routing capabilities are outrageous and truly a landmark. 

To be honest, I work in my control room 8 plus hours every day, and 90% of them are in the midi editor. There are things that bug me with the midi, but here again, with my custom actions and "Toolbars" there's no way I could find another DAW to replace it. 

I might add that I'm not into making orchestral mockups, my projects depend on what comes through the door. That's not to say I don't do any midi orchestra soundtracks, the outdoor videos in my signature can attest to that. 

Reaper is not for everyone, you first have to have the understanding of how it works, then the motivation to take it to it's limits, if that's even possible.


----------



## husker

InLight-Tone said:


> I don't see how ED has time to compose. He's on every forum with copious replies daily and his profiles all say some 15,000+ posts EACH FORUM?!? (Oh wait only 4000+ on VI, slacker...



I know I have certainly appreciated the the time he has spent on the forums. He has really helped me out on a few occasions.


----------



## InLight-Tone

husker said:


> I know I have certainly appreciated the the time he has spent on the forums. He has really helped me out on a few occasions.


Absolutely, a wealth of knowledge....


----------



## halfwalk

Besides the extremely helpful community (with people like EvilDragon), I find the extensible nature of the program to be a major draw for me.

You aren't necessarily locked in to one way of doing things. Want something like Cubase's expression maps? Well there are at least three different solutions created by third party users that are each unique and elegant (BRSO Articulate. Reaticulate. Stephane's Inspector with Articulation Management). This enables the user base to go beyond the use cases predicted by the developers. It really can become your own unique DAW. But you have to take the time to set it up to the way you prefer to work. Kind of like any big sample library you buy, you gotta put some hours into learning it. And with ReaPack, most of the user-made extensions are all essentially collected in one place and kept up to date.

Whenever someone says something about Reaper being "bad for MIDI" I just wonder what's so advanced that they're trying to do, that the Reaper community as a whole hasn't addressed it yet? Maybe they haven't seen this? Or this? Or this? Or https://kawa.works/reascript-midi-section (these)? I could link a dozen more things but I think my point is made.

Or is it that people are just used to their own way of doing a certain thing, and any other way seems archaic or nonsensical? I mean, spend enough time with any DAW, even if it's Mario Paint, and you'll come around to its way of thinking. Maybe I'm only a Reaper fan because I've been using it since version 2 and it's what I know best. I'm also a DIY kind of person; built my desk and acoustic panels, cook from scratch all the time, no slouch with a soldering iron, etc, so I think it fits my personality better than other DAWs I've tried.

I get it, there are way too many options, and it can sort of come together as a non-uniform patchwork of hacks and kludges. But that's human ingenuity right there, using the tools provided to solve problems that the people who made the tools never even imagined.

[/fan mode]


----------



## tack

halfwalk said:


> Well there are at least three different solutions created by third party users that are each unique and elegant (BRSO Articulate. Reaticulate. Stephane's Inspector with Articulation Management).


I very much appreciate the plug for Reaticulate, halfwalk, but the link in your OP is wrong.


----------



## halfwalk

tack said:


> I very much appreciate the plug for Reaticulate, halfwalk, but the link in your OP is wrong.


 Whoops! Fixed, sorry!


----------



## pmcrockett

On the subject of Reaper customization and articulation management, I have a prototype system that presents keyswitch, channel-per-articulation, and track-per-articulation to the user in exactly the same way. I have ideas for a system that will auto-generate alternate takes of MIDI recordings. I think it may be possible to hack the piano roll CC lanes so they effectively display envelope data instead of CC nodes.

The fact that it's actually possible to fix things yourself and implement features that have never even existed in a DAW before is what appeals to me about Reaper.


----------



## gregh

pmcrockett said:


> I have ideas for a system that will auto-generate alternate takes of MIDI recordings.



what do you mean by this?


----------



## robgb

pmcrockett said:


> I think it may be possible to hack the piano roll CC lanes so they effectively display envelope data instead of CC nodes.


I assume this is different from the CCEnv scripts?


----------



## pmcrockett

gregh said:


> what do you mean by this?


I'm specifically interested in a script that can generate the additional performances needed to construct full sections from the SWAM solo strings based on a single MIDI track per section, but more broadly speaking, the idea is to give the script a MIDI track and get back another MIDI track that is distinct from the first but is still musically coherent in the same general ways as the first. For my thoughts about how to approach this, see my posts in this thread.


robgb said:


> I assume this is different from the CCEnv scripts?


If I can get it working, I'll add it to CCEnv. It should be possible to commandeer the CC lanes to visualize/control the envelopes and completely bypass the lanes on playback. This would also let you do things like show flashing or animating CC nodes as part of the visualization because the actual positions and values of the nodes wouldn't matter. I haven't had time to do any testing yet, but I'm reasonably optimistic.


----------



## NYC Composer

pderbidge said:


> I love how I can write a part,write some more parts and then later down the line decide I don't like that one part in the middle and easily get rid of it with just a few clicks and everything past that part stays in tack and snaps back in place without a lot of hassle.


On my old version of Cubase- to delete a part, highlight and delete. To cut time, set the markers on the transport bar and go to "range/delete time". To add time, "add silence" at the place you want more time, etc. That's if you don't want to take the time to set up key commands or use the ones that are already there.

Not too complex


----------



## enyawg

I much prefer Reaper. I used Cubase since 2001 and found it an expensive big juggernaut... but as far as EBJ’s are concerned is was great!

Released my second movie score to director via 100% reaper this week and loving the flexibility, midi, audio, cpu footprint, speed of startup, VST playability, plays well with vep6/slave, and some great free tools like Reaticulate (articulation manager).


----------



## NYC Composer

I prefer Cubase because: 

1.I’m a composer who likes to write every day, and I’ve used it since 1997.
2. It does the majority of what I need.
3. I know it well.

Why the heck should I invest months in learning another sequencer, during which I will NOT by writing but WILL be scratching my head a lot and slogging through manuals, YouTube vids, forums and the like to get back to where I already am plus a little? Madness.


----------



## EvilDragon

Nobody forces you to? Madness.


----------



## NYC Composer

True, but you are a great supporter of Reaper, because it’s ‘“better”. I think these issues are really more for people starting out than people who have been actively composing for years (which as you say is not what you do, though I admire what you DO do very much)


----------



## EvilDragon

It is certainly better in some pretty important aspects compared to Cubase (much faster startup, no copy protection, lower CPU usage, better compatibility with VSTs, better and more stable bit-bridging (correct me if I'm wrong but there's no bit-bridging in Cubase any longer, unless you use 3rd party paid-for tools like jBridge), firewalling plugins, better and easier routing because of no track types etc. etc. etc.)

It's better for me, and for many others. But obviously not for everyone. If I ever need to compose on a daily basis, you can bet I'd be extremely efficient with it - there's really nothing missing for efficient composing in Reaper (well apart from native articulation management, but to me that is absolutely not a dealbreaker, as I always found that feature more geared towards a piano roll mousing person rather than a guy playing his stuff in and doing some touch-ups later, which is closer to who I am). Much more efficient than I would have been on Cubase, in fact.


----------



## NYC Composer

Oh, I’m perfectly willing to believe that Reaper is a technically better tool, but you’re missing my larger point. It’s a TOOL. It doesn’t write for you. It’s serves your writing. The right tool to get a job done is the one that fits your workflow. One table saw may be better than another, but if you’re a long time craftsman who has done beautiful work with your tools, why do you need different ones? Why would you stop your carpentry to
learn new tools to do what you’re already doing quite successfully?

These discussions always seem to end up in a bunch of ‘my tools are better than yours’ posts. Eh, ok.

Btw, I’ve seen you in the Mac vs PC wars, so admit it-you like your tools the best


----------



## EvilDragon

Everybody likes their tools the best, of course. But you can't say you didn't go through iterations to find the tool which will work best for you. I did - first FL Studio, then Sonar, ended up with Reaper, never looked back - I can shape the tool to work the way I want and the way I have in mind, instead of me learning how the tool wants to make me work, which is pretty much how I felt with tools I previously used, and from watching other people work in their DAWs of choice, I am seeing similar limitations that are just not there in Reaper.


----------



## EvilDragon

NYC Composer said:


> It doesn’t write for you.



Actually... I'm pretty sure that one could write a script in Lua for Reaper that would generate compositions algorithmically or from a pool of phrases and whatnot. Instant library music and/or trailer BRAAAMS


----------



## Divico

EvilDragon said:


> compatibility with VSTs,


How ironic since VST is a Steinberg standard :D


----------



## NYC Composer

Well, you don’t need Reaper for bad algorhythmic compositions 

As for going through tools, there was 4 track, 8 track, 16 track and eventually 2 24 track analog Sony’s synced, Pro Tools 3, Dr T on the Commodore SX-64,Oberheim hardware sequencer, Southworth Jam Box, Opcode Vision, a brief flirtation with DP to service a client, Cubase VST, a few days with Reaper salted in there. I think I’ve done enough research and can write music quickly and adeptly with my little Cubase system. I’m sure the same can be done with all major DAWS.


----------



## VgsA

EvilDragon said:


> Inserting a single event in a CC lane is just a double-click, that's it. No need for Event List. CCs do copy via Ctrl+C/V, the paste is applied at edit cursor, and it does work in multiple lanes. Not sure how you managed NOT to do it.¸



Really interested in how you do this, been trying to do the same thing for a while (''vanilla'' Reaper, no scripts or anything) with no results! I only get the lines, not the smooth ones I see here.


----------



## Divico

VgsA said:


> Really interested in how you do this, been trying to do the same thing for a while (''vanilla'' Reaper, no scripts or anything) with no results! I only get the lines, not the smooth ones I see here.


Imo they are not that smooth either. A matter of how many values are writtten and how much you zoom in 
That leads me to a question. Do you change the value of default 32 events per quarter note? And if you draw them in what grid size do you choose?


----------



## VgsA

Divico said:


> Imo they are not that smooth either. A matter of how many values are writtten and how much you zoom in
> That leads me to a question. Do you change the value of default 32 events per quarter note?



Smoother than this, right?


----------



## VgsA

Divico said:


> Do you change the value of default 32 events per quarter note?


Nope, I barely touched the preferences (if I ever touched them). I thought this was a thing with Reaper, and you had to use the external control for modulation and such, instead of doing it in the piano roll.
Sorry, I missed this question!


----------



## Divico

VgsA said:


> Nope, I barely touched the preferences (if I ever touched them). I thought this was a thing with Reaper, and you had to use the external control for modulation and such, instead of doing it in the piano roll.
> Sorry, I missed this question!


Change the grid to lets say 1/128th and look what happens 
Unfortunately reaper doesnt offer a smoother display of cc values than those bars


----------



## EvilDragon

VgsA said:


> Really interested in how you do this, been trying to do the same thing for a while (''vanilla'' Reaper, no scripts or anything) with no results! I only get the lines, not the smooth ones I see here.



Hold Shift while drawing to not snap to grid, and also set 128 CCs per quarter note rather than default 32, also set not to be zoom dependent (Preferences->Editing Behavior->MIDI Editor).


----------



## Divico

Yap. Reaper sets the sparsing of events depending on your grid


----------



## EvilDragon

Yeah, unless you disable snapping to the grid either via the MIDI toolbar button or a mouse modifier (like Shift by default). Pretty normal stuff there.


----------



## VgsA

Divico said:


> Change the grid to lets say 1/128th and look what happens
> Unfortunately reaper doesnt offer a smoother display of cc values than those bars






EvilDragon said:


> Hold Shift while drawing to not snap to grid, and also set 128 CCs per quarter note rather than default 32, also set not to be zoom dependent (Preferences->Editing Behavior->MIDI Editor).



Thanks a lot for the input! This is what happens when I hold shift, it basically modifies the event value up and down and left/right, nothing more. Maybe I'm using the wrong tool?


----------



## VgsA

Ooops, sorry, I think I attached the file the wrong way.


----------



## aaronventure

Hold CTRL while drawing to bypass grid.


----------



## VgsA

aaronventure said:


> Hold CTRL while drawing to bypass grid.



Doesn't work for me either. What am I doing wrong lol
Thanks for helping


----------



## Divico

VgsA said:


> Doesn't work for me either. What am I doing wrong lol
> Thanks for helping


Check your mouse modifier settings for the midi cc lane in the preferences and make sure its set to draw cc event ignoring snap


----------



## VgsA

Divico said:


> Check your mouse modifier settings for the midi cc lane in the preferences and make sure its set to draw cc event ignoring snap








I think it looks fine... Maybe the ''double click'' thing is wrong?


----------



## Divico

Yap wrong place. Here you wanna be


----------



## VgsA

Divico said:


> Yap wrong place. Here you wanna be








Gosh FINALLY, thank you! 
The first two lines were different in my computer.


----------



## vicontrolu

I find it amazing that after so many years, there's still a lot of people that think Reapers midi is not on par with Cubase's. I am a Cubase user who tried to switch to Reaper a couple times and finally didn't make it for the very same reason.

It's hard for me to understand why cocko's don't make it easier for us to switch. I know there are themes that copy Cubase's style and keycommands but there's a bunch of stuff you have to add manually: reascripts, midi scripts for enhancements, stuff for expression maps, etc. Since all of this is doable in Reaper.. Would it be that hard to include it all in the "cubase theme"?

I am pretty sure there are hundreds or thousands of composers in this situation, who can't afford to spend weeks of their time trying to put the Frankenstein together, but those at the same time know for a fact that Reaper is indeed superior to most of the DAWs out there and, specially with cubase, feel they don't want to keep supporting a company which sometimes doesn't reply to user problems, etc.

I usually don't think about Reaper and I am cool with cubase, but every now and then I run into a problem with steinberg or cubase crashes or refuses to exit or I read posts like this and damn.. I feel I am putting my money in the wrong basket


----------



## VgsA

vicontrolu said:


> I feel I am putting my money in the wrong basket



Totally. I think it's flexible enough to work ''like Cubase'' (all DAWs are different, hence the quote), but I don't quite understand the ''assembly'' proccess. I own several DAWs and I know pretty much all their commands and functions, but switching to Reaper requires quite a bit more than that, I think. Or at least it has been harder for me. Maybe I'm getting old lol.

But yeah, when you think about that part I quoted, I can't help but scratch my head and wonder if it's worth paying to be fully up to date (I stopped at 8.5), specially when they stop supporting older versions and if a glitch suddenly appears, they only suggest you to update (happened with my Cubase AI7 that I use in my laptop).

Also, what @EvilDragon said, protection free...


----------



## Divico

vicontrolu said:


> Since all of this is doable in Reaper.. Would it be that hard to include it all in the "cubase theme"?


Well the problem is that the themes are fanmade and restricted in their capabilities, in the end think of them as color themes.


----------



## Tod

VgsA said:


> Really interested in how you do this, been trying to do the same thing for a while (''vanilla'' Reaper, no scripts or anything) with no results! I only get the lines, not the smooth ones I see here.





Divico said:


> Imo they are not that smooth either. A matter of how many values are writtten and how much you zoom in
> That leads me to a question. Do you change the value of default 32 events per quarter note? And if you draw them in what grid size do you choose?



Yes, that's the key, I've got my ppq setup for an exaggerated amount and the events go in very smoothly. I've also got a scripted action to eliminate redundant events, unfortunately Reaper doesn't do that as you insert them, maybe someday soon.

I can understand somebody that's been using a DAW for years and reluctant to change, I was the same way with Cakewalk, I started using it in the early 90s. I stuck with them until Sonar-4, when they moved on to Sonar-5 leaving several bugs behind, I'd had enough and moved to Reaper.


----------



## robgb

vicontrolu said:


> I am pretty sure there are hundreds or thousands of composers in this situation, who can't afford to spend weeks of their time trying to put the Frankenstein together,


Weeks? I made the switch and it took me a few days to get my head around Reaper and customize it to my liking. I don't know what you folks are doing, but it ain't rocket science. It functions basically the same as every other DAW I've used, except that it's infinitely more customizable.


----------



## robgb

Divico said:


> restricted in their capabilities


Restricted in what way?


----------



## Divico

robgb said:


> Restricted in what way?


Like workflow wise. As far as I know its not possible to create a Reaper that works like Cubase, which for me would be nonsense anyway. So sure the protools/ Cubase themes etc make you feel kinda at home but under the hood its still a Reaper workflow


----------



## vicontrolu

robgb said:


> Weeks? I made the switch and it took me a few days to get my head around Reaper and customize it to my liking. I don't know what you folks are doing, but it ain't rocket science. It functions basically the same as every other DAW I've used, except that it's infinitely more customizable.



I guess some of us make more use of the project logical editor than others, also expression maps..i meant mostly midi related stuff. I admit last time I tried it was like 4 years ago, maybe some things changed, but judging on the comments I see here I'd have to assume they didn't that much. 

Speaking about logical editor.. One thing that turned me down quite a lot is the absence of something similar in reaper. I know you can build your own scripts but I think it might be too hardcore for the majority of composers. Would be nice if they wrapped it up in a cleaner, easier to use way (basic interface like cubase should do it). 

Out of curiosity, if there's somebody out there who could prepare an estimate quote on giving me a ready "my custom cubase reaper clone" feel free to send me a pm


----------



## robgb

Divico said:


> Like workflow wise. As far as I know its not possible to create a Reaper that works like Cubase, which for me would be nonsense anyway. So sure the protools/ Cubase themes etc make you feel kinda at home but under the hood its still a Reaper workflow


I agree that it's pointless to try to make Reaper look like Cubase. It isn't Cubase and isn't trying to be. As for workflow, Reaper, under the hood, has any workflow you desire. The actions, the SWS extensions, the user scripts, the mouse modifiers, the amazing routing, the track templates, the preferences, allow you to tailor Reaper to YOUR workflow rather than the other way around. That's really what I love about it. I have yet to encounter a problem that can't be tackled in multiple ways in Reaper.

And therein lies the problem with it for some people. There are too many choices. It can be overwhelming at first. But once I had it tailored to my workflow, with macros, screen sets, menus, toolbars and menus set up the way I prefer them, the work is smooth and carefree...


----------



## Divico

robgb said:


> I agree that it's pointless to try to make Reaper look like Cubase. It isn't Cubase and isn't trying to be. As for workflow, Reaper, under the hood, has any workflow you desire. The actions, the SWS extensions, the user scripts, the mouse modifiers, the amazing routing, the preferences, allow you to tailor Reaper to YOUR workflow rather than the other way around. That's really what I love about it. I have yet to encounter a problem that can't be tackled in multiple ways in Reaper.
> 
> And therein lies the problem with it for some people. There are too many choices. It can be overwhelming at first. But once I had it tailored to my workflow, with macros, screen sets, menus, toolbars and menus set up the way I prefer them, the work is smooth and carefree...


The same here. CC lanes could look better but inspite of that im overall happy. My post was related to a comment earlier


----------



## robgb

vicontrolu said:


> I guess some of us make more use of the project logical editor than others


I'd have to take a closer look, but it seems to me the logical editor can easily be replicated in Reaper through actions, either custom, built-in, or user created. Put them on a midi toolbar and you can make multiple changes to multiple notes simultaneously. Unless I'm missing something, I don't see much difference.


----------



## robgb

Divico said:


> CC lanes could look better but inspite of that im overall happy.


Do a search on CCEnv and you can do CC editing via envelopes instead. Works like a charm.


----------



## vicontrolu

robgb said:


> I agree that it's pointless to try to make Reaper look like Cubase



I strongly disagree. It is useful as long as cockos enlarges his user base (and wallet) and also for us users who want to ditch steinberg for good. Besides, it's just the midi bit we are talking about.


----------



## Divico

robgb said:


> Do a search on CCEnv and you can do CC editing via envelopes instead. Works like a charm.


Was using it for a while, but having all the envelopes was annoying for me. In the moment I try to stay with the normal cc lanes also because I bought a controller to use faders for cc rides


----------



## robgb

vicontrolu said:


> I strongly disagree. It is useful as long as cockos enlarges his user base (and wallet) and also for us users who want to ditch steinberg for good. Besides, it's just the midi bit we are talking about.


I honestly don't remember anything with midi in Cubase that's any better than Reaper, but, admittedly, it's been several years since it was my main DAW. I suspect the midi editing in Reaper is just as robust, however.


----------



## robgb

Divico said:


> I bought a controller to use faders for cc rides


I set up TouchOSC for CC controllers. Didn't think I'd like the virtual faders, but they actually work great.


----------



## Divico

robgb said:


> I set up TouchOSC for CC controllers. Didn't think I'd like the virtual faders, but they actually work great.


Did so earlier with Androids Touch Daw, but didnt convince me. I guess Ive got to have something I can touch and move :D


----------



## EvilDragon

Do note that Reaper's MIDI editor has a Filter, which, while not exactly as fleshed-out as logical editor in Cubase, does allow you to filter out events in a myriad of ways, and then you can do your tweaks on the events that pass the filter.

Also note that in Event Properties dialog, you can use math operations. So for example typing +10 in velocity field would do exactly that, for all selected events.


----------



## vicontrolu

robgb said:


> I honestly don't remember anything with midi in Cubase that's any better than Reaper



Probably there's nothing.. If you manage to know what scripts to use, where to get them, how to install it and finally use them. That's the bitter thing with reaper


----------



## robgb

vicontrolu said:


> Probably there's nothing.. If you manage to know what scripts to use, where to get them, how to install it and finally use them. That's the bitter thing with reaper


Bitter? It only takes a short time to set it up however you like. Nothing "bitter" about it at all.


----------



## Replicant

IMO, Reaper is the best DAW out there.

I started with FL Studio, I've used ProTools, at the college I went to we used Logic, and I've tried Cubase a number of times on their month-long, full-featured trials.

and Cubase is great, as is ProTools or Logic — I could honestly use any of them and be just as "efficient".

But why would I when they all cost upward of 5x as much as the basic Reaper license, have paid updates, and any "advantages" I can think of are really just minor conveniences that probably have a fanmade script or something that can be added to Reaper anyway, and I can just customize the crap out of it in general? It offers all the types of audio plugins anyone really _needs_, it supports all the 3rd-party VSTs, it's way easier to setup and route MIDI/Audio than most of the competition, it has a simple layout, tons of tutorials online, etc.

In my opinion, Cockos has the right idea with this $#%*


----------



## EvilDragon

vicontrolu said:


> Probably there's nothing.. If you manage to know what scripts to use, where to get them, how to install it and finally use them. That's the bitter thing with reaper



Thankfully ReaPack to the rescue for nearly all of those things listed there.


----------



## VgsA

Question: Saving the preferences (save modifiers for all contexts) allows you to copy all tweaks to a second machine? Like those scripts and all? (I still didn't use any, so I have no idea about how they integrate)


----------



## EvilDragon

Saving modifiers for all contexts only saves mouse modifiers. Not whole settings. You will want to save your whole configuration in Preferences->General->Export configuration...


----------



## pmcrockett

Despite being super enthusiastic about Reaper, I definitely feel for people who miss other DAWs' MIDI editing tools. Is it Cubase that gives you that selection box with draggable handles that lets you stretch and resize selected CC nodes? I want that (and have scripted something similar), but it can't be implemented graphically within the piano roll itself, which is a shame.

My long-term plan is to code my own piano roll editor so it can work exactly how I want it to. And of course the danger there is that having the ability to do this potentially sends me down a bottomless rabbit hole that distracts me from actually using Reaper as a DAW. Which is okay, I guess, because I'm happy enough to be a software dev in addition to or even instead of a composer, but it is a strange feeling to realize that you're focusing so much on improving the program that you're barely even using the program.


----------



## EvilDragon

pmcrockett said:


> Is it Cubase that gives you that selection box with draggable handles that lets you stretch and resize selected CC nodes?



That's both S1 and Cubase. Instances where I needed that functionality: close to zero. Heh.


----------



## vicontrolu

I think articulation maps are not included with Reapack right? I can't remember exactly what but other stuff needed to be installed. Probably some stuff to change the midi editor/lanes look. If it was only Reapack I wouldn't have let it go...twice.

And yes that draggable selection thing affecting both velocities and ccs gets used daily here. Missed that too.


----------



## vicontrolu

Anyway, evildragon do you know if the midi stuff is going to get priority in Reaper 6? Keeping an eye on this thread has suddenly brought some hunger again


----------



## EvilDragon

I'm not the developer, I don't know.  But it's had some focus now, fixing some zooming/scrolling behaviors and making things a lot slicker when working with item selection done in the arrange view and the MIDI editor tracklist as well. It's pretty spiffy now. Also fixing some MIDI editor bugs too.

Reaper's development is all over the place, devs basically focus on what they want to focus when they want to focus. User feature requests are sometimes thrown into the mix, but they are not the guiding line. Devs always reserve the right to call all the shots. There's no "priority". They do what they wanna do, and there's no public roadmap at all, so it's anyone's guess.


----------



## Rasmus Hartvig

pmcrockett said:


> Is it Cubase that gives you that selection box with draggable handles that lets you stretch and resize selected CC nodes? I want that (and have scripted something similar), but it can't be implemented graphically within the piano roll itself, which is a shame.



That is THE single thing from Cubase midi editing I miss. If that were to happen, I'm not sure there would be much more ammunition left for the "Reaper's midi is inferior" argument.


----------



## EvilDragon

I don't think that lack of that transform box is making Reaper's MIDI that much inferior, really. Similar things are already possible with scripts.

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=176878


----------



## ghandizilla

You can actually warp and slice CC data, thanks to Julian Sader's scripts linked by EvilDragon. I use them all the time. You also have very powerful scales recognitions scripts. All this is very difficult to implement: you have to download a few kB file, and then two clicks to access to the action list, and then two others clicks to choose the key command. It took me at least 40 seconds to implement. (The point being: scripts are _very _easy to implement in Reaper.)

My only drawback five months after full migration to Reaper would be that I didn't find a way to "humanize", introduce slightly aleatoric but smooth (with a sense of continuity) variations to CC data (would have been amazing with sample modeling stuff). But in the other hand, this function doesn't even exist in most DAW


----------



## DS_Joost

robgb said:


> I honestly don't remember anything with midi in Cubase that's any better than Reaper, but, admittedly, it's been several years since it was my main DAW. I suspect the midi editing in Reaper is just as robust, however.



Two words. Transform Tool. It's the only glaring absence in Reaper's feature set. It has everything but the one thing that makes CC editing ten times more pleasant than it is. A transform tool isn't a convenience for me... it's a must. Without it, cc editing becomes much more difficult than it should be. In fact, Julian Sader's scripts try to mimic this. He even posted a feature request to the devs to take his code and built upon it.

Edit: I hadn't read the latest reactions to this thread. Glad that people have the exact feelings that I have. Don't get me wrong. I love Reaper and would love to totally fixate on it and ditch Cubase... but I can't. Because of exactly this.


----------



## EvilDragon

I just freehand draw CCs 99% of the time. Have absolutely no problems doing that.  For anything else, Julian's scripts take the cake.


----------



## Erick - BVA

EvilDragon said:


> I just freehand draw CCs 99% of the time. Have absolutely no problems doing that. :D For anything else, Julian's scripts take the cake.


Same here --as far as freehand goes. Haven't seen Julian's script though.


----------



## EvilDragon

I just linked to them in my previous post above.


----------



## Erick - BVA

DS_Joost said:


> Two words. Transform Tool. It's the only glaring absence in Reaper's feature set. It has everything but the one thing that makes CC editing ten times more pleasant than it is. A transform tool isn't a convenience for me... it's a must. Without it, cc editing becomes much more difficult than it should be. In fact, Julian Sader's scripts try to mimic this. He even posted a feature request to the devs to take his code and built upon it.
> 
> Edit: I hadn't read the latest reactions to this thread. Glad that people have the exact feelings that I have. Don't get me wrong. I love Reaper and would love to totally fixate on it and ditch Cubase... but I can't. Because of exactly this.


I've tried Cubase several times over the past few years. There are some things I like about it, but I think overall it just doesn't gel with my workflow the way Reaper does. I like that you can immediately do EQ work on each individual track, but basic things such as dragging and selecting areas of time seem frustratingly difficult compared to Reaper. Perhaps there are some settings which I can change to make it work better. I think ultimately whatever DAW you start with ends up being your favorite --with some exceptions I'm sure. I started with Reaper. So it may just be that I am much more familiar with it, rather than it being necessarily "better" than anything else.


----------



## DS_Joost

Sibelius19 said:


> I've tried Cubase several times over the past few years. There are some things I like about it, but I think overall it just doesn't gel with my workflow the way Reaper does. I like that you can immediately do EQ work on each individual track, but basic things such as dragging and selecting areas of time seem frustratingly difficult compared to Reaper. Perhaps there are some settings which I can change to make it work better. I think ultimately whatever DAW you start with ends up being your favorite --with some exceptions I'm sure. I started with Reaper. So it may just be that I am much more familiar with it, rather than it being necessarily "better" than anything else.



Yes, I believe that is very true. I do think, however, that Reaper is superior to Cubase in almost every way. Except for that one, tiny, niggling frustrating thing.


----------



## VgsA

EvilDragon said:


> Saving modifiers for all contexts only saves mouse modifiers. Not whole settings. You will want to save your whole configuration in Preferences->General->Export configuration...



Thanks, and would that save the custom scripts as well (the downloaded ones)? I guess not, but I'd like to ask just in case.


----------



## fretti

DS_Joost said:


> Yes, I believe that is very true. I do think, however, that Reaper is superior to Cubase in almost every way. Except for that one, tiny, niggling frustrating thing.


Well I wouldn't say superior per se. If you need scripts for things Cubase or Logic have implemented from the start, then it certainly is only superior from the point where you have customized it for all your needs.
If you mean that it's superior in the way of customization and adding things via scripts, then yes, it probably is superior to Cubase and other DAWs.


----------



## EvilDragon

VgsA said:


> Thanks, and would that save the custom scripts as well (the downloaded ones)? I guess not, but I'd like to ask just in case.



Yes it would. How about you check out the Export configuration dialog?


----------



## VgsA

EvilDragon said:


> Yes it would. How about you check out the Export configuration dialog?



Ouch, right! Sorry! Too many things to check out yet!


----------



## WestonGuidero

I know this is a Cubase comparison to Reaper, but the concepts are still relevant imo.

If reaper's UI looked 'prettier' im sure people wouldn't bash it as much and probably use it more. Unfortunately, these things are sometimes more about the way something looks rather than it's functionality. Aluminum Apple laptops & colorful, curved edges, bright logic go well together xD But I kinda get their point.... Could be the same with Cubase. 
If something were more aesthetically pleasing would you work or feel inspired to work more or is it just placebo? 

I remember talking about this in a college course. Sometimes you want to use the thing that encourages you to write more and put out more work rather than a functional powerhouse like reaper. But that's not to say people can't do both in Reaper... 

You can say "buy your own instruments," but another thing I like in logic and some other Daws is their included instruments and sometimes even effects... I prefer some pro tools fx than other daws and some logic fx than other daws. Even with nice sample libraries and instruments I've purchased, Alchemy & others in logic get me writing music instantly and encourage me to finish tracks quickly (even with templates in other daws), which I can't always say the same with Reaper... 

For most advanced MIDI work i prefer reaper over other daws, yet i haven't messed with cubase much, so that's where I'm lacking xD Soon!

- Long time Reaper user, who's used pro tools and logic extensively as well, but still prefers Reaper in many aspects... (6 years).


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

WestonGuidero said:


> If reaper's UI looked 'prettier' im sure people wouldn't bash it as much and probably use it more. Unfortunately, these things are sometimes more about the way something looks rather than it's functionality. Aluminum Apple laptops & colorful, curved edges, bright logic go well together xD But I kinda get their point.... Could be the same with Cubase.
> If something were more aesthetically pleasing would you work or feel inspired to work more or is it just placebo?
> 
> .



I think aesthetics have a lot to do with it. I personally find Pro Tools (and the old Logic 9) interface very uninspiring. One thing that I love about Cubase is it's colours. Logic X is pretty plain that regard, but I like the dark aspect of it, I find it easy on the eyes when I'm sitting in front of it for hours on end.


----------



## Dewdman42

Wolfie2112 said:


> I think aesthetics have a lot to do with it. I personally find Pro Tools (and the old Logic 9) interface very uninspiring. One thing that I love about Cubase is it's colours. Logic X is pretty plain that regard, but I like the dark aspect of it, I find it easy on the eyes when I'm sitting in front of it for hours on end.



LPX is customizable if you don't like the colors. Not from within the program like Cubase is, but via third party..

https://www.creationauts.com/products/logic-pro-colorizer/


----------



## Dewdman42

I have been demoing Cubase for the past few days, and frankly I'm a little underwhelmed. LPX does so much more and I think Reaper does too. I don't get the love for Cubase honestly, especially for what it costs. I get that cubase supposedly has great midi editing, but I haven't spent enough time with it to appreciate that yet.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

Dewdman42 said:


> I have been demoing Cubase for the past few days, and frankly I'm a little underwhelmed. LPX does so much more and I think Reaper does too. I don't get the love for Cubase honestly, especially for what it costs. I get that cubase supposedly has great midi editing, but I haven't spent enough time with it to appreciate that yet.



Logic does so much more? I use both Cubase and LPX, but can't say I agree. And if you're using VEPro, Cubase is the bomb when it comes to routing.


----------



## Dewdman42

yes Logic does way more. I agree though, Logic's routing sucks.


----------



## joebaggan

fretti said:


> Well I wouldn't say superior per se. If you need scripts for things Cubase or Logic have implemented from the start, then it certainly is only superior from the point where you have customized it for all your needs.
> If you mean that it's superior in the way of customization and adding things via scripts, then yes, it probably is superior to Cubase and other DAWs.



A lot of what I'm hearing regarding Reaper Midi functionality is that you can cobble together some scripts to approximate what Cubase and Logic already do well out of the box with no effort. I have Cubase and Reaper and use the latter for audio rock band type of projects, but for Midi orchestral mockups, I'm not seeing any advantage to using Reaper. Sure I can scour around trying to find plugins/scripts that mimic Cubase Expression Maps, robust Midi functions, Logical Editor, Score Editor etc in Cubase, but that's time spent not composing and in the end, am likely to find Reaper tools that aren't as mature as their Cubase counterparts.


----------



## InLight-Tone

EvilDragon said:


> I don't think that lack of that transform box is making Reaper's MIDI that much inferior, really. Similar things are already possible with scripts.
> 
> https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=176878


Those scripts, while impressive as to what users can code themselves into Reaper, are finicky and tedious to use at best and believe you me I tried. The CC editing tools in Cubase native are smooth as silk to use, as most of the midi editing experience is...


----------



## InLight-Tone

Dewdman42 said:


> I have been demoing Cubase for the past few days, and frankly I'm a little underwhelmed. LPX does so much more and I think Reaper does too. I don't get the love for Cubase honestly, especially for what it costs. I get that cubase supposedly has great midi editing, but I haven't spent enough time with it to appreciate that yet.


You obviously haven't cracked too deep into Cubase's capabilities then, but then admit you haven't spent enough time with it. Coming to grips with midi in Cubase takes TIME!


----------



## InLight-Tone

joebaggan said:


> A lot of what I'm hearing regarding Reaper Midi functionality is that you can cobble together some scripts to approximate what Cubase and Logic already do well out of the box with no effort. I have Cubase and Reaper and use the latter for audio rock band type of projects, but for Midi orchestral mockups, I'm not seeing any advantage to using Reaper. Sure I can scour around trying to find plugins/scripts that mimic Cubase Expression Maps, robust Midi functions, Logical Editor, Score Editor etc in Cubase, but that's time spent not composing and in the end, am likely to find Reaper tools that aren't as mature as their Cubase counterparts.


Exactly! Even after going through all that effort and setup, you'll also find that the tools and scripts are a funky second hand approximation of said native tools, and a pain to use on an extensive daily basis...


----------



## EvilDragon

Disagree that they're tedious to use, really.


----------



## Rasmus Hartvig

Honest question from a long time Cubase user who migrated to Reaper:

What are those fabled, amazing midi functions that Cubase has that Reaper is missing?
Expression maps, note expression and the CC transform box has been mentioned (and I do miss at least some of those). But apart from that?


----------



## storyteller

I end up posting these videos every now and then in Reaper threads. These 3 videos are about the midi functions included in Orchestral Template for Reaper (OTR). The advanced midi functionality in OTR is mostly due to the use of having Julian Sader’s midi scripts preconfigured and preinstalled in a way that is most useful. They certainly are not tedious. And are VERY functional. Videos below. As I always note, these videos are valuable even if you are not using OTR because they demonstrate what is possible with midi in Reaper. The second video shows off the advanced midi functionality in the most detail.


----------



## vicontrolu

Well, thats interesting and at least shows that cool MIDI stuff is already feasible in Reaper. Still, its a step up in complexity compared to cubase:a simple select and drag here turns into button click + hold A + strange combinations with the wheel sometimes...not to mention its 130$ on top of the 225$.

But yeah, feels like its about to get there. Good news! 

EDIT: Exp maps is way below cubase´s features though


----------



## ghandizilla

The setup is not complicated and very fast. The problem IMO would be technical support on those unofficial scripts.


----------



## EvilDragon

You need to check out Reaticulate.


----------



## Tod

Thanks Jonathan, seeing julian's scripts in use like that was a big help and very interesting.

May I ask where you've got your events per quarter note set at? Also I saw the duplicate events were automatically eliminated, is that part of julian's scripts in general or is it a script by itself?


----------



## EvilDragon

Julian's scripts have an option to remove duplicate events (as a separate script which is a toggle action). Update them via ReaPack.


----------



## Tod

Thanks Mario, I do have the one that I've got in my main midi toobar that removes redundant events from selected CCs, this might be a little different.


----------



## EvilDragon

Yeah, what I'm talking applies only to his curve drawing scripts - so they draw automatically with all redundant events removed.


----------



## Tod

Got it along with a couple of the other scripts. I briefly checked them out and I know I'm going to like them, just need some time to get into them deeper.


----------



## storyteller

Jason's Reaticulate is a much more robust expression map solution that is now available. At the time the video was made, Reaticulate wasn't even in an alpha state yet... so I'd definitely recommend checking it out. Also, the midi scripts incorporated in the video are only a small portion of all the scripts that Julian has made available. Those are included in OTR too, but I just have the most frequently used scripts pre-configured.

@Tod - Honestly, I'm not sure what the events per quarter note were set at in that video. I bounce around with that setting frequently. If I were guessing, maybe as high as either 512 or 1024? I'm truly not sure though as I was still testing out different settings very heavily. I know I typically keep the setting at a multiple of 8 (e.g. like ram 8/16/32/64/etc).


----------



## robgb

joebaggan said:


> A lot of what I'm hearing regarding Reaper Midi functionality is that you can cobble together some scripts to approximate what Cubase and Logic already do well out of the box with no effort. I have Cubase and Reaper and use the latter for audio rock band type of projects, but for Midi orchestral mockups, I'm not seeing any advantage to using Reaper. Sure I can scour around trying to find plugins/scripts that mimic Cubase Expression Maps, robust Midi functions, Logical Editor, Score Editor etc in Cubase, but that's time spent not composing and in the end, am likely to find Reaper tools that aren't as mature as their Cubase counterparts.


The financial hit for that convenience is pretty hefty. And let's be serious. It takes very little effort to customize Reaper. And the fact that you CAN customize it is what makes it invaluable.


----------



## robgb

Wolfie2112 said:


> I think aesthetics have a lot to do with it. I personally find Pro Tools (and the old Logic 9) interface very uninspiring. One thing that I love about Cubase is it's colours. Logic X is pretty plain that regard, but I like the dark aspect of it, I find it easy on the eyes when I'm sitting in front of it for hours on end.


Different strokes. I personally think Cubase is ugly.


----------



## Rasmus Hartvig

robgb said:


> The financial hit for that convenience is pretty hefty. And let's be serious. It takes very little effort to customize Reaper. And the fact that you CAN customize it is what makes it invaluable.



Exactly. It's surprising that so many see high customizability as a scary / bad / inconvenient thing. For me, Reaper is a DAW that grows with me. I've been customizing it slowly for years. Whenever I've done something enough times that I think can be more efficient, I spend a few minutes making a button, hotkey or contextual menu. Sometimes I might spend 30 minutes writing a script that will save me a few seconds every time I use it. I might have to use that for years for the time investment to pay off 1:1 - but what I get instead, and right away, is the feeling of being in absolute flow, just flying through whatever I need to do with very few obstacles.


----------



## Rasmus Hartvig

Here's a really elegant Reaper solution to a problem I just had:






I had a mariachi trumpet patch with two trumpets playing thirds in C-major. At one point the track modulated to Db major, so I was missing a way play the melody that suddenly had to have an A flat. What you're seeing here is a midi part that crossfades into an audio item (the minor third I needed, taken from C major and pitched up one semitone).

That this can be done fluidly on a single track in less than a minute is one of the reasons I love Reaper.


----------



## joebaggan

EvilDragon said:


> Disagree that they're tedious to use, really.



Take the Cubase Score Editor for example. For orch


robgb said:


> The financial hit for that convenience is pretty hefty. And let's be serious. It takes very little effort to customize Reaper. And the fact that you CAN customize it is what makes it invaluable.



Financial hit? What a couple of hundred extra dollars for Cubase Pro that does everything Reaper can and more out of the box? I think people pay a heck of a lot more for libraries in this forum and your DAW is the centerpiece of your studio. 

I keep hearing about "customizing", but honestly if your DAW does what you need it to do (e.g. Cubase or Logic), then I have no need for it. I can create macros, key commands, logical editor presets etc for everything I need to do.


----------



## EvilDragon

joebaggan said:


> Take the Cubase Score Editor for example. For orch



Nah. If I want a score editor I'd use a dedicated program. That said, Reaper's score editor is pretty fast to work with, since it's basically taking piano roll in another form, sort of a hybrid staff thing. Which is pretty darn cool IMHO.


----------



## robgb

joebaggan said:


> Financial hit? What a couple of hundred extra dollars for Cubase Pro that does everything Reaper can and more out of the box?


Cubase is $559. Reaper is $60. That's a hell of a lot more money for absolutely no gain except ten minutes worth of convenience. Even if you buy the pro license of Reaper (and congratulations to you), you're still paying $335 more for Cubase for, again, no actual gain. And I say this as a former Cubase/Nuendo user.

I hesitate to mention this, but you can, if you're so inclined, use Reaper for free forever. Some folks stretch the sixty day demo period into years, because the only thing that happens is a nag screen. I wouldn't recommend going this route (I bought a license), but if you're absolutely dead broke, it's an option. But do the right thing as soon as you have the money.


----------



## Dewdman42

Spending a few hundred dollars for another DAW is not that bad but it is if you get it and realize it’s not for you. Also Steinberg updates pretty often for a fee so in the long run it will not be a few hundred dollars.

I see points on both sides of this argument. The customizability of reaper is unmatched by any other daw. I could see power and possibility with that and I’m sure I would end up sidetracked writing a bunch of scripts if I started using reaper.

That being said I find reaper to be just so like “Linux”, another thing I don’t enjoy much. But Linux lovers really do love it. But it takes a certain kind of mind to really appreciate and take advantage of an open system like Linux. Many people, I would suggest the vast majority, especially artistic types....do not do well with an open system like that, it shuts them down. Too many variables and possibly a little too left brained.

It’s interesting to watch reaper evolve. It could definitely be better in the ways that cubase aficionados are saying they like about cubase. The work flow of reaper is simply not as smooth unless you as the user customize it to make it so. Many of us don’t want to impede our brain with all that left brain stuff. If the couple of guys making reaper focused just a little bit on the usability aspects of their software I believe it could be improved a lot and the open architecture would be frosting in the cake for anyone that wants that, rather hen a required entry point to reasonable workflow with the software.

That being said I’m not overly impressed by cubase either.


----------



## InLight-Tone

Rasmus Hartvig said:


> Honest question from a long time Cubase user who migrated to Reaper:
> 
> What are those fabled, amazing midi functions that Cubase has that Reaper is missing?
> Expression maps, note expression and the CC transform box has been mentioned (and I do miss at least some of those). But apart from that?


Fluid, lightening fast ease of operation...


----------



## InLight-Tone

robgb said:


> The financial hit for that convenience is pretty hefty. And let's be serious. It takes very little effort to customize Reaper. And the fact that you CAN customize it is what makes it invaluable.


That's a small sum to pay for a tool that could financially sustain yourself...


----------



## InLight-Tone

vicontrolu said:


> Well, thats interesting and at least shows that cool MIDI stuff is already feasible in Reaper. Still, its a step up in complexity compared to cubase:a simple select and drag here turns into button click + hold A + strange combinations with the wheel sometimes...not to mention its 130$ on top of the 225$.
> 
> But yeah, feels like its about to get there. Good news!
> 
> EDIT: Exp maps is way below cubase´s features though


EXACTLY! And from experience, using those CC tools in actual practice is the most cludgey, uncomfortable hack. That's the problem with Reaper for me, most of it in operation feels the same...


----------



## EvilDragon

InLight-Tone said:


> That's the problem with Reaper for me, most of it in operation feels the same...



No it doesn't.


----------



## robgb

InLight-Tone said:


> That's a small sum to pay for a tool that could financially sustain yourself...


You can do that for $60 with Reaper. Oh, and by the way, that license fee includes a free update to the next version. For example, if you bought Reaper 5.0, your license is good until they reach Reaper 7.0. And incremental updates come just about every month, plus you can get beta releases if you're so inclined.


----------



## ghandizilla

InLight-Tone said:


> EXACTLY! And from experience, using those CC tools in actual practice is the most cludgey, uncomfortable hack. That's the problem with Reaper for me, most of it in operation feels the same...



Obviously you can't make a shortcut and get to it automatically. It takes a bit of time to use it without thinking about it. But so it is in every DAW. The difference in Reaper is just that you set it up yourself, so you can make it close to what you're already accustomed to (in my case, I would never have been able to make Cubase's MIDI editor operate so closely to FL Studio one's).


----------



## tack

What I've learned from this thread: some people like Reaper, and some people like Cubase. Some people value the Reaper's crazy flexibility and can tolerate and/or tame its warts in exchange. Others are more comfortable with Cubase's constraints in return for a clearer, more streamlined out-of-box UX for their particular use-cases.

The one thing I think we can all agree on is that we're fortunate enough to have accessible, quality, continuously improved tools that can satisfy such a broad spectrum of needs and interests.

It's also axiomatic that no matter our tools of choice and particular preferences, we all have moments where our favorite software utterly fails and enrages us. It's only just a matter of time before it happens.


----------



## robgb

InLight-Tone said:


> EXACTLY! And from experience, using those CC tools in actual practice is the most cludgey, uncomfortable hack.


I don't know what experience you had, but this is complete nonsense. There is absolutely nothing about Reaper, including the CC tools, that is cludgey or uncomfortable. Look, I get that you like Cubase. Hey, you've found a DAW you love, but spreading this kind of misinformation about Reaper is ridiculous. Let's at least be honest about it. Just because Reaper is a better DAW—for me—doesn't mean I think Cubase is a bad DAW.


----------



## ghandizilla

What has to be taken into account, as tack put it, is how your DAW lets you do what you want fluently. Some prefer customability, others prefer a predefined clear way of doing things, but there is no "absolute" better choice.

No, we can't spread misinformation about things you can't do with Reaper, while you can actually do them with Reaper. We can talk about price, technical support, functionalities, CPU usage, stock plugins (for me, a weakness in Reaper, but you have to take the price into account), all that stuff, and emphasize on the differences between both DAWs, so people know if it's for them or not.

EDIT: We can also talk about interoperability. It already happened composers send me Cubase project files and I'm like "sh*t, I don't use Cubase". The fact that Cubase is being so widely used makes it easier to work with most Windows "linear writing" composers if you use it: the odds to be able to work with another Cubase users are indeed higher than the odds of working with another Reaper user.


----------



## robgb

ghandizilla said:


> stock plugins (for me, a weakness in Reaper, but you have to take the price into account)


Interesting you should say this, as I think ReaEQ, ReaComp, ReaGate, ReaDelay, for example, are fantastic plugins. I use them all regularly. I will admit, however, that they aren't very pretty to look at.


----------



## ghandizilla

robgb said:


> Interesting you should say this, as I think ReaEQ, ReaComp, ReaGate, for example, are fantastic plugins. I use them all regularly. I will admit, however, that they aren't very pretty to look at.



I find them pretty limited. I like having mid-side and match EQ for example. Don't know how it is with Cubase though.


----------



## EvilDragon

ghandizilla said:


> the odds to be able to work with another Cubase users are indeed higher than the odds of working with another Reaper user.



I guess that also depends on the type of job you're doing. Reaper is gaining popularity extremely fast in game sound design circles, for example.


For everything else, there's AATranslator, which does an amazing job converting between different DAW project files.


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## ghandizilla

You're right. And in the same time, aren't the sound design circles more into Pro Tools than Cubase? And Reaper has killer functionalities from Pro Tools, like the stretch markers.


----------



## pderbidge

ghandizilla said:


> I find them pretty limited. I like having mid-side and match EQ for example. Don't know how it is with Cubase though.


I think this is true of most stock plugins. That being the case you are actually saving money with Reaper since you're going to have to purchase external plugins anyways to handle those tasks.


----------



## robgb

ghandizilla said:


> I like having mid-side


----------



## ghandizilla

robgb said:


>




Nice! I didn't know you could do that with Reacomp.



pderbidge said:


> I think this is true of most stock plugins. That being the case you are actually saving money with Reaper since you're going to have to purchase external plugins anyways to handle those tasks.



I don't know enough DAWs to make a generality. But the more good stock plugins you have, the more the price will rise. Ex. : Pro Tools. And so, if Cubase stock plugins aren't more efficient than Reaper's ones, then it's true Reaper saves you a tremendous amount of money.



EvilDragon said:


> For everything else, there's AATranslator, which does an amazing job converting between different DAW project files.



Very instructive! If I had known last month AATranslator existed, it would have saved me so much time...


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## robgb

ghandizilla said:


> Nice! I didn't know you could do that with Reacomp.


You can actually do it with any plugin. Play around with it and have fun.


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## ghandizilla

Always nice to learn some stuff that were just under your hand


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## Dewdman42

ghandizilla said:


> Very instructive! If I had known last month AATranslator existed, it would have saved me so much time...



Me neither! how well does it work?


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## pderbidge

You guys really sucked me in so now I have to comment as an avid Reaper User. I have no desire to debate with DAW is better since it is completely subjective and I haven't extensively tried all the DAW's out there. I've dabbled but dabbling doesn't give "any" DAW a fair shake. All I care to do is hopefully dispell some "myths" I constantly see about Reaper because I would hate for a newbie who is searching for the right DAW to use to base their info on misinformation. I'm sure there are some "myths" out there concerning other DAWs as well but I'll leave those to be dispelled by users of those.

1. Reaper is for the technically inclined and tweakhead only- False, Reaper is actually very easy to use. Like any other DAW there is a learning curve and to get the most out of it you need to spend some time learning it's workflow. There are many video series on Groove3 and macprovideo that will get you up and running very quickly so that you can hit the ground running.

2. Reapers workflow is a hodgepodge of cobbled together customization's and actions- Once again FALSE! Although reaper can become what you want it to be it actually feels very streamlined and most importantly STABLE. I don't at all feel like somehow it's only for those Linux geeks that value flexibility over simplicity. Reaper is dead simple. It's when you want or need to get into the weeds where reaper gives you flexibility that you appreciate.

3. Scripts are scary- False. I think the word Scripts scare people off as if they think they have to learn some type of programming language to use reapers deeper functions. They are easy and sometimes I wish we just called them tools instead of scripts. They are accessible right through the reaper inteface, you can just load them and click run or you can go into the action menu and create a button for it or a key command. No programming language required. Once again these are all a part of the reaper interface so I never feel like I'm going outside of reaper into some clunky interface to make things happen. If anything is to be considered clunky, just click on the toolbar in Kontakt to reach it's back end functionality. That is way more cumbersome than reapers actions list and scripts.

4. Reaper Midi is incapable of professional workflow and results. False. Yes, it is different than Cubase and one might prefer one over the other but as shown in many posts there are things you can do to make it very powerful and it is far from clunky. It may not be preffered by some but just like any interface, once you get used to it, it's very powerful. Can it be improved? Yes, but what DAW or Midi interface can't be improved? It's always evolving.

5. Reaper lacks plugins- OK, it depends on what plugins you think it lacks and what version of Cubase etc... you are comparing it to. Reaper developers know that most people go outside their DAW and choose 3rd party plugins for many tasks so they give you the essentials and then some, but with the money you save you can buy up whatever plugin your heart desires. Contrast that with spending a lot of money on a DAW packaged with all kinds of extras and still going out and buying Omnisphere, Komplete Ultimate, Fabfilter, Soundtoys, etc.... Some of my favorite plugins are still Reacomp, and ReaEQ and a few of the JS plugins. By the way anyone can download the reaper plugins (minus the JS ones) and try them out. They're not flashy but they do a great job.

6. Reaper is so ugly that it's not inspiring to work in- Are people still unaware of the many many skins available for both paid and free that can "Easily" be loaded? If you like the look of cubase, protools, Logic, Pro Tools, FL Studio, etc.. you can get that. Of course, it's not going to make reaper act like those DAW's without some customization and even then you can only take it so far, but if your trying to make reaper work "exactly" like another DAW then why are you buying Reaper?

I think my biggest points to reiterate is that Reaper is far from a toy and that it is actually very smooth and streamlined. It is not what I would describe as clunky. It's like an already nice car with the ability to give it an upgrade package if you so desire, although this part is a little bit on you but not near as complicated as people make it out to be. Perhaps those people have either never become proficient in any DAW before or they are so used to the one they've been using for so long that it's hard to learn a new trick.


----------



## pderbidge

robgb said:


> You can actually do it with any plugin. Play around with it and have fun.


Good point but I don't necessarily consider that a function of the plugin but a function of Reaper. If you were to load ReaEQ, for example, in another DAW there would be no Mid-Side processing.


----------



## EvilDragon

pderbidge said:


> haugepauge
> 
> comber-son



First time I see these spellings of the words.


----------



## ghandizilla

Dewdman42 said:


> Me neither! how well does it work?



We have to make peace with some Cubase users here and try it out :-D


----------



## pderbidge

ghandizilla said:


> I don't know enough DAWs to make a generality. But the more good stock plugins you have, the more the price will rise. Ex. : Pro Tools. And so, if Cubase stock plugins aren't more efficient than Reaper's ones, then it's true Reaper saves you a tremendous amount of money.



I'm sure Protools creators would like people to think that but it's not true. The plugins that Reaper contains are just as good as the ones in any DAW. It comes down to what workflow and interface you prefer but as far as sound quality, usability etc... is concerned Reapers are as good as any of them. It's the number of plugins, for example a version of Cubase that includes Halion and its own version of melodyne/Autotune that raise the cost of their product. These are not reasons, In my opinion to buy Cubase. It should be about the workflow. Why not buy Reaper and then buy Melodyne and still be out less money in purchase costs, unless you really like the way Cubase works as a DAW then you have a valid reason for making that purchase.


----------



## tack

The phrase "avid Reaper user" had me doubletake.


----------



## pderbidge

EvilDragon said:


> First time I see these spellings of the words.


Typing too fast was never my strong suite- hodgepodge, cumbersome. Is that better? 

I love how the internet will record your mistakes forever. Wait, there's an edit button nowI'm going to go fix that.


----------



## EvilDragon

pderbidge said:


> hauppauge



Third time's the charm - hodgepodge


----------



## pderbidge

EvilDragon said:


> Third time's the charm - hodgepodge


And one might think that english isn't my first language


----------



## EvilDragon

It's not mine either. Sorry for being a pest


----------



## pderbidge

EvilDragon said:


> It's not mine either. Sorry for being a pest


That's my point, it actually is my first language and for the guy correcting me, it isn't, LOL. No worries.


----------



## MarcusD

So hows the stability in Reaper? Can it handle massive sessions? Can it handle those sessions with ALOT of plugins? I feel like despite being a cheap DAW and having unlimited customisable potential, if it can't run stable with 300+ vst instruments and tonne of plugins, then it isn't even worth batting an eyelid for. What about VEP users? Anyone use Reaper with a master slave setup?


----------



## robgb

pderbidge said:


> There are many video series on Groove3 and macprovideo that will get you up and running very quickly so that you can hit the ground running.


Actually, there's a really terrific series of tutorials right on the Reaper.fm website, made by Kenny Gioia. They were what got me started.


----------



## EvilDragon

MarcusD said:


> So hows the stability in Reaper? Can it handle massive sessions?



It's rock solid.


----------



## robgb

pderbidge said:


> I'm sure Protools creators would like people to think that but it's not true. The plugins that Reaper contains are just as good as the ones in any DAW. It comes down to what workflow and interface you prefer but as far as sound quality, usability etc... is concerned Reapers are as good as any of them. It's the number of plugins, for example a version of Cubase that includes Halion and its own version of melodyne/Autotune that raise the cost of their product. These are not reasons, In my opinion to buy Cubase. It should be about the workflow. Why not buy Reaper and then buy Melodyne and still be out less money in purchase costs, unless you really like the way Cubase works as a DAW then you have a valid reason for making that purchase.


As a long time Melodyne user, I was surprised by how much less I use Melodyne now that I have Reaper. The built in pitch correction plugins are great. And one of the easiest ways to tune a vocal, for example, is to open a pitch envelope on a take and start in. Yes, Melodyne is much more sophisticated in that area, but I find the quick and dirty works just as well in most cases.


----------



## robgb

MarcusD said:


> So hows the stability in Reaper? Can it handle massive sessions? Can it handle those sessions with ALOT of plugins? I feel like despite being a cheap DAW and having unlimited customisable potential, if it can't run stable with 300+ vst instruments and tonne of plugins, then it isn't even worth batting an eyelid for. What about VEP users? Anyone use Reaper with a master slave setup?


I hammer Reaper pretty hard. It has crashed on me........ once. The difference in CPU usage is significantly lower compared to other DAWs I've used.


----------



## MarcusD

robgb said:


> I hammer Reaper pretty hard. It has crashed on me........ once. The difference in CPU usage is significantly lower compared to other DAWs I've used.



How large is your template and what buffer are you running it at? I'm genuinely curious to know what it's like after being pushed. I've never had an issue with crashes in Cubase, apart from older versions. 9.5 is super rock solid and when I push my machine to the limits, it's normally the machine that gives up. Cubase still goes strong.


----------



## EvilDragon

I don't use templates but I'm running at 128 samples buffer. I can drive my CPU up to 99% and Reaper is glitch-free still. Depending on which plugins are loaded, there can be many of them (if they're not CPU hogs) or if they are a bit of a CPU hog, then of course you tap out pretty fast, but even then those plugins use less CPU than in other DAWs (because of Reaper's anticipative processing).


----------



## novicecomposer

I'm trying out Reaper today. When I click on the solo button on a track, it doesn't solo it. When I click on the mute button on a folder track, it doesn't mute the tracks in the folder. Not so intuitive. Is it just me? I haven't RTFM, but nobody should RTFM for such a simple task.


----------



## EvilDragon

The buttons on child tracks don't change state but they do get muted (as evidented by track backgrounds going dark). There are good reasons for this - you could only have a few child tracks muted but then you'd toggle between muting the whole folder on/off, etc.

Soloing works just fine over here?


----------



## tack

Not only do the track backgrounds go dark but a little red 'M' appears on each child track of the folder as well. It seems so self-evident to me that the child tracks would then be muted that I have to think novicecomposer is somehow seeing something different.

Edit: maybe it's because of the fact that if the child tracks are soloed but the parent folder is muted, it doesn't show the red M indicator beside the track or dim the background?


----------



## novicecomposer

I don't see the little red 'M' on each child track. But it does appear on the folder track.

Playing with this thing further, I just realized that the mute and solo buttons did work but the horizontal meters on the muted tracks indicate that they are still playing. So misleading. Or, is it just me again? On a plus side, this DAW feels so lightweight.


----------



## tack

novicecomposer said:


> I just realized that the mute and solo buttons did work but the horizontal meters on the muted tracks indicate that they are still playing


Yeah, if a child track is explicitly soloed then a parent folder being muted won't override that (and so FX processing on the soloed tracks would still occur) but as the audio is routed up to the parent track, it would not pass any further due to the parent being muted.

But if the child tracks aren't explicitly soloed, then the parent folder's mute state propagates to the children (in that if you have the "Do not process muted tracks" option enabled no FX processing would occur) and this is reflected via the dimmed track background and red M in the meter area.

This can be seen in the video I posted earlier.

This behavior makes sense to me. If you've gone through the trouble to solo a track it means you want it to be processed even if the parent is muted. Could be useful for example if you have an explicit send from the child to another track outside the parent's hierarchy and you want to force that to be heard even if the parent is muted.


----------



## novicecomposer

Thanks for the vid! Very much appreciated! Looks like the meter problems are related to a theme I downloaded earlier. Still, I see counter-intuitive UI behaviors in Reaper. Taking a break now. Will complain later.


----------



## Dewdman42

EvilDragon said:


> but even then those plugins use less CPU than in other DAWs (because of Reaper's anticipative processing).



Can you tell us a little more about this?


----------



## tack

Dewdman42 said:


> Can you tell us a little more about this?


Anticipative processing is essentially the parallel processing of audio blocks through FX chains spread across multiple tracks (e.g. via sends). It does this by processing track FX of unarmed tracks in different threads, and it keeps those threads busy even for a serialized FX chain by processing audio blocks slightly ahead of time. So while one thread might be chewing on a block at time t, another thread may be working on t+1, while another thread works on t+2. (As it happens, FX on a given track are always processed serially, but if your chain is spread across multiple tracks, as is the case with most nontrivial projects, then the tracks can be processed in parallel.)

Just how much further ahead it will process (and therefore how much parallelism it can achieve) is configurable by the user, because the tradeoff is increased latency. (The default is 200ms.)

It's not so much that anticipative processing uses less CPU as such -- the FX need to do whatever they need to do whether the processing is serial or parallel -- it just means that for the processing it does do, it can make better use of multiple cores, so your audio thread is less burdened. As a result, with more headroom for ASIO, you can squeeze more FX in your project without audio dropouts (or run the FX you have at a lower ASIO buffer).

I believe this is similar to ASIO Guard in Cubase, except for whatever reason while there seems to be a history of people having problems with ASIO Guard, Reaper's anticipative FX seems to have a better track record of robustness.


----------



## robgb

MarcusD said:


> How large is your template and what buffer are you running it at? I'm genuinely curious to know what it's like after being pushed. I've never had an issue with crashes in Cubase, apart from older versions. 9.5 is super rock solid and when I push my machine to the limits, it's normally the machine that gives up. Cubase still goes strong.


I don't use a template, but I did create one in the past with about a hundred different instances of Kontakt. I disabled all the tracks and used them as needed, running at 128 most of the time, but sometimes bumping it up to 512. I've run a large number of tracks, including FX, without a glitch (I have no idea how many, I'm not one to keep count). I'm also running on a Mac, so I don't know if that makes a difference.


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## Dewdman42

That is one area I would absolutely not expect Reaper to have any troubles.


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## joebaggan

EvilDragon said:


> Nah. If I want a score editor I'd use a dedicated program. That said, Reaper's score editor is pretty fast to work with, since it's basically taking piano roll in another form, sort of a hybrid staff thing. Which is pretty darn cool IMHO.



Hah, I've tried the Reaper Score Editor and it ain't anywhere near what the Cubase Score Editor can do. A lot of people actually prefer using the Cubase Score Editor over a dedicated notation package due to its robustness and easy integration with Cubase. If you're doing a simple rock band chart or something, go for Reaper. If you're doing orchestral scores, then the Reaper Score Editor ain't gonna cut it for pro use.


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## EvilDragon

Also do note that Reaper's notation editor is not really meant for engraving purposes, and developers themselves stated that. It's just another method of MIDI input/editing, that's all.


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## Craig Peters

I've never really used Reaper for programming MIDI or mixing. But since I moved to Cubase I haven't even had the urge to look at another DAW. Except for DP because of the chunks feature. Cubase does have tons of great features for manipulating midi.


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## Tod

I think it appears pretty plain to me, most of those that are defending or championing Reaper have used it enough to know what you can do with the "actions and Scripting". They really are another dimension and until you gain some understanding about what they can do and how they work, Reaper will probably be just another DAW.

Reaper is also multi dimensional, more so, I think, than any other DAW. What this means is that it will probably be more suitable for the overall production of audio.

If what you do is strictly midi, then another DAW may be more suitable for you. Reapers midi is good and very usable, but for hard core midi users, especially if you're used to a particular DAW, it might not feel right.

For myself, I'm somewhat retired, but I'm still producing a few song writers, editing samples and writing scripts for Kontakt, I love it, it gives me reason to get out of bed every morning, which you will understand when you get to be my age.


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## robgb

Tod said:


> If what you do is strictly midi, then another DAW may be more suitable for you. Reapers midi is good and very usable, but for hard core midi users, especially if you're used to a particular DAW, it might not feel right.


"Might" being the operative word here. I use it almost exclusively for midi and it works just as well as any other DAW I've used, even without the special midi scripts (which I don't use). I'm not sure what a "hard core" midi user is. Everything I record, except vocals and guitars, is done with midi. I use only midi for orchestral work. I draw CC curves and quantize and step record and manipulate notes. It all works great in Reaper. I'm really not sure what people are doing that's any more "hard core" than that.


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## Rapollo

I like Reaper not because of the scripts or macros (although I'll admit I've made a couple of custom actions and my god they are useful) I prefer Reaper for the simple facts that are it is dongle-less, the king of CPU, has minimal USEFUL stock plugins and zero bloat. And the audio editing... my love! haha.

The MIDI is fine... and as for the score editor - the guy above nailed it as it being for being another way to input MIDI, which is actually sooo easy to use by the way, as opposed to creating your paper scores. If you need to do anything extra fancy - the option is there.


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## joebaggan

robgb said:


> Cubase is $559. Reaper is $60. That's a hell of a lot more money for absolutely no gain except ten minutes worth of convenience. Even if you buy the pro license of Reaper (and congratulations to you), you're still paying $335 more for Cubase for, again, no actual gain. And I say this as a former Cubase/Nuendo user.
> 
> I hesitate to mention this, but you can, if you're so inclined, use Reaper for free forever. Some folks stretch the sixty day demo period into years, because the only thing that happens is a nag screen. I wouldn't recommend going this route (I bought a license), but if you're absolutely dead broke, it's an option. But do the right thing as soon as you have the money.



Not. I paid $350 for Cubase Pro - there are great deals out there on it if you look. And for orchestral composers who are doing serious Midi and Score Editing work, there's no comparison IMO. The Cubase Score Editor alone is a serious notation editor that rivals expensive dedicated notation packages. The free Musescore notation editor is actually more robust than the Reaper Score Editor from my experience. And I bet even the Reaper Score editor developers would admit it's just a tool intended as a quick notepad rather than for creating detailed orchestral scores that you'd want to give to real musicians. Again, you get what you pay for.


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## pderbidge

joebaggan said:


> Not. I paid $350 for Cubase Pro - there are great deals out there on it if you look. And for orchestral composers who are doing serious Midi and Score Editing work, there's no comparison IMO. The Cubase Score Editor alone is a serious notation editor that rivals expensive dedicated notation packages. The free Musescore notation editor is actually more robust than the Reaper Score Editor from my experience. And I bet even the Reaper Score editor developers would admit it's just a tool intended as a quick notepad rather than for creating detailed orchestral scores that you'd want to give to real musicians. Again, you get what you pay for.



I don't think anyone would or has disagreed that the Cubase Score Editor is more advanced than the one in Reaper or any other DAW for that matter. If this is your main or one of your main workflows then Cubase might be the only solution to your needs but if you use other score editors and are searching for a DAW to mate with it then Reaper "should" be a consideration. I disagree completely, at least in the case of Reaper your phrase "you get what you pay for". That just simply is not true in regards to Reaper.


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## EvilDragon

joebaggan said:


> And I bet even the Reaper Score editor developers would admit it's just a tool intended as a quick notepad rather than for creating detailed orchestral scores that you'd want to give to real musicians.



That is in fact exactly what they said themselves. It's not meant to be used for engraving purposes - it's just another method of MIDI data entry, with a few additions like printing and MusicXML export/import. That's all.


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## robgb

joebaggan said:


> The free Musescore notation editor is actually more robust than the Reaper Score Editor from my experience.


I agree with this. I'll even go as far to say that the Cubase score editor is better than the Reaper version, mostly because Reaper has only recently added one and it's still finding its legs. I expect it to mature considerably in the future. If you're doing simple notation, however, it works quite well. But, frankly, most composers creating detailed orchestral scores are not using Cubase or Reaper for that purpose, because that isn't really the main focus of either DAW. They're using a dedicated editor like Sibelius or Finale.

I'm glad you picked up Cubase Pro for $350 (the website price is $559, the price on Sweetwater is $579), but that's still nearly a $300 difference. You can pick up a lighter version of Cubase, with fewer features, for less, but Reaper has only one version with all the same features whether you buy the lower cost license or the pro license. It's exactly the same software. So, again, the difference in price between Cubase and Reaper is not even close to being justified by the difference in features, which are minor.

But price doesn't matter to some people, and that's fine. Congratulations on finding a DAW that works for you. But your like of Cubase doesn't diminish Reaper any more than my like of Reaper diminishes Cubase. I've used enough DAWs over the years (Sonar, Cubase, Logic, Studio One) to know that the differences between them are actually minuscule. It really comes down to personal preference. And my personal preference happens to be unlimited control. I like being able to customize. The look, the feel, the workflow. That's what Reaper does for me.


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## mjsalam

I love Cubase but utterly despise dongles. Was acceptable back in the parallel port everybody was physically fixed to a location days but in todays uber mobile always connected world I just think its beyond silly. I've tried to live with it, somehow I can't. I've trialed Reaper numerous times...I started to get into it but ultimately the UI has kept me from sticking with it. I know there are countless themes and Ive tried many but none of them are particularly usable. (IMO) Scaling all over the place, tiny text etc. As well by the end of paying for all the themes, "essential" scripts (many of which seemed to be subscription based) I was pretty frustrated, just keeping track of them all was a PITA. Incidentally as much as I love Digital Performer I had to abandon it as well due to sadistic UI scaling.


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## InLight-Tone

mjsalam said:


> I love Cubase but utterly despise dongles. Was acceptable back in the parallel port everybody was physically fixed to a location days but in todays uber mobile always connected world I just think its beyond silly. I've tried to live with it, somehow I can't. I've trialed Reaper numerous times...I started to get into it but ultimately the UI has kept me from sticking with it. I know there are countless themes and Ive tried many but none of them are particularly usable. (IMO) Scaling all over the place, tiny text etc. As well by the end of paying for all the themes, "essential" scripts (many of which seemed to be subscription based) I was pretty frustrated, just keeping track of them all was a PITA. Incidentally as much as I love Digital Performer I had to abandon it as well due to sadistic UI scaling.


Boom!...ultimately the UI has kept me from sticking with it....countless themes and Ive tried many but none of them are particularly usable....(IMO) Scaling all over the place, tiny text etc....just keeping track of them all was a PITA...
My experience exactly...Proceed with caution.


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## Symfoniq

mjsalam said:


> I love Cubase but utterly despise dongles. Was acceptable back in the parallel port everybody was physically fixed to a location days but in todays uber mobile always connected world I just think its beyond silly. I've tried to live with it, somehow I can't. I've trialed Reaper numerous times...I started to get into it but ultimately the UI has kept me from sticking with it. I know there are countless themes and Ive tried many but none of them are particularly usable. (IMO) Scaling all over the place, tiny text etc. As well by the end of paying for all the themes, "essential" scripts (many of which seemed to be subscription based) I was pretty frustrated, just keeping track of them all was a PITA. Incidentally as much as I love Digital Performer I had to abandon it as well due to sadistic UI scaling.



I, too, am looking to get off Cubase and anything VSL due to the dongle situation. I will probably end up with either Reaper or Studio One.


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## robgb

mjsalam said:


> I love Cubase but utterly despise dongles. Was acceptable back in the parallel port everybody was physically fixed to a location days but in todays uber mobile always connected world I just think its beyond silly. I've tried to live with it, somehow I can't. I've trialed Reaper numerous times...I started to get into it but ultimately the UI has kept me from sticking with it. I know there are countless themes and Ive tried many but none of them are particularly usable. (IMO) Scaling all over the place, tiny text etc. As well by the end of paying for all the themes, "essential" scripts (many of which seemed to be subscription based) I was pretty frustrated, just keeping track of them all was a PITA. Incidentally as much as I love Digital Performer I had to abandon it as well due to sadistic UI scaling.


Say What? I have about three dozen themes and haven't paid a cent for any of them, and have hundreds of scripts. Never even heard of a subscription for scripts, nor have I ever had a problem with scaling. I seriously have no idea what you're talking about.


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## mjsalam

The better themes (at least in my estimation) were all paid. Meaning every one of the authors required a donation (I think most were up to you to decide how much) prior to sending you the theme. I don't mind, these guys are really talented and its a LOT of work. The free ones just were up to (my) standard - ultimately even the paid ones just weren't great for me. Then with respect to scripts it was similar. By the end of it my PayPal account had been pretty active - I moved on. May revisit someday. But hey if you have any great themes to reco I'd love to check them out!


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## gregh

InLight-Tone said:


> Boom!...ultimately the UI has kept me from sticking with it....countless themes and Ive tried many but none of them are particularly usable....(IMO) Scaling all over the place, tiny text etc....just keeping track of them all was a PITA...
> My experience exactly...Proceed with caution.



The Reaper UI has had little effort put in to it and the devs have said that's the way it will stay. Basically if you cant get over the various inconsistencies and so on then Reaper is not for you. You really have to get into the actions, mouse modifiers and custom toolbars to bring out the strengths if your work is varied - but then Reaper can be pretty fast and functional. 
Themes are more a reskin than a UI redesign so are handy but aren't going to overcome the UX. I still use Reaper though and have since the earliest days -although with a lot of trying to find something better, but in the end the combination of flexibility and power overcomes the other annoyances.


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## mjsalam

gregh said:


> The Reaper UI has had little effort put in to it and the devs have said that's the way it will stay. Basically if you cant get over the various inconsistencies and so on then Reaper is not for you. Themes are more a reskin than a UI redesign so are handy but aren't going to overcome the UX. I still use Reaper though and have since the earliest days -although with a lot of trying to find something better, but in the end the combination of flexibility and power overcomes the other annoyances.



Great response. And I totally get that. I have that same sense which is why I fully expect to revisit (and keep doing so).


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## robgb

Frankly, i have no idea what you guys are talking about. Reaper's GUI is no worse or less user friendly than any other DAW I've used. That's some serious nonsense you're slinging. I'm beginning to think the last time you used it was in 2005.


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## Dewdman42

I get what they are saying and feel the same way.


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## gregh

robgb said:


> Frankly, i have no idea what you guys are talking about. Reaper's GUI is no worse or less user friendly than any other DAW I've used. That's some serious nonsense you're slinging. I'm beginning to think the last time you used it was in 2005.



moving past your insult - the interface has all sorts of inconsistencies, more than most, if not all, other software I use. Rather than spoil your experience, if you cannot find them I will not point them out.


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## vicontrolu

mjsalam said:


> May revisit someday.



I think that sums it up. Reaper has been constantly evolving but its seems to be not enough for midi power users, especially if you come from Cubase. Future is promising, but it needs a bit more time for the grass to become that green.

Thanks a lot to all the Reaper user who posted examples btw!


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## robgb

gregh said:


> moving past your insult - the interface has all sorts of inconsistencies, more than most, if not all, other software I use. Rather than spoil your experience, if you cannot find them I will not point them out.


There was no insult. I made an accurate observation. I couldn't care less whether people prefer another DAW, but I do get annoyed when a wonderful one is unfairly maligned (the real insult) and I highly doubt there's anything you could point out that would change my mind.

You're simply wrong about Reaper. But I'm too old to keep arguing about it.


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## ghandizilla

It's true the Reaper's UI tends to show A LOT of functions and subfunctions, which makes some menus overwhelming. A little clean-up woud not be bad IMO.


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## gregh

ghandizilla said:


> It's true the Reaper's UI tends to show A LOT of functions and subfunctions, which makes some menus overwhelming. A little clean-up woud not be bad IMO.


you can alter that too  But that is left to the individual users. Things like having different mechanisms for altering envelopes and different methods for resizing lanes depending on the context are also in need of tidying up / systematizing.


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## pderbidge

The Reaper UI is very functional and makes very good sense even compared to the Cubase UI. Instead of being caught up on customizing the UI I would suggest going through Kenny Gioia's Reaper 5 explained tutorials first ( they're free) before passing judgement. My guess is you haven't allowed yourself a crash course in Reaper like this and owe it to yourself to do this. I'd hate to see you turned off of Reaper by seemingly little annoyances that you'll find are not annoyances at all but very functional features. Don't try to make Reaper into Cubase or any other DAW, embrace it for what it is and learn its strengths. Only then will you realize it's power and understand its strong following and fast adoption in the world of DAWs

And all this customization people complain about- take just minutes to implement and you're done. Sure you can waste a lot of time doing this if that's all you focus on but I only customize something once I find a want/need otherwise Reaper's default is quite functional and easy to use.


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## ghandizilla

I took all the "main" Kenny Gioia's Reaper 5 Explained course, alongside additional videos (like advanced MIDI editing and sidechain), and to this day, still am a proud and happy Reaper user.

Just not later than this morning, I got lost again in some right-click submenus. Nothing important, as you say, just "little annoyances" that would not be enough to justify turning off Reaper.


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## Dewdman42

well I think the point is made that many users, including myself, have attempted to start to try out Reaper and found it very non-initutive to use. Sure I can sit through many hours of tutorial videos and if i manage to remember it all..... Of course the GUI has a way to do most things you need to do...nobody is saying otherwise. But clearly, UI designers were not involved and it shows. A good UI doesn't make you have to think about it so hard. Just looking through Reaper preferences alone makes my brain ache.


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## storyteller

I think it is probably fair to say most people expect to sit down at Reaper and have the same experience they have with Cubase, Logic, or ProTools. The reality is, they won't. At all. It is a completely different workflow which BEGINS with each user adjusting every aspect to their needs. I think of it as similar to buying a suit. Some people want to go in and buy one off the shelf. Some will buy one off the shelf and get it tailored. Reaper is more like walking into a tailor's shop and having a bespoke suit designed from scratch. There is no argument the bespoke suit will look and perform better than one off the shelf. The only difference in this analogy and the reality with Reaper, is the bespoke suit is usually the most expensive because it requires the expertise of a tailor. With Reaper, you are the tailor and therefore you can design a bespoke suit for much cheaper than a factory-bought suit. You just have to realize you are the tailor and not the customer. And, you have to put in the time, effort, and care to get it right... or seek out a "tailor" that can design a bespoke Reaper for you.


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## pderbidge

Dewdman42 said:


> well I think the point is made that many users, including myself, have attempted to start to try out Reaper and found it very non-initutive to use. Sure I can sit through many hours of tutorial videos and if i manage to remember it all..... Of course the GUI has a way to do most things you need to do...nobody is saying otherwise. But clearly, UI designers were not involved and it shows. A good UI doesn't make you have to think about it so hard. Just looking through Reaper preferences alone makes my brain ache.


This is VERY subjective, as most things about our personal tastes with DAW's are. Is the UI in Cubase or Protools that much better? I say no. I actually like the Reaper 5 UI. I think it balances the need to be easy on the eyes for long periods of time with the need to be functional quite well. I've tried other skins that were prettier but in the long run they were either too dark or too bright for long term use. If you are used to working in Cubase for example then trying to get used to another UI is going take time to get used to. Look at all those Kontakt libraries with Pretty UI's but very little usefulness. I'm not saying that the Cubase UI is useless by the way, I'm just making the point that a pretty UI is not the only factor to be considered.

As far as sitting through hours of tutorials to learn ANY DAW, not just Reaper, is what I would propose is necessary. How else do you expect to become proficient? I get it, I used to resist learning a lot of things and still do to some extent but it's not going to be the way to learn one of the most important tools we musicians have for creating music. For that reason alone, I would not treat this process lightly. If you're interested in Reaper, then be willing to "learn" it well. If you are already happy with what you have, then you're good. At some point every DAW, every Kontakt Library, every soft synth is going have some feature that just isn't intuitive and you're going to have to break out the manual, or watch a video or something, to figure it out. 

Now if I was someone who has been using say, Protools, for many years and made my living off of it then taking time to learn another DAW may not make sense. As long as it's working for you and your accomplishing your needs then why learn something else that may or may not work out? If that were my situation I might still dabble in Reaper since it has an unlimited fully functional free trial (technically 30 days but they don't stop you) until I decided if it was for me but for the most part time is money and I get that. Nevertheless you are not going to be able to give any DAW a fair shake unless you're willing to actually learn how it works, that's just how it is. Resisting this will just frustrate you, especially when using Reaper if you are used to other DAW's.


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## pderbidge

storyteller said:


> I think it is probably fair to say most people expect to sit down at Reaper and have the same experience they have with Cubase, Logic, or ProTools. The reality is, they won't. At all. It is a completely different workflow which BEGINS with each user adjusting every aspect to their needs. I think of it as similar to buying a suit. Some people want to go in and buy one off the shelf. Some will buy one off the shelf and get it tailored. Reaper is more like walking into a tailor's shop and having a bespoke suit designed from scratch. There is no argument the bespoke suit will look and perform better than one off the shelf. The only difference in this analogy and the reality with Reaper, is the bespoke suit is usually the most expensive because it requires the expertise of a tailor. With Reaper, you are the tailor and therefore you can design a bespoke suit for much cheaper than a factory-bought suit. You just have to realize you are the tailor and not the customer. And, you have to put in the time, effort, and care to get it right... or seek out a "tailor" that can design a bespoke Reaper for you.


I agree to some extent with this. It is not going to be the same experience as the other DAW's but sometimes people get the impression that it requires all this customization to make it work and I would just say that while you can customize Reaper, you don't have to in order to have a good experience with it. You have to "learn" it first, then customize later, once you realize the power in doing so. If all you need is to record takes and create tracks, use Pre/Post sends and Buses, use crossfades etc... and have decent Midi editor then it'll do all of that without any customization. You just have to learn how to do those functions but you don't have to do any customizing to use them or make them work well. Customization comes "after" you learn it's routing and you find there are certain tasks you'd like to do with just the push of a button or a keystroke. It's really not as complicated as people make it sound. Neither is Cubase or Protools or FL Studio or Abletone Live etc... You just need to "learn" how they work first.


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## Dewdman42

themes and skins are "lipstick on a pig". UI usability has very little to do with how nice the GUI looks and has to do a lot more with the workflow, how easy or or hard it is to find the thing you need to do. 

I've used or tried all the DAW's. Reaper is BY FAR the hardest to figure out. 

Yes, that is my subjective opinion. And you have yours of course too. I'm apparently not alone in having this same subjective opinion since it keeps coming up and Reaper defendants keep getting.....well....defensive.... about it. If it walks like a duck...

Reaper's UI is its weakest thing about it. It has many other strengths and those should be noted and considered, but simply put, if a lot of people don't like the GUI..well...there must be something wrong with it.


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## EvilDragon

Dewdman42 said:


> well I think the point is made that many users, including myself, have attempted to start to try out Reaper and found it very non-initutive to use.



This is, from what I can observe, almost always the case of the so-called "previous DAW baggage", where you expect things to work in a certain way (that you're used to), but then they don't. New, fresh users who never used a DAW before usually get up to speed with Reaper extremely fast... and then when they try other DAWs they usually notice how slow workflow in them is.


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## Divico

EvilDragon said:


> It's rock solid.


Agree on that. Though there are plugins that like to make it crash. F.e. Little Plate by Soundtoys.


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## pderbidge

Dewdman42 said:


> themes and skins are "lipstick on a pig". UI usability has very little to do with how nice the GUI looks and has to do a lot more with the workflow, how easy or or hard it is to find the thing you need to do.
> 
> I've used or tried all the DAW's. Reaper is BY FAR the hardest to figure out.
> 
> Yes, that is my subjective opinion. And you have yours of course too. I'm apparently not alone in having this same subjective opinion since it keeps coming up and Reaper defendants keep getting.....well....defensive.... about it. If it walks like a duck...
> 
> Reaper's UI is its weakest thing about it. It has many other strengths and those should be noted and considered, but simply put, if a lot of people don't like the GUI..well...there must be something wrong with it.



I don't think any of the Reaper folks here have been defensive. We're only trying to clarify possible misunderstanding. When you use phrases like "lipstick on a pig" and "if it walks like a duck" those give people the impression there is something nefarious about Reaper or its community. I don't think I've used those types of phrases to describe the Cubase community. I find the Reaper UI very intuitive but I have no doubt that others don't, especially if they are coming from another DAW that they are used to. All I'm saying is if your not willing to take the time to go through some tutorials then please don't characterize Reaper as somehow flawed or inferior in some way. It just isn't. it's different. I'm actually a big fan of Cubase and Protools, as well as Reaper. I'm sure there are others that are great as well, but with any of these DAWs you have to be willing to put in some "learning" time, to get the most out of it. I feel for you and others who have tried to learn it on their own because you might have spent just as much time being frustrated as you could have just watched a few videos and went "aha, I get it now". We live in a time where it is soo easy to learn things that we used to have to dig into manuals for. This is not unique to Reaper, as I sound like a broken record now, this is true with any software. Some features are going to be easier for some and not so much for others as our brains all work differently. Please don't, however, purport people as being defensive when they are just passionate about a tool they enjoy and try to clarify things that are not totally accurate. Nothing to defend here, I'm happy with Reaper.


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## robgb

storyteller said:


> I think it is probably fair to say most people expect to sit down at Reaper and have the same experience they have with Cubase, Logic, or ProTools. The reality is, they won't. At all. It is a completely different workflow which BEGINS with each user adjusting every aspect to their needs. I think of it as similar to buying a suit. Some people want to go in and buy one off the shelf. Some will buy one off the shelf and get it tailored. Reaper is more like walking into a tailor's shop and having a bespoke suit designed from scratch. There is no argument the bespoke suit will look and perform better than one off the shelf. The only difference in this analogy and the reality with Reaper, is the bespoke suit is usually the most expensive because it requires the expertise of a tailor. With Reaper, you are the tailor and therefore you can design a bespoke suit for much cheaper than a factory-bought suit. You just have to realize you are the tailor and not the customer. And, you have to put in the time, effort, and care to get it right... or seek out a "tailor" that can design a bespoke Reaper for you.


This is exactly right. Well said. And to give you a little plug, it looks like you've made a pretty amazing suit with your Orchestral template.


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## ironbut

One of the things I love about Reaper and the Reaper community is the way that new tech is embraced.
For instance,..
If any of you guys are interested in Ambisonics and it's application to VR you should check out the Ambisonic Toolkit for Reaper. 
Even it you aren't that interested, it's pretty fun to mess with.
http://www.ambisonictoolkit.net/


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## robgb

pderbidge said:


> I don't think any of the Reaper folks here have been defensive.


I was certainly a tad bit defensive in my last couple of posts. It's simply a case of, "my kid is actually pretty friggin' smart, so don't start calling him an idiot." I don't take well to misinformation.


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## Dewdman42

pderbidge said:


> I don't think any of the Reaper folks here have been defensive.



oh really?, see below...



> When you use phrases like "lipstick on a pig" and "if it walks like a duck" those give people the impression there is something nefarious about Reaper or its community.



those were targeted at the software..not the community... And sorry, but yes...that is exactly what themes and skins are....lipstick on a pig...a common term in real estate for when someone dresses up a house with problems with pretty paint and carpet. That is how I see all the endless amount of effort by so many to try to skin up Reaper to make it more enjoyable. But fundamentally..the UI itself..the usability of it..is not great. Its Reaper's weakest aspect. Only when people start adding scripts and buttons and actually tweaking the UI does it get close. Round and round in circles we go on this.. I'm not sure it makes any difference to discuss...there are impassioned Reaper users that simply see a lovely thing in front of them, and many others that simply don't see the same duck you do.


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## EvilDragon

It's not a duck, it's a swan. 

How much exactly is "many others"? Do you have any firm numbers? Because Reaper has dozens of thousands of very satisfied users that aren't moaning about the GUI and getting shit done instead.

That said, I should get some shit done.


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## Dewdman42

The reaper community would also get a lot more credibility to discuss the strengths of reaper if they acknowledged the patently obvious flaws in Reaper's UI design.


----------



## Dewdman42

btw the swan started out as an ugly duckling..so maybe it will get there someday too.


----------



## robgb

Dewdman42 said:


> The reaper community would also get a lot more credibility to discuss the strengths of reaper if they acknowledged the patently obvious flaws in Reaper's UI design.


Why would we acknowledge something that simply isn't true? As they say, you're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.


----------



## pderbidge

Dewdman42 said:


> The reaper community would also get a lot more credibility to discuss the strengths of reaper if they acknowledged that patently obviously flaws in Reaper's UI design.



What does this have to do with credibility? If I were to say I don't like the UI of Cubase and Cubase lovers say they like it, does that then mean they are all discredited? Now we're just going down a road of nonsense. Personal preference is personal preference, it's not about credibility.

On a different note, I'd be genuinely interested to know how you felt about Reaper if you went through the tutorials I pointed to. I have a feeling that people that struggle with Reaper would feel differently after doing this. It may not change your mind about another DAW you prefer, which is perfectly fine because we all have different tastes, but it would be interesting to find if it made a difference in your impressions of Reaper.


----------



## Dewdman42

someday I plan to! But I don't know when I will have time to...so...for now..reaper is just an overcomplicated GUI that I don't have time for.


----------



## pderbidge

Dewdman42 said:


> btw the swan started out as an ugly duckling..so maybe it will get there someday too.


He was only an ugly duckling to the ducks. He was "always" a Swan.


----------



## Dewdman42




----------



## d.healey

Dewdman42 said:


> The reaper community would also get a lot more credibility to discuss the strengths of reaper if they acknowledged the patently obvious flaws in Reaper's UI design.


But I really like Reaper's GUI and really don't like Cubase's (one of many reasons why I left Cubase after using it for over a decade).


----------



## pderbidge

Divico said:


> Agree on that. Though there are plugins that like to make it crash. F.e. Little Plate by Soundtoys.


Little plate doesn't make mine crash but others have at times and what I love about Reaper is how you can isolate those plugins in different ways that make it not crash at all or at least will not crash the entire session. Not sure if this is featured in other DAW's as well but it is a good feature to have.


----------



## Divico

pderbidge said:


> Little plate doesn't make mine crash but others have at times and what I love about Reaper is how you can isolate those plugins in different ways that make it not crash at all or at least will not crash the entire session. Not sure if this is featured in other DAW's as well but it is a good feature to have.


Is buggy plugin compat. mode the same as firewalling it? Any tips how to prevent this?


----------



## robgb

pderbidge said:


> Little plate doesn't make mine crash but others have at times and what I love about Reaper is how you can isolate those plugins in different ways that make it not crash at all or at least will not crash the entire session. Not sure if this is featured in other DAW's as well but it is a good feature to have.


I use Little Plate all the time (love it) and haven't had a crash. I've really only had one crash with Reaper and I'm pretty sure it was caused by Kontakt (or my abuse of it).


----------



## EvilDragon

Divico said:


> Is buggy plugin compat. mode the same as firewalling it? Any tips how to prevent this?



No, it's not the same thing. Firewalling a plugin is basically running it as a dedicated process (bridging it).


----------



## germancomponist

I compose in my head.


----------



## gregh

Dewdman42 said:


> The reaper community would also get a lot more credibility to discuss the strengths of reaper if they acknowledged the patently obvious flaws in Reaper's UI design.


will never happen - you will just get a bunch of people telling you how UI is just subjective, or that you can change the colours. 
I've probably been using Reaper longer than anyone here and it has measurable, objective UI problems that anyone who worked in UI design could point out. I still use Reaper because the UI issues are less important than the strengths - but they are still there. 
Learnability is one of the problems Reaper has - it has often been remarked upon, pointed out exhaustively elsewhere many times, and the learnability problems can be quantified and easily improved. These have nothing to do with watching videos but with the UI itself and/or the default setup. 
I have never understood the defensive Reaper thing. It's just software for music - it doesn't address systemic disadvantage, microplastics in the oceans, or anything else of major importance. It's software that has strengths and weaknesses and can be improved or not. 
In Reaper's case the developer Justin, who seems a nice guy in everything I have seen of him, prefers to add functionality and not work on the design aspect of the UI. That's his interest and unlikely to change - but it might. Until then I think it worth moving past the UI problems and using Reaper, but that doesn't mean there aren't UI problems.


----------



## robgb

gregh said:


> I have never understood the defensive Reaper thing. It's just software for music


I've never understood the Reaper bashing thing, either.


----------



## vicontrolu

robgb said:


> I've never understood the Reaper bashing thing, either.



That's very defensive


----------



## mjsalam

I thought the purpose of this thread was to share/compare some experiences specific to Cubase and Reaper so those considering a change might get some perspectives. 

The experiences and impressions I shared were subjective but not fabricated. In my case I didn't comment on the functionality of Reaper because frankly I think it's pretty much considered a universal truth that it is an extremely capable DAW. But as is often repeated, most DAWs are very much capable and the rest is really the little things, many of which are very subjective.

So when I say I didn't really like the interface I meant that I didn't really like the interface. When I said the themes didn't solve that for me I meant exactly that. When I mentioned that I found myself paying for a number of the themes and scripts I wanted...well I did. Anybody getting hysterical about it really doesn't change that fact. I'm sure that experienced users have a library of free scripts they've created or found over time ...but that didn't really help me at all. 

Then I started playing with Walter (is it Walter?) trying to adjust the themes that were almost right for me...Etc.

Anyhow it just wasn't right for me at the time.

It's not really anything that requires such a vehement defense.

Just to add the other side of my experience. I do like Cubase (it has many of its own quirks) but I mostly just can't get past the dongle. 

So I use Logic.


----------



## mcalis

I'm not really in either camp. I come from Cubase and have recently picked up reaper. Only dipped my toes into the customization waters so far, but I can definitely tell that it has some serious strengths over cubase. Mind you, I've used Cubase a _lot_ longer than Reaper and while I do like Cubase's midi editor a lot better than Reaper's, Reaper has much better render functionaility (render queue, render presets, wildcards for naming). For the sound design work I do for games I've managed to _massively_ improve my workflow in terms of organization, general speed of working (editing waveforms just feels a lot nicer in reaper I can do a lot things with just the mouse and holding a key down that would require a special action in cubase), and export management.

At the end of the day, I genuinely like both. The only reason I am slightly preffering reaper right now is because it has been more stable for me than Cubase, is far less bloated (14mb download vs.. what was it? 8gb?) and for my current work (sound design for games) is just plain faster.

Also, tracks being type (midi/audio/folder) and channel (mono/stereo/surround) agnostic is an amazing feature that all DAWs should have.

I do prefer to do midi composing in Cubase though, largely because of the midi editor. I also like that I can use Ctrl+F to find tracks by name in my oversized template .


----------



## chrisphan

And here I thought the Mac vs PC argument was bad..


----------



## pderbidge

Divico said:


> Is buggy plugin compat. mode the same as firewalling it? Any tips how to prevent this?





EvilDragon said:


> No, it's not the same thing. Firewalling a plugin is basically running it as a dedicated process (bridging it).



What he said

I know there's a tutorial on how it works somewhere, I'll see if I can find one. When you bring up your plugin in the plugin window you would right click it (at least in Windows) instead of clicking add right away and you will have options such as add as a dedicated process, Native, and a few others. You can choose whatever option seems to work best and then move on. pretty simple


----------



## joebaggan

robgb said:


> I agree with this. I'll even go as far to say that the Cubase score editor is better than the Reaper version, mostly because Reaper has only recently added one and it's still finding its legs. I expect it to mature considerably in the future. If you're doing simple notation, however, it works quite well. But, frankly, most composers creating detailed orchestral scores are not using Cubase or Reaper for that purpose, because that isn't really the main focus of either DAW. They're using a dedicated editor like Sibelius or Finale.
> 
> I'm glad you picked up Cubase Pro for $350 (the website price is $559, the price on Sweetwater is $579), but that's still nearly a $300 difference. You can pick up a lighter version of Cubase, with fewer features, for less, but Reaper has only one version with all the same features whether you buy the lower cost license or the pro license. It's exactly the same software. So, again, the difference in price between Cubase and Reaper is not even close to being justified by the difference in features, which are minor.
> 
> But price doesn't matter to some people, and that's fine. Congratulations on finding a DAW that works for you. But your like of Cubase doesn't diminish Reaper any more than my like of Reaper diminishes Cubase. I've used enough DAWs over the years (Sonar, Cubase, Logic, Studio One) to know that the differences between them are actually minuscule. It really comes down to personal preference. And my personal preference happens to be unlimited control. I like being able to customize. The look, the feel, the workflow. That's what Reaper does for me.



You're not making any sense. You agree that Cubase has a much more advanced Score Editor than Reaper and you follow that up by saying the difference between them is minuscule. Sibelius and Finale are $500+ dollars and many regard the Cubase Score Editor as their equal, and the latter is only a small part of the total Cubase Pro package you're paying for. 

As I recall, you've said on this forum that you don't read or write music, so don't think you're in a position to compare score editors. But if you ever get around to scoring music, you'll learn about the Pita that is moving between a score in Sibelius/Finale and your DAW. Cubase provides that integration to a degree with a pro level score editor, and Steinberg has already talked about a future integration between Dorico and Cubase. That will be a huge deal for composers where notation is a part of their composing process and who intend to have real musicians play their music.


----------



## pderbidge

chrisphan said:


> And here I thought the Mac vs PC argument was bad..


Is it really that bad? I'm sure I've seen much worse over Spitfire debates.


----------



## pderbidge

mjsalam said:


> I thought the purpose of this thread was to share/compare some experiences specific to Cubase and Reaper so those considering a change might get some perspectives.
> 
> The experiences and impressions I shared were subjective but not fabricated. In my case I didn't comment on the functionality of Reaper because frankly I think it's pretty much considered a universal truth that it is an extremely capable DAW. But as is often repeated, most DAWs are very much capable and the rest is really the little things, many of which are very subjective.
> 
> So when I say I didn't really like the interface I meant that I didn't really like the interface. When I said the themes didn't solve that for me I meant exactly that. When I mentioned that I found myself paying for a number of the themes and scripts I wanted...well I did. Anybody getting hysterical about it really doesn't change that fact. I'm sure that experienced users have a library of free scripts they've created or found over time ...but that didn't really help me at all.
> 
> Then I started playing with Walter (is it Walter?) trying to adjust the themes that were almost right for me...Etc.
> 
> Anyhow it just wasn't right for me at the time.
> 
> It's not really anything that requires such a vehement defense.
> 
> Just to add the other side of my experience. I do like Cubase (it has many of its own quirks) but I mostly just can't get past the dongle.
> 
> So I use Logic.



Mmm. I don't really get the statement of UI issues other than the interface. I've never had any thing in the UI not function properly so I just assumed the comments on the UI are about the look of the interface. Maybe we just have different meanings of the acronym UI?


----------



## gregh

pderbidge said:


> Mmm. I don't really get the statement of UI issues other than the interface. I've never had any thing in the UI not function properly so I just assumed the comments on the UI are about the look of the interface. Maybe we just have different meanings of the acronym UI?



The UI is the mechanism through which someone interacts with the, in this case, software. So it is not just the look of, say, a button but where the button is placed, how the button is used in the context of appropriate workflows, how suitable a button is as a metaphor for the functionality, how consistent is the button with respect to all other similar functions and buttons and so on. 

Here is a nice summary of user interface design principles from Wikipedia - note how looks / colours and similar are not mentioned explicitly at all. Everything mentioned in these guidelines has some empirical support
"

_The structure principle_: Design should organize the user interface purposefully, in meaningful and useful ways based on clear, consistent models that are apparent and recognizable to users, putting related things together and separating unrelated things, differentiating dissimilar things and making similar things resemble one another. The structure principle is concerned with overall user interface architecture.
_The simplicity principle_: The design should make simple, common tasks easy, communicating clearly and simply in the user's own language, and providing good shortcuts that are meaningfully related to longer procedures.
_The visibility principle_: The design should make all needed options and materials for a given task visible without distracting the user with extraneous or redundant information. Good designs don't overwhelm users with alternatives or confuse with unneeded information.
_The feedback principle_: The design should keep users informed of actions or interpretations, changes of state or condition, and errors or exceptions that are relevant and of interest to the user through clear, concise, and unambiguous language familiar to users.
_The tolerance principle_: The design should be flexible and tolerant, reducing the cost of mistakes and misuse by allowing undoing and redoing, while also preventing errors wherever possible by tolerating varied inputs and sequences and by interpreting all reasonable actions.
_The reuse principle_: The design should reuse internal and external components and behaviors, maintaining consistency with purpose rather than merely arbitrary consistency, thus reducing the need for users to rethink and remember.
"


----------



## robgb

joebaggan said:


> You're not making any sense. You agree that Cubase has a much more advanced Score Editor than Reaper and you follow that up by saying the difference between them is minuscule.


It's not hard. The difference between the two DAWs is minuscule, not the two score editors. A better score editor doesn't make Cubase a better DAW, it simply makes it a DAW with a better score editor. I could point to a number of things that are better in Reaper—like the routing or the sheer customizability—but, again, the differences overall are relatively minor. It really comes down to what YOU prefer and picking the DAW that best suits your needs. Fortunately, Reaper can usually be tailored to most people's needs.


----------



## robgb

vicontrolu said:


> That's very defensive


Thank you for the laugh this morning.


----------



## pderbidge

mjsalam said:


> I thought the purpose of this thread was to share/compare some experiences specific to Cubase and Reaper so those considering a change might get some perspectives.
> 
> The experiences and impressions I shared were subjective but not fabricated. In my case I didn't comment on the functionality of Reaper because frankly I think it's pretty much considered a universal truth that it is an extremely capable DAW. But as is often repeated, most DAWs are very much capable and the rest is really the little things, many of which are very subjective.
> 
> So when I say I didn't really like the interface I meant that I didn't really like the interface. When I said the themes didn't solve that for me I meant exactly that. When I mentioned that I found myself paying for a number of the themes and scripts I wanted...well I did. Anybody getting hysterical about it really doesn't change that fact. I'm sure that experienced users have a library of free scripts they've created or found over time ...but that didn't really help me at all.
> 
> Then I started playing with Walter (is it Walter?) trying to adjust the themes that were almost right for me...Etc.
> 
> Anyhow it just wasn't right for me at the time.
> 
> It's not really anything that requires such a vehement defense.
> 
> Just to add the other side of my experience. I do like Cubase (it has many of its own quirks) but I mostly just can't get past the dongle.
> 
> So I use Logic.



Not sure why you feel there is some "vehement" defense. I've tried to explain my experience and opinions on how to give Reaper or any DAW a fair chance because I feel that your DAW is one of your staples when it comes to making music so it's important to make sure that you do the best you can to find out what works for you. If my experience with Reaper counters your experience does that make me right and you wrong? Of course not. It's all a matter of personal taste and preference. I suppose the only defending I've tried to do is point out unfair "broad negative statements" about Reaper that might give non-users the impression that those statements are facts rather than someones personal opinions. If you feel you have put in the fair amount of effort to learn Reaper and still prefer Logic or something else then that's great. You have done your due diligence and found what works for you. Sorry if any of my comments have come off as defensive. I don't think they have been and certainly haven't tried to criticize anyone else for not choosing or liking Reaper other than to say make sure you've taking the time to learn it fully before passing judgement. Keep making great music, that's all that matters in the end.


----------



## mjsalam

pderbidge said:


> Not sure why you feel there is some "vehement" defense. I've tried to explain my experience and opinions on how to give Reaper or any DAW a fair chance because I feel that your DAW is one of your staples when it comes to making music so it's important to make sure that you do the best you can to find out what works for you. If my experience with Reaper counters your experience does that make me right and you wrong? Of course not. It's all a matter of personal taste and preference. I suppose the only defending I've tried to do is point out unfair "broad negative statements" about Reaper that might give non-users the impression that those statements are facts rather than someones personal opinions. If you feel you have put in the fair amount of effort to learn Reaper and still prefer Logic or something else then that's great. You have done your due diligence and found what works for you. Sorry if any of my comments have come off as defensive. I don't think they have been and certainly haven't tried to criticize anyone else for not choosing or liking Reaper other than to say make sure you've taking the time to learn it fully before passing judgement. Keep making great music, that's all that matters in the end.



Totally fair and thanks for taking the time. Nobody is wrong here. Some responses (not necessarily yours) just come across (and it may just be the nature of the medium) as incredulous. For my part I've tried to be clear about the totally subjective nature of most of my comments. Nevertheless, lots of good input IMO. In fact, this is (for the most part) the type of thread I am quite happy to find when I'm researching something or trying to come to a decision.


----------



## pderbidge

gregh said:


> The UI is the mechanism through which someone interacts with the, in this case, software. So it is not just the look of, say, a button but where the button is placed, how the button is used in the context of appropriate workflows, how suitable a button is as a metaphor for the functionality, how consistent is the button with respect to all other similar functions and buttons and so on.
> 
> Here is a nice summary of user interface design principles from Wikipedia - note how looks / colours and similar are not mentioned explicitly at all. Everything mentioned in these guidelines has some empirical support
> "
> 
> _The structure principle_: Design should organize the user interface purposefully, in meaningful and useful ways based on clear, consistent models that are apparent and recognizable to users, putting related things together and separating unrelated things, differentiating dissimilar things and making similar things resemble one another. The structure principle is concerned with overall user interface architecture.
> _The simplicity principle_: The design should make simple, common tasks easy, communicating clearly and simply in the user's own language, and providing good shortcuts that are meaningfully related to longer procedures.
> _The visibility principle_: The design should make all needed options and materials for a given task visible without distracting the user with extraneous or redundant information. Good designs don't overwhelm users with alternatives or confuse with unneeded information.
> _The feedback principle_: The design should keep users informed of actions or interpretations, changes of state or condition, and errors or exceptions that are relevant and of interest to the user through clear, concise, and unambiguous language familiar to users.
> _The tolerance principle_: The design should be flexible and tolerant, reducing the cost of mistakes and misuse by allowing undoing and redoing, while also preventing errors wherever possible by tolerating varied inputs and sequences and by interpreting all reasonable actions.
> _The reuse principle_: The design should reuse internal and external components and behaviors, maintaining consistency with purpose rather than merely arbitrary consistency, thus reducing the need for users to rethink and remember.
> "


Sorry for all the abundance of posts these last few days on this. If you look at my posting history you'll find I'm not usually this active, but I guess I must have way too much time on my hands this week -

First off, Thanks for sharing that. I think Wikipedia has a pretty good definition of UI, so I'll have to bookmark that one. Frankly I find that, for me, Reaper does in fact hit those bullet points quite well, so to assert that the developers are overlooking some glaring UI issues is really not fact but a matter of opinion/taste. I think some of my posts about people not liking the look of Reaper has certainly led you to believe that all I mean by UI is how it looks but when I say "pretty UI" I am including all of those bullet points you posted in my statement. I had mentioned earlier in this thread that I think that Reaper does a fine job balancing form and function and I appreciate it doing this. I happen to like the default layout and have only made minor tweaks to mine, which is cool you can even do that. The fact that you think there are glaring UI issues doesn't make you wrong but it also doesn't make you right. I happen to think the UI is very well laid out in comparison to other DAWs I've tried. I'm probably one of the few who seems to not customize Reaper all that much. I've taken the approach of learning it's strengths as is and then only tweaking it if I find that something continues to bother me, for example the scroll bars. I didn't like how their color blended in with the background too much making it hard for me to see where they were. Although I usually use key strokes to scroll up and down and left and right most of the time, after a long time of dealing with it I finally decided to figure out a way to change the look and feel of the scrollbar. Since there is no good video on how to do this it did take me some time to figure it out but I persevered and now I'm happy with the Scroll bar. If I wanted to change the volume button on a track to a slider, that's way easier. I can also change the location of that volume button, as well as the look and location of the solo, mute, fader, meters etc.... Everything on the UI can be customized to your liking but I just happen to like the Reaper 5 default so I keep most of it, except for the transport bar, I moved that to the top center of my layout. Once gain, to say that there are glaring UI issues that the developers are ignoring is a strong assertion. To say that you think the UI is not functional for you is more accurate. I just happen to feel different. No right or wrong here or need to defend anything other than to explain my counter position.

What I find more interesting is that you find the UI so bad but continue to use Reaper. I'm not so sure I would be that patient. If I disliked the UI the way you seemed to dislike it then I think I would have abandoned Reaper long ago but then again we all have different reasons for why we use what we use and I can't criticize that, I just found it interesting. What is it that you like that is keeping you on Reaper that the other DAW's with a "better"(subjective) UI don't have?


----------



## pderbidge

mjsalam said:


> Totally fair and thanks for taking the time. Nobody is wrong here. Some responses (not necessarily yours) just come across (and it may just be the nature of the medium) as incredulous. For my part I've tried to be clear about the totally subjective nature of most of my comments. Nevertheless, lots of good input IMO. In fact, this is (for the most part) the type of thread I am quite happy find when I'm researching something or trying to come to a decision.


Good response. I would be lying if I said that I've never been stumped or frustrated trying to figure something out in Reaper but most of that went away once I invested time in the video tutorials I pointed to. There are still things here and there, as there is with anything, but there is such an abundance of information on how to do this or that in Reaper that it's usually just a quick search followed by a "that makes sense" and then I move on having learned a new feature. If I were to do this with say, Logic, I'm sure I would feel the same affinity to how it works and have a less subject viewpoint on Reaper, however I've been having great success with Reaper so I haven't felt the need to branch out to other DAW's at the moment. My advice to anyone is find a DAW that you think will work best for you and then invest some time learning it inside and out. It will be one of the best things you can do for yourself in the music making business.


----------



## robgb

gregh said:


> The UI is the mechanism through which someone interacts with the, in this case, software. So it is not just the look of, say, a button but where the button is placed, how the button is used in the context of appropriate workflows, how suitable a button is as a metaphor for the functionality, how consistent is the button with respect to all other similar functions and buttons and so on.


One of the points (and joys) of Reaper is that you can place that button wherever you want, use it however you want to use it, in whatever context you prefer. You can place and utilize it in a way that best works for YOU, not the designer. To my mind, the only appropriate workflow is the CURRENT USER's workflow. So rather than being stuck with the designer's idea of what your workflow should be, and adapting to that, Reaper allows the user to create his or her own workflow and adjust the UI accordingly. This is a plus, not a negative.


----------



## Dewdman42

Customizability is clearly a strong point of reaper. That does not represent good ui design. Those are two different things.


----------



## Divico

pderbidge said:


> right click it


I´ve been searching for this. Unfortunately this feature seems to have been moved or even deleted.


----------



## EvilDragon

No, it's not removed.


----------



## pderbidge

Dewdman42 said:


> Customizability is clearly a strong point of reaper. That does not represent good ui design. Those are two different things.


For me it is. Most of my setup is the default Reaper and if that was all I was stuck with I'd still prefer it over the others I've tried. Having said that, the ability to customize it is an added bonus. You can tweak a little or a lot, it's up to you, but yes Reaper represents good UI design IMHO.


----------



## Tod

robgb said:


> One of the points (and joys) of Reaper is that you can place that button wherever you want, use it however you want to use it, in
> 
> whatever context you prefer. You can place and utilize it in a way that best works for YOU, not the designer. To my mind, the only appropriate workflow is the CURRENT USER's workflow.
> 
> So rather than being stuck with the designer's idea of what your workflow should be, and adapting to that, Reaper allows the user to create his or her own workflow and adjust the UI
> 
> accordingly. This is a plus, not a negative.



Totally agree, and not only can you place any button where ever you want, you also can create all your own buttons to go along with your custom macros and actions.

As seems to be the case here, the GUI is one of the biggest complaints about Reaper, probably followed by midi. Ha ha, I'm personally still using the Reaper-3 theme. The reason being that I like the meters and the basic ui elements, old fashioned yes, but it has all the things that I need, placed in a very logical place. I might add it looks more like one of my old studio mixers. I could care less about eye candy, functionality is my main concern and I'm not the only one.

The late Bob Villwock (aka Big Bob) was a good friend of mine. We talked on the phone at least once a week, sometimes 3 or 4 depending on the project we were working on. At any rate, I turned him onto Reaper and the first thing he said is he didn't like the way it looked. That's when I told him I was still using the Reaper 3 theme, so he check it out and yeah, that was much better. However he chose the "Classic" Reaper 3 theme I think it was.

I've tried many of the various themes but I just keep coming back the the V3 theme. Here's a picture of a project I'm working on at the time, along with some of my toolbars. I know it's probably ugly to you, but for me it's got everything I need. Incidentally the color toolbar on top is one of Bob's designs.

https://stash.reaper.fm/33620/Main Arrange with Toolbars and Mixer 1.png

This is the midi editor, again it will be ugly for most of you, but I've got all my needs a click away. On the right side notice the toolbar-4, I've got it sitting right over an "IrfanView" picture I made that has all the strings and notes of a Steel Guitar instrument I made in Kontakt. The velocities of the notes determine which string is being played and when I click on one of the toolbar 4 buttons, it will in turn put that velocity on the note that I've selected in the midi editor. A huge help in making my Steel Guitar work, and something I don't think could be done with another DAW.

https://stash.reaper.fm/33621/Midi with Toolbars 1.png


----------



## chrisphan

pderbidge said:


> Is it really that bad? I'm sure I've seen much worse over Spitfire debates.


Not bad, just pointless I guess. So much of why someone uses a certain DAW is subjective, such as a certain look or workflow. For people trying to decide, all major DAWs have working demos.


----------



## robgb

Oh, another thing about Reaper. I just got a notification that Reaper 5.9 has been released. The previous release was about a week or two ago. It seems they offer new releases every month, give or take. They are constantly working on it, improving it. I expect Version 6 to be released sometime in the near future. And I won't have to pay a cent for the upgrade.


----------



## benmrx

So..., uhhh, is the grass greener yet? 

IMO, all these debates wouldn’t get so heated if everyone puts ‘IMO’ at the end of their post. 

‘Scripts are cumbersome’ (IMO)
‘No they’re not’ (IMO)

‘The UI is horrible’ (IMO)
‘The UI is great’ (IMO)

IMO of course.


----------



## robgb

benmrx said:


> So..., uhhh, is the grass greener yet?
> 
> IMO, all these debates wouldn’t get so heated if everyone puts ‘IMO’ at the end of their post.
> 
> ‘Scripts are cumbersome’ (IMO)
> ‘No they’re not’ (IMO)
> 
> ‘The UI is horrible’ (IMO)
> ‘The UI is great’ (IMO)
> 
> IMO of course.


Has it been heated? I think everyone's been relatively level headed.


----------



## benmrx

IMO?


----------



## d.healey

robgb said:


> Oh, another thing about Reaper. I just got a notification that Reaper 5.9 has been released. The previous release was about a week or two ago. It seems they offer new releases every month, give or take. They are constantly working on it, improving it. I expect Version 6 to be released sometime in the near future. And I won't have to pay a cent for the upgrade.


I reported a bug two days ago, Justin tested it yesterday and it's been fixed in today's update


----------



## tack

d.healey said:


> I reported a bug two days ago, Justin tested it yesterday and it's been fixed in today's update


It's nice when that happens, but it does largely depend on timing and whether Justin's head happens to be in the space where the bug is when he reads the report. There are still a number of trivial bugs that have been languishing for many years that I have little hope of ever being fixed. (Example.)


----------



## EvilDragon

Heh. And then you get stuff like this.


----------



## robgb

tack said:


> It's nice when that happens, but it does largely depend on timing and whether Justin's head happens to be in the space where the bug is when he reads the report. There are still a number of trivial bugs that have been languishing for many years that I have little hope of ever being fixed. (Example.)


How dare you point this out. Reaper is PERFECT!!!!


----------



## ghandizilla

Chhht. Nobody shall talk about our Reaper cult involving Cubase-users sacrifices to the Golden Engineer.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

chrisphan said:


> For people trying to decide, all major DAWs have working demos.



Logic doesn't have a demo, and I'm pretty sure Pro Tools doesn't. And if you want to demo Cubase, you need an eLicense dongle.


----------



## fretti

Wolfie2112 said:


> Logic doesn't have a demo, and I'm pretty sure Pro Tools doesn't. And if you want to demo Cubase, you need an eLicense dongle.


Pro Tools has, 30 days
https://connect.avid.com/Pro-Tools-Trial.html

Not Pro Tools Ultimate though


----------



## robgb

Wolfie2112 said:


> And if you want to demo Cubase, you need an eLicense dongle.


You gotta be kidding me.


----------



## ghandizilla

Nope, when I tried Cubase, it was a real downer for me.


----------



## vicontrolu

Allright so let's say I try once again. I'll probably have dozens of questions every day for some weeks. 

Is the Reaper forum the place to ask? Is there any live chat dedicated to reaper or at least with a decent amount of active reaper users? Live communication would probably speed things up at the beginning I guess


----------



## robgb

ghandizilla said:


> Nope, when I tried Cubase, it was a real downer for me.


And there's another difference between Cubase and Reaper. What happens if you lose the dongle? What does it cost to buy another? If you're on the road and you forget your dongle, then what? With Reaper you can simply download a copy and import your configuration that you've wisely kept in the cloud (oh, wait, since there's no dongle to lose, this won't be an issue).


----------



## robgb

vicontrolu said:


> Allright so let's say I try once again. I'll probably have dozens of questions every day for some weeks.
> 
> Is the Reaper forum the place to ask? Is there any live chat dedicated to reaper or at least with a decent amount of active reaper users? Live communication would probably speed things up at the beginning I guess


The Reaper forum is invaluable. Questions answered fairly quickly there. Also, Kenny Gioia's videos on the site and on his YouTube channel cover pretty much anything you need to know. Also Reaper Blog, which also has a YouTube Channel. In fact there are a number of information YouTube channels on Reaper. And, of course, you can ask here.

EDIT: Oh, and there are Reaper groups on Facebook, but I haven't been to Facebook in awhile so I have no idea how active they are.


----------



## ghandizilla

The community is very active and responsive. A wealth of ressources are available on the official website as well as on YouTube. But there is no dedicated technical support. That's a drawback. The developers trust their users. The users trust themselves. Something like that


----------



## fretti

vicontrolu said:


> Allright so let's say I try once again. I'll probably have dozens of questions every day for some weeks.
> 
> Is the Reaper forum the place to ask? Is there any live chat dedicated to reaper or at least with a decent amount of active reaper users? Live communication would probably speed things up at the beginning I guess


looks like nowadays lots of people on here use Reaper, could always just post in the DAW section
ED, Robgb and Divico seem to be online often


----------



## fretti

ghandizilla said:


> The community is very active and responsive. A wealth of ressources are available on the official website as well as on YouTube. But there is no dedicated technical support. That's a drawback. The developers trust their users. The users trust themselves. Something like that


Using Cubase myself, but I have to say, from some other threads (especially on the Steinberg forum) it looks like the Steinberg support seems to be non existent from time to time itself...read now multiple times about no answers or delays of a few weeks...luckily had no serious problems so far, but when I buy a product for couple hundred € I expect them to answer in max. a week (like Spitfire, u-He or OT, they are excellent in that)


----------



## ghandizilla

I can guarantee you every time I had an issue with Reaper, I had an answer within the day here at VI-C. That's how a system based on trust can be efficient.


----------



## robgb

fretti said:


> ED, Robgb and Divico seem to be online often


I'm happy to answer any questions I can. I'm old and semi-retired, hence the constant, get-off-my-lawn presence here at VI.


----------



## storyteller

If you are a composer using Reaper, VI-C will probably have answers more quickly for you. The reaper/cockos forums - while they are a wonderful community and can help solve nearly any problem you may encounter - tend to operate from a non-orchestral perspective and under the mindset of "Have you read the manual? Reaper has a great manual. If you read it, you'd know the answer already and not have this question. Your answer is on page ____." I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you get the idea.


----------



## vicontrolu

Gotcha. Allright VIc it is then. I was counting on rtfm anyway


----------



## EvilDragon

Definitely better go through Kenny's videos on Reaper website rather than manual. The "manual" is more of a user guide and tips-and-tricks than a function-by-function manual.


----------



## Jeremy Spencer

fretti said:


> Pro Tools has, 30 days
> https://connect.avid.com/Pro-Tools-Trial.html
> 
> Not Pro Tools Ultimate though



Nice, I didn't realize that.


----------



## d.healey

And the Reaper blog YouTube channel is very helpful


----------



## Tod

d.healey said:


> And the Reaper blog YouTube channel is very helpful



Yes, Jon has some great videos too, the most helpful thing that I got from Jon was working with videos. He's also created some video FX that work quite well.

I don't know how many DAWs cater to editing videos but Reaper does, admittedly in a rather small way, but still, there is a lot you can do with it.


----------



## joebaggan

Dewdman42 said:


> Customizability is clearly a strong point of reaper. That does not represent good ui design. Those are two different things.



I keep hearing about all this UI customizing that is supposedly the big advantage of Reaper. So I can put a button somewhere else or I can build my own UI. That is just irrelevant as a feature to me or as a way to increase efficiency if you intend to get around your DAW via key commands rather than pointing/clicking. I can create key commands or macros in Cubase (or Logic) to do everything I need with a key combo, from moving around to executing a complex series of tasks with 1 key combo. Whether you're working in a DAW or in a notation program like Sibelius/Finale, it's always going to be more efficient to use/create key commands rather than pointing/clicking buttons or scrolling through menus to do things.


----------



## robgb

joebaggan said:


> That is just irrelevant as a feature to me or as a way to increase efficiency if you intend to get around your DAW via key commands rather than pointing/clicking. I can create key commands or macros in Cubase (or Logic) to do everything I need with a key combo, from moving around to executing a complex series of tasks with 1 key combo.


You can do this in Reaper, too. Create your own actions (aka macros), even very complex ones, cycled ones, whatever you choose, and not only add it to a key command, but to a mouse click using mouse modifiers, a CC fader or controller button and so on. For example, I can use a Cmd Mouse Click to cycle through track modes - Read, write, latch, touch, etc. Reaper gives you a lot of options. If I want to assign that Cmd Mouse click to another action, all I have to do is set it up. Takes about thirty seconds. I also have TouchOSC set up so that I hit Albion One Horns on my tablet and Albion One Horns load up immediately. A lot of different choices.


----------



## SBK

Reaper user here, Reaper is crazy and has amazing features and customized stuff you can do all over but it is lagging for me. Doesn't have that smooth flow like in other DAWs


----------



## ghandizilla

robgb said:


> You can do this in Reaper, too. Create your own actions (aka macros), even very complex ones, cycled ones, whatever you choose, and not only add it to a key command, but to a mouse click using mouse modifiers, a CC fader or controller button and so on.



I'll add : I created only one icon with the Actions menu, everything else is shortcuts, dozens of shortcuts, some linked to series of up to nine actions. Each shortcut took a few seconds to set up. Reaper may have flaws, but it's *solid as hell *regarding custom actions.


----------



## robgb

SBK said:


> Doesn't have that smooth flow like in other DAWs


I've used nearly every major DAW (and some minor ones) and have no idea what this means. The only DAW that has a smooth flow is the one you've learned really well. Find one, learn it, customize it, and you'll get there.


----------



## ghandizilla

I'm faster with Reaper than with FL Studio. And I really _*loved *_FL Studio's piano roll. Just to say. I was at 6 hours per minute of orchestration, now I'm at 4. Nothing to do with the arrangement "habitus" since I do short scores on paper before getting to the full orchestration and these short scores take about the same amount of time as before.


----------



## d.healey

Spectral edits


----------



## ghandizilla

Cubase doesn't do spectral edits ?


----------



## SBK

robgb said:


> I've used nearly every major DAW (and some minor ones) and have no idea what this means. The only DAW that has a smooth flow is the one you've learned really well. Find one, learn it, customize it, and you'll get there.



Sorry I mean smooth flow in coding wise, like without lag and buggy operations


----------



## ghandizilla

*BREAKING NEWS*: The most lightweight (20mb!) and CPU friendly DAW _lags_.


----------



## d.healey

ghandizilla said:


> Cubase doesn't do spectral edits ?


I doubt it, why would Steinberg sell WaveLab if you could do it in Cubase. I'm not sure any other DAW has spectral editing on the timeline.


----------



## ghandizilla

My bad. I will sacrifice a virgin teenage Cubase user to soothe the Golden Engineer's wrath.


----------



## robgb

SBK said:


> Sorry I mean smooth flow in coding wise, like without lag and buggy operations


I'm trying to think what bugs you may have encountered. I'm sure there are some. Every piece of software has them. But I can't think of any that would lead you to conclude that Reaper is any "buggier" than any other DAW.


----------



## d.healey

ghandizilla said:


> My bad. I will sacrifice a virgin teenage Cubase user to soothe the Golden Engineer's wrath.


Ooops I deleted my post because I realised it's actually more when unpacked, now your post seems out of place


----------



## ghandizilla

Let us see what happens now :-D


----------



## MarcusD

Booted up reaper, first thing it did was crash when loading a sample library, which required the DAW to be restarted. This happens about 7 times until I finally got it to work... BTW without changing anything. Next experience, slow load times with plugins (CPU intensive ones that work fine on Cubase) which also caused stability problems or hangs. Finally some of simple things that you would expect to-do out-the-box are extremely un-intuitive & annoying which pretty much sums up what I think of Reaper, annoying. It's the jack of all trades but the master of none... and damn, you spend more time getting the f***er to actually WORK (the way you want) than you do creating anything. 

Sure, it's cheap and you can make it do everything the big DAWs do, but the issue is the implementation of these features and it's sketchy stability. It's like making a duvet out of recycled square cuttings from old cloths you find at a charity store. Super cool, until you get a rash from it because someone forgot to wash the cloths. So then you do a self diagnosis using google, panic, and go the doctors to get rash cream to use for 4 days until you're cured. But then the duvet falls apart because the stitching sucks and you're back to square 1. Moral of the story, just buy a damn duvet that's good to start with.

Hands down rather use Cubase, Studio One, Pro Tools, Sonar or FL Studio over this thing and happily pay the premium (and yes I've used them all) Uninstalled. Not going to waste anymore time with this DAW. But if it works for you, then thats great. This one is not for me though.


----------



## ghandizilla

Very surprising considered the wealth of Kontakt instances regular users are able to launch. Weird. Does someone have any idea what could have been the cause of those crashes? (Personal account: zero crash in six months.)

Concerning the learning curve (I understand you find all the tweaking something that elongates the learning curve, and I'll try to show the opposite): when I tried Cubase, it took longer for me to learn the thing than Reaper, because I had everything online to learn Reaper in two days, including all the "scary" scripts. All in a coherent order, in an enjoyable format, and right in the front page of the official website. A bliss. Whereas for Cubase, I had to bought the Groove3 course, and to find it in the first place.

Getting to the main point: I am god damn thankful for the parametrability, because Cubase MIDI editor was for me a pain, since I was accustomed to FL Studio's MIDI editor. The pencil tool was totally counter-intuitive to me. In Reaper, five minutes tweaking mouse modifiers, and I was fluent again with the MIDI editing. So five minutes of tweaking spared me months of clunkyness :o

So Cubase might help you gain some time you spend tweaking Reaper, it's undeniable, but:
(a) Reaper is really quick to tweak
(b) the non-tweakability of Cubase might put you in a "it took months to get accustomed to the workflow" situation

So what may we conclude? If you don't have any "habitus", or if you're accustomed to Cubase-like workflow and MIDI editing, Cubase will of course be faster to learn than Reaper. In other cases, it's not that obvious.


----------



## James Marshall

MarcusD said:


> Booted up reaper, first thing it did was crash when loading a sample library, which required the DAW to be restarted. This happens about 7 times until I finally got it to work... BTW without changing anything. Next experience, slow load times with plugins (CPU intensive ones that work fine on Cubase) which also caused stability problems or hangs.
> 
> ... but the issue is the implementation of these features and it's sketchy stability.



I'm really baffled by this. One of the major plus points of Reaper _is_ its stability. I don't think I've heard anyone say otherwise. Most Reaper users can probably count the number of times it's crashed on them on one hand.

What was the sample library you were trying to load? Perhaps there's a specific conflict on your system?

Reaper is an incredibly lean and stable piece of software. Let's at least set the record straight there. 



MarcusD said:


> It's like making a duvet out of recycled square cuttings from old cloths you find at a charity store. Super cool, until you get a rash from it because someone forgot to wash the cloths. So then you do a self diagnosis using google, panic, and go the doctors to get rash cream to use for 4 days until you're cured. But then the duvet falls apart because the stitching sucks and you're back to square 1. Moral of the story, just buy a damn duvet that's good to start with.



I have to hand it to you. That's the most "out there" metaphorical comparison of DAWs right there  If we're making that comparison, then Reaper for me is a lovely patchwork quilt in which I lovingly chose all the patches and pieced them all together. No one else has my lovely custom Reaper quilt and this makes me feel special


----------



## ghandizilla




----------



## InLight-Tone

Gotta say the obvious, Reaper has got to be the most DIVISIVE DAW on the market...


----------



## tack

MarcusD said:


> first thing it did was crash when loading a sample library, which required the DAW to be restarted


Which library?



MarcusD said:


> Next experience, slow load times with plugins (CPU intensive ones that work fine on Cubase) which also caused stability problems or hangs


Which plugins?



MarcusD said:


> Sure, it's cheap and you can make it do everything the big DAWs do, but the issue is the implementation of these features and it's sketchy stability.


I'm sure you must realize from this thread alone that your experience is extremely atypical.


----------



## MarcusD

James Marshall said:


> I'm really baffled by this. One of the major plus points of Reaper _is_ its stability. I don't think I've heard anyone say otherwise. Most Reaper users can probably count the number of times it's crashed on them on one hand.
> 
> What was the sample library you were trying to load? Perhaps there's a specific conflict on your system?
> 
> Reaper is an incredibly lean and stable piece of software. Let's at least set the record straight there.




Kontakt (latest version): No specific Library, just a patch from any vendor was causing a complete lockups randomly when drag and dropping a patch into kontakt.

Plugins: VMR, Bias FX, Fab-Filter Pro Q / MB (When run at cpu intensive settings) some of the Waves plugs are sluggish too and also caused lock ups. Again, no issues even doing the exact same things with Cubase, FL or PT?? Granted PT is not using VST. 

All the issues I was personally experiencing, my other DAWs have no problem with. Which suggests Reapers comparability might not be 100% amazing. This is a PC rig I'm running on BTW with Win10. But in all honesty, after getting the thing to work it prompted my other frustrations with it. Any other DAW you can pretty much grasp instantly, its just a case of learning key cuts etc.... and most of what you want to do is already included. 

With this, if you suddenly run into something you need to do, but can't you then need a script for it. But even with all of it's cool scripts, it's still not really doing anything to enhance the end result. In-fact it makes it MORE frustrating and time consuming. I suppose that is the trade-off you get, when something is $60. 

My main issue is probably the design of Reaper, it can be done much better. It feels like it was made with MS paint (Can't put my finger on it) There's very much something about it that really doesn't do it for me. It annoys me, and design is extremely important for me. You shouldn't need to faff around with a product to make it good looks wise, or feature wise.



James Marshall said:


> I have to hand it to you. That's the most "out there" metaphorical comparison of DAWs right there  If we're making that comparison, then Reaper for me is a lovely patchwork quilt in which I lovingly chose all the patches and pieced them all together. No one else has my lovely custom Reaper quilt and this makes me feel special



 haha! Hope you wash yours.


----------



## James Marshall

InLight-Tone said:


> Gotta say the obvious, Reaper has got to be the most DIVISIVE DAW on the market...


I agree, it really does seems that way sometimes on forums. Why is that? I'm genuinely curious. 

Most of these comparison threads descend into petty "my DAW is better than your DAW" arguments. All of hope of a constructive comparison gets lost pretty quickly.

I think first time Reaper users (who are used to another DAW) open it for the first time and think "this is f***ing weird, and looks ugly", which I sort of agree with actually. But it's only when you spend quite a bit of time with it do you learn to mould it into what you want. Some people like that, others don't I guess. The thing is I'm not convinced this is exclusive to Reaper. When I opened Ableton for the first time I didn't know where anything was and felt completely lost and found the interface strange, despite it being a very competent DAW. I also don't think everyone know's how to use Cubase straight away out of the box without _any_ learning curve. 

Reaper is awesome. But guess what? ... so is Cubase. But they have significant differences which can be discussed politely where everyone's nice to each other ..... really.... _nice_ ...


----------



## d.healey

MarcusD said:


> Any other DAW you can pretty much grasp instantly.


Yes, Reaper stands out from the herd of other DAWs, it is quite different.


----------



## tack

MarcusD said:


> My main issue is probably the design of Reaper, it can be done much better. It feels like it was made with MS paint (Can't put my finger on it) There's very much something about it that really doesn't do it for me. It annoys me, and design is extremely important for me. You shouldn't need to faff around with a product to make it good looks wise, or feature wise.


Well, I agree with all this, appreciating that at least some elements of aesthetics are subjective, there are definitely some objective warts when it comes to Reaper's UI. I do wish the developers spent more time on UX and fit and finish (which includes the array of tiny little workflow-killing bugs) -- but I don't think that criticism is necessarily unique to Reaper.

My own experience in terms of stability and performance though are very solid. In recent history (past couple years) any crashes were caused by plugins.


----------



## Rasmus Hartvig

tack said:


> I do wish the developers spent more time on UX and fit and finish (which includes the array of tiny little workflow-killing bugs) -- but I don't think that criticism is necessarily unique to Reaper.



Agree with this. The price you pay for all the power is a less than tight UI. On the other hand, Steinberg has a track record of baffling and infuriating attempts at inventing their own UI paradigms. In the end, Cubase drove me up the wall far more often than Reaper does when it comes to weird UI stuff.


----------



## MarcusD

d.healey said:


> Yes, Reaper stands out from the herd of other DAWs, it is quite different.



I don't think it does though. It's no different to any other DAW, it's really not hard to learn or use. The annoyance is having to mess around with it to make it work like the other DAWs. It's like being given the choice of a toothpick or fork for eating rice. Alternatively, you could wait for something better to be invented but by the time you've waited, you could of just used the fork.


----------



## James Marshall

MarcusD said:


> Kontakt (latest version): No specific Library, just a patch from any vendor was causing a complete lockups randomly when drag and dropping a patch into kontakt.
> 
> Plugins: VMR, Bias FX, Fab-Filter Pro Q



That's weird, I've had _no_ issues with Kontakt, and none of these plugins have crashed on me. Although I find Bias FX and AMP kind of clunky anyway. Maybe we can help you with the issues you're having?



MarcusD said:


> ... This is a PC rig I'm running on BTW with Win10.


Me too! Glad there's more of us 



MarcusD said:


> It feels like it was made with MS paint


If there was an MS Paint theme I would download it, that'd be hilarious. The funny thing is it's _possible_ 



MarcusD said:


> haha! Hope you wash yours.


It's always kept lovely and clean with its regular updates


----------



## d.healey

MarcusD said:


> I don't think it does though. It's no different to any other DAW, it's really not hard to learn or use.


It is very different, that's why everyone seems to either love it or hate it. If you need a DAW to do all the things other DAWs do and nothing more then don't bother looking at Reaper. Only use Reaper if you are missing something and want the unique features that Reaper offers. For me its batch tools are invaluable and there is nothing that compares with them in any other DAW.



> The annoyance is having to mess around with it to make it work like the other DAWs.


This is the problem, it's not another DAW and won't work like another one, that's why you have other DAWs. The first time I used Reaper, coming from Cubase, and tried to build a template I was incredibly confused by the routing so I tried to emulate the routing I was used to in Cubase using Reaper's routing matrix, after much frustration I watched the Groove3 tutorial series and realised that Reaper doesn't do routing like Cubase (although you can force it too as I did) it's way simpler, each track can also be a bus. 



> It's like being given the choice of a toothpick or fork for eating rice.


That's one (strange) way of looking at it  but I guess it depends if all you eat is rice. I think chopsticks are a pretty strange implement for eating rice with too but they work for some people... this is a weird analogy.



> Alternatively, you could wait for something better to be invented but by the time you've waited, you could of just used the fork.


Why wait, just write a script in Reaper, or get someone else to for you. But what features are you missing in your DAW that is driving you to look at others?


----------



## MarcusD

James Marshall said:


> That's weird, I've had _no_ issues with Kontakt, and none of these plugins have crashed on me. Although I find Bias FX and AMP kind of clunky anyway. Maybe we can help you with the issues you're having?
> 
> 
> Me too! Glad there's more of us
> 
> 
> If there was an MS Paint theme I would download it, that'd be hilarious. The funny thing is it's _possible_
> 
> 
> It's always kept lovely and clean with its regular updates



Well, there's really no need. But thank you for the offer. I already have a few DAWs that work perfectly well and do everything that I need, without needing to fix, troubleshoot or relying on other peoples scripting ability to improve a product. Besides, I've already uninstalled it. 3 days of using Reaper was more than enough to re-affirm my criticisms towards it. The only positive thing I can say about Reaper, is it's cheap. Cheap as chips!

Maybe message jimllpaintit, he's pretty nifty with MS paint. I bet he could make a funny theme for Reaper!


----------



## MarcusD

d.healey said:


> It is very different, that's why everyone seems to either love it or hate it.



I can see what you're saying, but I'm looking at it from a the perspective of: It's a DAW, it records stuff and lets you make music. It's unique features don't make the end result any different. The process of getting to that end result is just not a smooth enough experience. By no means am I saying Cubase is superior in every-way, because NO DAW is perfect, but making music / recording or what ever you are doing, should be a smooth, headache-free experience. Reaper just doesn't do that very well, from my experience. It feels like a program in Alpha testing, not a finished super polished product.




d.healey said:


> That's one (strange) way of looking at it  but I guess it depends if all you eat is rice. I think chopsticks are a pretty strange implement for eating rice with too but they work for some people... this is a weird analogy.



I'm just a weird guy hahaha




d.healey said:


> Why wait, just write a script in Reaper, or get someone else to for you. But what features are you missing in your DAW that is driving you to look at others?



I'm not missing any features in my DAW, I was just curious to see if Reaper had improved much more since I last used it because there's so much hype about the product.


----------



## tack

It would be nice if people who posted "I just tried Reaper and it sucks because <problems they had with it>" would capture their screen during those initial minutes using Reaper for the first time, and record themselves thinking aloud and upload the video in place of their written criticism. It'd be useful to _truly _know the ways that Reaper properly sucks versus misunderstandings about the ways it works (e.g. due to carrying assumptions over from other software).

If you get enough people tripping over the same things, there may be minor UX improvements to reduce confusion that the community could advocate for. Or if there is legitimate instability then with a record of what was actually done we'll have some hope of getting to the bottom of it.

Instead all we have continuous (and a bit pointless if I'm being honest) ping-pongs between "Reaper sucks because reasons" and "what are you talking about, it works great for me!" posts. One can't help but feel stuck in an infinite loop.


----------



## vicontrolu

d.healey said:


> For me its batch tools are invaluable and there is nothing that compares with them in any other DAW.



Can you please elaborate on what you do with batch processing? I do sound design for video games so maybe I could get some ideas from it. Thanks


----------



## robgb

MarcusD said:


> Booted up reaper, first thing it did was crash when loading a sample library, which required the DAW to be restarted. This happens about 7 times until I finally got it to work... BTW without changing anything. Next experience, slow load times with plugins (CPU intensive ones that work fine on Cubase) which also caused stability problems or hangs. Finally some of simple things that you would expect to-do out-the-box are extremely un-intuitive & annoying which pretty much sums up what I think of Reaper, annoying. It's the jack of all trades but the master of none... and damn, you spend more time getting the f***er to actually WORK (the way you want) than you do creating anything.
> 
> Sure, it's cheap and you can make it do everything the big DAWs do, but the issue is the implementation of these features and it's sketchy stability. It's like making a duvet out of recycled square cuttings from old cloths you find at a charity store. Super cool, until you get a rash from it because someone forgot to wash the cloths. So then you do a self diagnosis using google, panic, and go the doctors to get rash cream to use for 4 days until you're cured. But then the duvet falls apart because the stitching sucks and you're back to square 1. Moral of the story, just buy a damn duvet that's good to start with.
> 
> Hands down rather use Cubase, Studio One, Pro Tools, Sonar or FL Studio over this thing and happily pay the premium (and yes I've used them all) Uninstalled. Not going to waste anymore time with this DAW. But if it works for you, then thats great. This one is not for me though.


Sorry you're having problems. I suspect it has something to do with your system and not Reaper. Reaper is the most stable, rock solid DAW I've used. Studio One, for example, constantly crashes on me. Reaper has crashed on me once.


----------



## robgb

InLight-Tone said:


> Gotta say the obvious, Reaper has got to be the most DIVISIVE DAW on the market...


Only with people who don't actually use it.


----------



## ghandizilla

People who dont like it dont use it. It's logical.


----------



## ghandizilla

Concerning batch tools, there are groupings, folders, VCA faders, but also a media bay, which centralizes (with configurable criterias) every item and takes of your project.


----------



## joebaggan

robgb said:


> Only with people who don't actually use it.



Nonsense, I have Cubase and Reaper. It doesn't have to be either/or. I prefer Cubase for detailed Midi orchestration work, Score Editing, expression maps, the Logical Editor capabilities. I use Reaper for simple audio projects. It's possible to use both. As I've said, I wouldn't use the Reaper Score Editor ever because it's not pro level like the Cubase Score Editor is. Nobody would argue that.


----------



## robgb

joebaggan said:


> Nonsense, I have Cubase and Reaper. It doesn't have to be either/or. I prefer Cubase for detailed Midi orchestration work, Score Editing, expression maps, the Logical Editor capabilities. I use Reaper for simple audio projects. It's possible to use both. As I've said, I wouldn't use the Reaper Score Editor ever because it's not pro level like the Cubase Score Editor is. Nobody would argue that.


We keep making the same arguments over and over. Let's just celebrate the fact that we have a choice.


----------



## d.healey

vicontrolu said:


> Can you please elaborate on what you do with batch processing? I do sound design for video games so maybe I could get some ideas from it. Thanks


My main use for the batch tools is for sample library development so I don't know how useful they would be for your purposes. But I can run scripts on a seemingly unlimited number of items, I can group items and run scripts just on those groups, batch export and batch renaming are a breeze too. Copying envelopes between multiple items is also very handy. I'm sure there are more situations that I don't even think about but are a natural part of my workflow now.


----------



## coolbass

MarcusD said:


> Booted up reaper, first thing it did was crash when loading a sample library, which required the DAW to be restarted. This happens about 7 times until I finally got it to work... BTW without changing anything. Next experience, slow load times with plugins (CPU intensive ones that work fine on Cubase) which also caused stability problems or hangs. Finally some of simple things that you would expect to-do out-the-box are extremely un-intuitive & annoying which pretty much sums up what I think of Reaper, annoying. It's the jack of all trades but the master of none... and damn, you spend more time getting the f***er to actually WORK (the way you want) than you do creating anything.
> 
> Sure, it's cheap and you can make it do everything the big DAWs do, but the issue is the implementation of these features and it's sketchy stability. It's like making a duvet out of recycled square cuttings from old cloths you find at a charity store. Super cool, until you get a rash from it because someone forgot to wash the cloths. So then you do a self diagnosis using google, panic, and go the doctors to get rash cream to use for 4 days until you're cured. But then the duvet falls apart because the stitching sucks and you're back to square 1. Moral of the story, just buy a damn duvet that's good to start with.
> 
> Hands down rather use Cubase, Studio One, Pro Tools, Sonar or FL Studio over this thing and happily pay the premium (and yes I've used them all) Uninstalled. Not going to waste anymore time with this DAW. But if it works for you, then thats great. This one is not for me though.



Hahaha. Great!

Reaper is the only DAW ( and I have used them all) that never crashed on me.


----------



## coolbass

MarcusD said:


> Well, there's really no need. But thank you for the offer. I already have a few DAWs that work perfectly well and do everything that I need, without needing to fix, troubleshoot or relying on other peoples scripting ability to improve a product. Besides, I've already uninstalled it. 3 days of using Reaper was more than enough to re-affirm my criticisms towards it. The only positive thing I can say about Reaper, is it's cheap. Cheap as chips!



So, what are you doing here?
If I don't like a DAW, I don't feel the need to post that 100 x on their forum.


----------



## MarcusD

coolbass said:


> So, what are you doing here?
> If I don't like a DAW, I don't feel the need to post that 100 x on their forum.



Come on now, are you seriously going down that path? It's a forum, a place of discussion. I'm a Cubase user mainly, but I use other DAWs for different tasks. It's not here to "Bash" products or put words in peoples mouths (as some do on this forum) I'm here because I wanted to see how far Reaper had come since I last used ages ago for MIDI. But instead, encounter problems and various interface related stuff which turned me off the product ... From my POV, it's not as good as Cubase for MIDI. Despite having the ability to do potentially everything and more, the implementation is just not great and feels cumbersome for large projects, that's where I think it lacks. But that's my opinion.


----------



## joebaggan

coolbass said:


> So, what are you doing here?
> If I don't like a DAW, I don't feel the need to post that 100 x on their forum.



Hmm, ask robgb about that. He seems to post the same stubborn fanboy opinion over and over even when the facts contradict it. Perhaps some of us should instead spend our time learning the basics of how to read and write music.


----------



## pderbidge

fretti said:


> Pro Tools has, 30 days
> https://connect.avid.com/Pro-Tools-Trial.html
> 
> Not Pro Tools Ultimate though


30 days wouldn't be bad for me to get a feel for most Daws but for a noob I really think it takes longer than that to be able to really test it out. I wish software developers would understand this. It is the industry standard though so pro tools is not the only one.
Wait. Doesn't protools also need a dongle for the demo?


----------



## robgb

joebaggan said:


> same stubborn fanboy opinion over and over even when the facts contradict it.


LOL. You can't really insult me when I'm right. I've never understood the need to bash someone who knows what he likes and likes what he has. As I said previously, let's just be happy we have a choice. No need to get ugly about it.


----------



## tack

coolbass said:


> If I don't like a DAW, I don't feel the need to post that 100 x on their forum.


This isn't the Reaper forum though. This isn't even a pro-Reaper thread as such. Reaper (and Cubase) bashing seem to be fair game here.

Though admittedly the bashing could be a lot more constructive and useful.


----------



## coolbass

tack said:


> This isn't the Reaper forum though. This isn't even a pro-Reaper thread as such. Reaper (and Cubase) bashing seem to be fair game here.
> 
> Though admittedly the bashing could be a lot more constructive and useful.



Ok.
Seems I was lost in forumland there.


----------



## InLight-Tone

joebaggan said:


> Hmm, ask robgb about that. He seems to post the same stubborn fanboy opinion over and over even when the facts contradict it. Perhaps some of us should instead spend our time learning the basics of how to read and write music.


That's typical for a Reaper fanboy/girl...aggressively praising Reaper whenever ANY DAW is discussed...


----------



## Bender-offender

To get back on topic, when using scripts in Reaper, does it eat up cpu power? And how does it work - is it like Logic where you put a script on each track? Or is there a universal script area-kind-of-thing?

I’m just thinking about what would happen if I had close to two thousand midi tracks.


----------



## tack

Bender-offender said:


> To get back on topic, when using scripts in Reaper, does it eat up cpu power?


Depends on what the script does. Generally a script bound to some action will only use CPU when the action is executed. Some scripts can be long-running and so whether they're heavy on the CPU depends on what problems they're solving and/or how well written they are.



Bender-offender said:


> And how does it work - is it like Logic where you put a script on each track? Or is there a universal script area-kind-of-thing?


Both. Apart from what I mentioned above, you can create scripts that intend to live in the FX chain. These are written using a specialized, high-performance language called JSFX and these tend to be quite CPU efficient.

So to use an example I'm most familiar with, I wrote a tool called Reaticulate which ticks all the above boxes:

Provides a long-running script to present a dockable UI to control articulations and to monitor the currently selected track so that the UI can be updated according to the articulation on the selected track
Provides a series of one-off scripts that can be actions bound to e.g. shortcut keys. These aren't long lived but take some immediate action, like "set articulation to X"
Includes a special plugin that lives in the FX chain on each track whose job it is to translate "set articulation to X" into whatever the VI needs to receive to set X (e.g. note D#2 velocity 64).
All these different capabilities are glued together into what's essentially one product offering.

If you had 2000 tracks, that's fine. Only one instance of the long-running script exists, and I'd like to think it's written well enough not to fall into common performance-killing traps. Although the third type, the FX plugin, would need to live on all 2000 tracks, these perform well enough. But at the end of the day, it does very much depend on the specific script.

But now that you have me wondering, I'll create a project with 2000 tracks and see what happens.


----------



## robgb

InLight-Tone said:


> That's typical for a Reaper fanboy/girl...aggressively praising Reaper whenever ANY DAW is discussed...


I find it interesting this need to insult someone who is enthusiastic about the tools they use. While your statement is false (or a gross exaggeration at the very least), on a psychological level I'm curious to know what upsets you so much about that enthusiasm. How, exactly, does it harm you that someone gets a certain amount of joy out of the DAW they use. And since you have free will, why do you bother reading my posts if that joy upsets you? Why not simply block me?

I'm serious about these questions. I like to know what motivates people, especially when what they post is nothing more than an ad hominem attack.


----------



## robgb

tack said:


> So to use an example I'm most familiar with, I wrote a tool called Reaticulate which ticks all the above boxes:
> 
> Provides a long-running script to present a dockable UI to control articulations and to monitor the currently selected track so that the UI can be updated according to the articulation on the selected track
> Provides a series of one-off scripts that can be actions bound to e.g. shortcut keys. These aren't long lived but take some immediate action, like "set articulation to X"
> Includes a special plugin that lives in the FX chain on each track whose job it is to translate "set articulation to X" into whatever the VI needs to receive to set X (e.g. note D#2 velocity 64).
> All these different capabilities are glued together into what's essentially one product offering.


I would add that it's a brilliant script. I use it daily.


----------



## Bender-offender

tack said:


> Depends on what the script does. Generally a script bound to some action will only use CPU when the action is executed. Some scripts can be long-running and so whether they're heavy on the CPU depends on what problems they're solving and/or how well written they are.
> 
> 
> Both. Apart from what I mentioned above, you can create scripts that intend to live in the FX chain. These are written using a specialized, high-performance language called JSFX and these tend to be quite CPU efficient.
> 
> So to use an example I'm most familiar with, I wrote a tool called Reaticulate which ticks all the above boxes:
> 
> Provides a long-running script to present a dockable UI to control articulations and to monitor the currently selected track so that the UI can be updated according to the articulation on the selected track
> Provides a series of one-off scripts that can be actions bound to e.g. shortcut keys. These aren't long lived but take some immediate action, like "set articulation to X"
> Includes a special plugin that lives in the FX chain on each track whose job it is to translate "set articulation to X" into whatever the VI needs to receive to set X (e.g. note D#2 velocity 64).
> All these different capabilities are glued together into what's essentially one product offering.
> 
> If you had 2000 tracks, that's fine. Only one instance of the long-running script exists, and I'd like to think it's written well enough not to fall into common performance-killing traps. Although the third type, the FX plugin, would need to live on all 2000 tracks, these perform well enough. But at the end of the day, it does very much depend on the specific script.
> 
> But now that you have me wondering, I'll create a project with 2000 tracks and see what happens.



Thank you, Tack for the lengthy reply. 

I watched the videos Storyteller posted in this thread about OTR scripts and it looked very interesting. 

How is Reaper’s efficiency and stability on a Mac? After the Cubase 9.5.30 debacle, I’m getting the feeling Steinberg doesn’t care much for their Mac users. So maybe it’s time to look elsewhere.


----------



## tack

Bender-offender said:


> How is Reaper’s efficiency and stability on a Mac?


I think if this thread has taught us anything it's that you're going to get different replies to this question. 

If nothing else, the effort to take Reaper out for a spin is quite low (small download size, quick install, no dongles or weird licensing hoops for a trial, etc.), so I'd say spend half an hour and see how you get on with it.


----------



## Bender-offender

tack said:


> I think if this thread has taught us anything it's that you're going to get different replies to this question.
> 
> If nothing else, the effort to take Reaper out for a spin is quite low (small download size, quick install, no dongles or weird licensing hoops for a trial, etc.), so I'd say spend half an hour and see how you get on with it.



Great, I’ll try that. Thanks again, tack!


----------



## InLight-Tone

robgb said:


> I find it interesting this need to insult someone who is enthusiastic about the tools they use. While your statement is false (or a gross exaggeration at the very least), on a psychological level I'm curious to know what upsets you so much about that enthusiasm. How, exactly, does it harm you that someone gets a certain amount of joy out of the DAW they use. And since you have free will, why do you bother reading my posts if that joy upsets you? Why not simply block me?
> 
> I'm serious about these questions. I like to know what motivates people, especially when what they post is nothing more than an ad hominem attack.


It's not really an attack, it's more an observation. You can try and paint it as "enthusiasm" but I'm not falling for it. But by all means, enjoy your DAW...


----------



## robgb

InLight-Tone said:


> It's not really an attack, it's more an observation. ... But by all means, enjoy your DAW...


Oh, I do, and will continue to share my enthusiasm for it. It took me a long time to find a DAW I wasn't completely frustrated with after a few months. As I've said several times, if you love your DAW, that's all that counts. Pointing out the pros/advantages of Reaper in no way takes away anything from any other DAW. But let's be honest. Characterizing someone as a "fanboy" is indeed an attack, not just an observation. I don't believe anyone (including myself) has used the term in a flattering way.



InLight-Tone said:


> You can try and paint it as "enthusiasm" but I'm not falling for it.


I'm really not sure what it is you're not falling for. That I'm enthusiastic about Reaper? Are you suggesting I have some other agenda? Perhaps world domination by Reaper fanboys? Do you think I'm a paid shill for Cuckos? If only that were true.


----------



## SBK

robgb said:


> I'm trying to think what bugs you may have encountered. I'm sure there are some. Every piece of software has them. But I can't think of any that would lead you to conclude that Reaper is any "buggier" than any other DAW.



Mostly in really big projects. Sometimes you want to delete something like 50 audio clips and it lags and it deletes them one by one slowly. LOL... I am Reaper user ofcourse and I love it, it just has some buggy stuff.


----------



## Stevie

I'm been a Cubase user since Atari times (you could call me a fan boy) and maybe I can share a bit of my thoughts.
I consider myself a power user. I make extensive use of LE, PLE and macros. Most of them
are chained and when all this fails, I'm using AutoHotkey to complement Cubase.
Over the years, Cubase became worse in so many areas. There does not pass one single day with multiple crashes. There are bugs that haven't been fixed since ages and instead of refining existing features (a REAL macro editor, more functions in LE and PLE, revamped VST expressions), we get tons of new features on every major update, that I personally don't need.
Sure, the MIDI editor is not bad, but far from perfect. Quantize preset management is a mess and hasn't been touched for a decade. Selecting CC curves or single dots with the mouse is a pita!
Drawing curves with the mouse is even worse. The whole experience is flawed and unpleasant.
I'm at the point where I really dislike the MIDI editor in Cubase.

All in all, I felt ready to try Reaper. I gotta add, that I tried Reaper in the past and quickly deleted it again, because I didn't want to invest too much time in learning. My personal experience is: when the transport controls are not assigned to keys that I usually use, my motivation to learn a DAW goes down extremely 

However, before Reaper, I tried Studio One. Which I really liked. But when it came to customization (writing scripts, etc...), I quickly realized that Studio One is the wrong DAW. Ultimately, only Reaper was left and this time I really wanted to invest some decent amount of time to learn it.
And what can I say, most of the functionality I'm used from Cubase, is either there, a script is available or I coded it myself. Most of the time though, there's stuff that is much cooler, as in Cubase. Mouse modifier, contextual menus (think of 10 Cubase toolboxes that you can assign to keyboard shortcuts), the amount of key commands is insane!, macros can be created and edited in no time, SWS extension (a must! Gives you so many new actions and even functions for scripts), Reaticulate (from Tack  ) is far superior to VST expressions (easy to set up and logical), once you get your head around the scripting engine you can code whatever you want (things I could only dream of in Cubase), I can insert my favorite plugins with a single shortcut (Kontakt, Play, Omni, R2, Pro Q, etc...), you can have take FX and track FX (that's heaven for sound designers), you can have audio and MIDI on the same track (great if you record a Hardware synth and want to keep the MIDI for later editing), Julian Sander (his MIDI tools go way beyond Cubase), mpl, cfillion, ED and many more... are invaluable coders of the community and super helpful guys. And that's another great thing: you can be part of the community, you can actively take part by scripting or beta testing and give feedback.
What Steinberg, Apple, Avid and Presonus will never be able to achieve: the coders have direct contact to the user base. This is absolutely outstanding. It's not like you have to wait 6-12 months for a new version of your DAW (Cubase for example) and you can't get involved in the process. The Reaper community is completely interactive. And I could go on... but will close this for now.

As always, your mileage may vary, but for me, Reaper is exactly the DAW that fits my needs.
In the past, I was happy with Cubase. But times are changing...


----------



## Zoot_Rollo

robgb said:


> I would add that it's a brilliant script. I use it daily.



wow, that looks really good.

i'll have to give that a try instead of dicking with Cubase Expression Maps.

especially since i own Reaper already.

thanks!


----------



## meradium

I have tried multiple times to move away from Cubase since I got really sick of some of its annoying bugs, especially in the macro and LE department. 

But unfortunately so far I was always drawn back in simply because I got so used to how things work inside it. 

The main drawback for me in Reaper was the fact that it felt a little bit like the JavaScript ecosystem where everything is theoretically possible but it takes ages and loads of searching and reading to find the right packages for the right job, each with their very own philosophy of how to do things.

It would be cool to have a slightly more streamlined package to start with in the first place.


----------



## meradium

Oh, and I was really missing something similar to Cubase's Chord Track


----------



## gregh

meradium said:


> I have tried multiple times to move away from Cubase since I got really sick of some of its annoying bugs, especially in the macro and LE department.
> 
> But unfortunately so far I was always drawn back in simply because I got so used to how things work inside it.
> 
> The main drawback for me in Reaper was the fact that it felt a little bit like the JavaScript ecosystem where everything is theoretically possible but it takes ages and loads of searching and reading to find the right packages for the right job, each with their very own philosophy of how to do things.
> 
> It would be cool to have a slightly more streamlined package to start with in the first place.


I would not change to Reaper without a great reason - but I would not change away without a good reason also - as you say, there is so much time invested in one's existing systems that learning a new system has to have some fairly clear and significant personal advantages.

The out of the box Reaper ie Reaper itself without other people's (unpaid) work added on - is quite streamlined. As far as installing packages for actions etc - that is easily handled and maintained using Reapack and SWS extensions. It sounds like it would be difficult but it isn't. Those two add-ons will cover most everything.

As far as trying to find the right actions - yeah that can be a drag at times as there is no obvious and consistent system of keywords. But once you get used to searching in the actions system and on the net then most times you can get what you want in a few minutes. In fact I would recommend using and throwing away actions all the time - treating them as a temp scripting base rather than something that has to be kept and cherished by making in to a multple toolbar. Over a bit of time you will find you get quicker at finding the action you want and those you use all the time can be made in to a toolbar button or a keystroke. The thing is is to make using actions something that is casual rather than a big deal


----------



## Zoot_Rollo

How does Reaper compare with VI/VST CPU usage?


----------



## lucor

Zoot_Rollo said:


> How does Reaper compare with VI/VST CPU usage?


In terms of efficiency nothing comes even remotely close to Reaper.


----------



## Rasmus Hartvig

It is very efficient with respect to CPU usage. For at technical explanation check out this post.


----------



## Zoot_Rollo

For some upcoming projects and until i get a new PC, Reaper may be the answer.

Currently using S1 3.5.6 and VEP6.

It can get a little maddening.


----------



## C.R. Rivera

Zoot_Rollo said:


> For some upcoming projects and until i get a new PC, Reaper may be the answer.
> It can get a little maddening.



Apropos of nothing, does your middle name start with H?  A little Captain Beefheart humor in my a.m.


----------



## Zoot_Rollo

C.R. Rivera said:


> Apropos of nothing, does your middle name start with H?  A little Captain Beefheart humor in my a.m.



Only when i'm feeling Horny.

I do like a bit of Winged Eel Fingerling with my Dada Coffee in the morning.

It's the Blimp!


----------



## Zoot_Rollo

Reaper tracks are like stem cells.


----------



## robgb

meradium said:


> The main drawback for me in Reaper was the fact that it felt a little bit like the JavaScript ecosystem where everything is theoretically possible but it takes ages and loads of searching and reading to find the right packages for the right job, each with their very own philosophy of how to do things.
> 
> It would be cool to have a slightly more streamlined package to start with in the first place.


I will agree that if you really want to bend Reaper to your will, it takes time and effort. But the out of the box experience (as long as you've read the manual or watched tutorials) is just fine.


----------



## Zoot_Rollo

robgb said:


> I will agree that if you really want to bend Reaper to your will, it takes time and effort. But the out of the box experience (as long as you've read the manual or watched tutorials) is just fine.



watching the videos is an absolute must.

going through them again now.

pretty slick program.

-

relocating the Folder tracks is fantastic! something i wish you could do with the Busses in Studio One.

insanely flexible routing.

-

update, spent some time with Reaper tonight.

wow, i threw some tracks at it that makes S1 stutter like mad and not a click.

inspiring.


----------



## robgb

Zoot_Rollo said:


> watching the videos is an absolute must.
> 
> going through them again now.
> 
> pretty slick program.
> 
> -
> 
> relocating the Folder tracks is fantastic! something i wish you could do with the Busses in Studio One.
> 
> insanely flexible routing.
> 
> -
> 
> update, spent some time with Reaper tonight.
> 
> wow, i threw some tracks at it that makes S1 stutter like mad and not a click.
> 
> inspiring.


I'm a Studio One refugee myself.


----------



## Zoot_Rollo

robgb said:


> I'm a Studio One refugee myself.



i like Studio One - everyone talks about how lovely its workflow is.

and it is.

but when i have to second guess myself every time i want to add another VI instance, my creative workflow suffers.

and f*%k constantly rendering/printing/stemming to alleviate CPU - screw that.

with Reaper (so far), it gets out of your way; LEAN!!!

it may not be the prettiest of DAWs,

but, as "they" say,

Once you get passed the smell...

big test this weekend. if it fails, i'm going back to ADAT.

-

i'm running the Cubase 9.5 demo too, so far - ehhh, not so much.

loving the idea of Reaticulate, still trying to wrap my head around how to install these "extras" and how to assign switches.

i've been to his site, but one bite at a time.

i know this is Off Topic, but if anyone knows a great quick start for REAPACK and REATICULATE, i will be forever grateful.


----------



## meradium

I gave it another spin today. But as two other users pointed out Reaper currently has difficulties dealing with lots of idle/unused tracks.

This is a deal breaker for me with my VEP template.

So sad. I started to get the hang of it... 

Guess I will have to revisit it some time later.


----------



## Zoot_Rollo

meradium said:


> I gave it another spin today. But as two other users pointed out Reaper currently has difficulties dealing with lots of idle/unused tracks.
> 
> This is a deal breaker for me with my VEP template.
> 
> So sad. I started to get the hang of it...
> 
> Guess I will have to revisit it some time later.



this would be a concern for me as well.

i'll do some digging - if you have links to discussions about this, i'd appreciate the pointers.

this?

https://vi-control.net/community/threads/reaper-–-inexplicable-cpu-load-on-a-blank-template.62330/

looks like this may not be an issue for me.

as usual, it's ALWAYS a compromise with ANY software.

i am still seeing Reaper as the cleanest alternative for me at this point.


----------



## Regulus

Zoot_Rollo said:


> i like Studio One - everyone cant talks about how lovely its workflow is.


Yeah, it sure is. But to some degree before userfriendlyness becomes a restriction. I was checking version 4 out of curiosity not so long ago, and while some stuff is indeed a pleasant experience in comparison to other daws, it was a really short period of time till it started to bug me (Can't assign keyboard shortcuts to this, can't do that, etc.).
Reaper spoilt me lol.
Did some quick CPU performance tests and it seems that it's still the same (3.5'ish), which is a shame. Could squeeze a lot more into Reaper before it started choking.
Should mention that i'm a Studio One refugee myself.


Zoot_Rollo said:


> it may not be the prettiest of DAWs,


People bring this topic up more then it deserves tbh.
Made myself a custom theme that i can enjoy, so it looks like this for me:
Still WIP tho, but you get the idea (need to add custom icons to match the whole style, etc.).


Spoiler: Reaper












Yes there are some unskinnable elements (some menus/windows), but they don't bother me that much (especially knowing the reason why it was made that way).


----------



## Zoot_Rollo

Regulus said:


> Yeah, it sure is. But to some degree before userfriendlyness becomes a restriction. I was checking version 4 out of curiosity not so long ago, and while some stuff is indeed a pleasant experience in comparison to other daws, it was a really short period of time till it started to bug me (Can't assign keyboard shortcuts to this, can't do that, etc.).
> Reaper spoilt me lol.
> Did some quick CPU performance tests and it seems that it's still the same (3.5'ish), which is a shame. Could squeeze a lot more into Reaper before it started choking.
> Should mention that i'm a Studio One refugee myself.
> 
> People bring this topic up more then it deserves tbh.
> Made myself a custom theme that i can enjoy, so it looks like this for me:
> Still WIP tho, but you get the idea (need to add custom icons to match the whole style, etc.).
> 
> 
> Spoiler: Reaper
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes there are some unskinnable elements (some menus/windows), but they don't bother me that much (especially knowing the reason why it was made that way).




very nice.

i actually like the stock Reaper look - a lot!

and the way it handles VEP and Kontakt is simply enjoyable.

i'm not a HUGE template guy, but i like my Amplitube 4 instances for guitar and bass.
A4 CHEWS CPU in Studio One.


----------



## storyteller

meradium said:


> I gave it another spin today. But as two other users pointed out Reaper currently has difficulties dealing with lots of idle/unused tracks.
> 
> This is a deal breaker for me with my VEP template.
> 
> So sad. I started to get the hang of it...
> 
> Guess I will have to revisit it some time later.


The mute button fully offloads a track from all CPU cycles. It won't unload ram on a VST, but it will remove 100% of CPU overhead.


----------



## Zoot_Rollo

storyteller said:


> The mute button fully offloads a track from all CPU cycles. It won't unload ram on a VST, but it will remove 100% of CPU overhead.



excellent!

thank you.


----------



## meradium

Hmmm. Maybe more testing required. But from what I read on the Reaper forum this appears to be only half the story unfortunately...

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=207256

So far I can confirm the observations in my own tests.


----------



## Zoot_Rollo

meradium said:


> Hmmm. Maybe more testing required. But from what I read on the Reaper forum this appears to be only half the story unfortunately...
> 
> https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=207256
> 
> So far I can confirm the observations in my own tests.



great thread. knowing the community, i bet issues like this get handled faster than Steinberg or Presonus.

fortunately, i will never come close to that high of a track count.

so far, Reaper is ahead of the pack for me.


----------



## robgb

Zoot_Rollo said:


> it may not be the prettiest of DAWs,


Not out of the box, that's for sure. Fortunately, there are several themes that are quite beautiful.


----------



## robgb

meradium said:


> Hmmm. Maybe more testing required. But from what I read on the Reaper forum this appears to be only half the story unfortunately...
> 
> https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=207256
> 
> So far I can confirm the observations in my own tests.


I'm curious why anyone would test using 4,000 tracks.
If mute isn't working well enough for you, what you can easily do is DISABLE a track if you need to. I have a button on my toolbar -- ENABLE/DISABLE TRACK. When a track is disabled, everything goes dark and CPU usage drops.


----------



## Zoot_Rollo

robgb said:


> Not out of the box, that's for sure. Fortunately, there are several themes that are quite beautiful.



i'm seeing that. i later commented i really like the stock look of Reaper.

i didn't think i'd be interested in changing the these.

but wow, there are some amazing ones available.

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/variations-theme


----------



## Zoot_Rollo

http://www.houseofwhitetie.com/reaper/imperial/wt_imperial.html

nice


----------



## storyteller

meradium said:


> Hmmm. Maybe more testing required. But from what I read on the Reaper forum this appears to be only half the story unfortunately...
> 
> https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=207256
> 
> So far I can confirm the observations in my own tests.


I chimed in on the cockos board a few minutes ago, but 4000 blank tracks should not kill a CPU so hopefully that is a bug that can be fixed for you or possibly some tinkering in the preferences is needed. I just now did a fresh install of Reaper 5.9 and loaded up 4000 tracks on my *non-audio* 13" 2017 MacBook Pro Touchbar (i5 dual core) and had only about 35% load at both idle and playback. I did not tinker with the settings as I did when creating OTR to optimize it further. This was just a stock install, internal sound card, 48k, 512 buffer.


----------



## EvilDragon

If you just used 4000 straight tracks without any routing that's not painting the whole picture. If there are lots of sends going on, they are adding to CPU load (because, to my understanding, you cannot process sends in parallel via anticipative processing, that means the track that is sending and ALL ITS RECEIVES get the same thread, which increases CPU usage. Especially if there's heavy plugins on all the receives!)


----------



## Tod

Out of curiosity, is there any DAW that can handle a 4,000 track template better then Reaper. I'm assuming there is or we wouldn't be having this conversation.


----------



## d.healey

Tod said:


> Out of curiosity, is there any DAW that can handle a 4,000 track template better then Reaper. I'm assuming there is or we wouldn't be having this conversation.


My mind can't handle a 4000 track template.


----------



## Zoot_Rollo

after a few days back at Reaper after several years, i have a few templates built up.

no where near 4,000 tracks, but Kontakt, VSL, Amplitube 4, Superior Drummer 3, Hive, etc...

love the simplicity and neatness. took a little bit to get my head wrapped around it again, but not bad.

looking forward to getting deeper with it. 

but as it stands, it's project ready!


----------



## DS_Joost

Tod said:


> Out of curiosity, is there any DAW that can handle a 4,000 track template better then Reaper. I'm assuming there is or we wouldn't be having this conversation.



Depending on your setup, Cubase. Say what you will about the program, but you can sure push it harder than any DAW out there (except maybe for Reaper). You don't need a top of the line pc for this with cubase. This is coming from a studio one user.


----------



## AlexRuger

Yes, in my experience Cubase can handle nearly unlimited tracks.


----------



## vicontrolu

Just did the 4K track test here. Win10 i7 5930 @3.5Ghz 32GB RAM. I didnt feel like Cubase could handle 4K tracks properly so i reduced it to 1K


Reaper empty = 0% (wtf!)
Reaper 4K tracks = 49% idle and playing (task manager)
Reaper loading time = 24 secs

Cubase9 empty = 1.2%
Cubase9 1K Instrument tracks = 22% idle, 28% playing
Cubase9 loading time = around 2 minutes


Now if i disabled all the Cubase tracks it went down to 1.6%. If i muted all the tracks and did the SWS Toggle all FX online/offline in Reaper, it didnt make any difference. I am new to Reaper though, not sure if there´s anything else i can do to disable the tracks.

Another big difference is RAM: Cubase took 2,3GB with 1K Instrument tracks (1,6GB with tracks disabled) whereas Reaper took only 338MB with 4K.


So yeah, i think Cubase wins the disabled contest here, at least regarding CPU.


----------



## EvilDragon

That's just initial figures, though. I bet Cubase would croak sooner than Reaper once you start actually putting stuff on the tracks. Reaper is created with better scalability in mind as far as CPU usage (anticipative processing), so idle load will be higher than most if not all other DAWs. However once you start adding stuff to the project, CPU doesn't increase as much as it would in other DAWs.

Also your comparison where Cubase has 4x less tracks isn't really a comparison at all - of course it'd take less CPU with 4x less tracks! Why not have it tested in some middle ground, like give 2k tracks to both. Or 3k tracks to both. Then see which one croaks first. Or if you reduced to 1k for Cubase, you should've had 1k in Reaper too.


----------



## vicontrolu

Agree, but the issue here is with disabled tracks on huge orchestral templates. Disabling tracks in Cubase seems to be more effective than in Reaper, and that is a fact.

Anyway 4K is really high count number. I think most of VI orchestral composers wont reach that far, so probably Reaper still performs better than Cubase in most circunstances.


----------



## Zoot_Rollo

newbie question,

is VEP 6 still the go-to for VI instruments in Reaper?

Is it as efficient (CPU and RAM) to just add and group Vienna Instruments directly into Reaper, avoiding VEP?

With VEP 6, how do users deal with the added latency?


----------



## SBK

In Reaper the RT Cpu is the one to see, not the Total CPU


----------



## tack

It may be worth pointing out that there's no intrinsic "track disabled" state in Reaper as such. It's done through a series of actions on a track. You can drop this script in (needs SWS) and bind it to a key to toggle track disabling in a way that's maximally CPU efficient.

FWIW, for me, Reaper shits the bed on 4000 empty tracks (i.e. crashes). Even with a fresh profile. But nobody else seems to be complaining about that, so take it with a grain of salt. However like David, the idea of a 4000 track template is mind-breaking for me, so this problem isn't one for me in practice.


----------



## vicontrolu

Great script Tack. This is possibly one that could be massively used. Any chance to include it in Reapack?


----------



## meradium

In my case I am relying on a slave computer which is delivering all my sounds. I use my master only for mixing and arranging, and to load some additional stuff that my slave (thanks to Orchestral Tools's RAM hungry libraries - sorry) cannot handle anymore.

This boils down to an endless list of MIDI-only channels and only a few incoming audio channels which get created by the VEP plugin instances.

Having said that the processing on those empty MIDI tracks should be close to zero if there is no data one them, right? Ok, maybe a very little amount to make sense of it all, but not something as high as we can observe.

In Reaper this is clearly not the case. My assumption without knowing too much about its internals is that this is strongly related to its "one-track-fits-all" approach... Could that be?


----------



## EvilDragon

meradium said:


> In Reaper this is clearly not the case. My assumption without knowing too much about its internals is that this is strongly related to its "one-track-fits-all" approach... Could that be?



Nope, I don't think it has anything to do with one-track-fits-all approach. It's more about how Reaper is coded for CPU scalability rather than anything else. Everything is always processed to some extent, so when you drop new stuff in, you can even do it during playback and it won't glitch out. So you can even do editing on media and drop new media in during playback, things will stay tight. Many other DAWs just fall apart (or plain disallow) this.


----------



## meradium

EvilDragon said:


> Nope, I don't think it has anything to do with one-track-fits-all approach. It's more about how Reaper is coded for CPU scalability rather than anything else. Everything is always processed to some extent, so when you drop new stuff in, you can even do it during playback and it won't glitch out. So you can even do editing on media and drop new media in during playback, things will stay tight. Many other DAWs just fall appart (or plain disallow) this.



I see... what do you need this for? Except maybe in a live setting?


----------



## hsindermann

tack said:


> It may be worth pointing out that there's no intrinsic "track disabled" state in Reaper as such. It's done through a series of actions on a track. You can drop this script in (needs SWS) and bind it to a key to toggle track disabling in a way that's maximally CPU efficient.
> 
> FWIW, for me, Reaper shits the bed on 4000 empty tracks (i.e. crashes). Even with a fresh profile. But nobody else seems to be complaining about that, so take it with a grain of salt. However like David, the idea of a 4000 track template is mind-breaking for me, so this problem isn't one for me in practice.



I'm not sure where I got this from, but what I use as action for disabling a track is a custom action, consisting of these two actions:

SWS: Bypass FX on selected track(s)
Track: Set all FX offline for selected tracks

Works like a charm.


----------



## tack

hsindermann said:


> Works like a charm.


In terms of CPU efficiency, another important part of the recipe is to mute the track. There are other benefits to the script I shared. Notably that it will also lock/unlock the track to give a nice visual indication as to whether the track is disabled, and there is also a workaround with what looks to be an intermittent Reaper bug when onlining FX on a track that has automatic record arming on selection.

So it gets sophisticated enough beyond what a simple SWS cycle action can do.



vicontrolu said:


> Any chance to include it in Reapack?


Yes, not a bad idea.


----------



## hsindermann

I'll give it a try then!


----------



## meradium

@tack: Have you in the meantime successfully moved to Reaper now?


----------



## hsindermann

Just tried your Disabling script with my orchestral template. I've got around 65 disabled tracks in my template. It seems strange, but if it changed anything then I'm now having a higher CPU load than before using the old way. Not sure why that is. It's kinda hard to say though, as the load level fluctuates constantly by 10-15%. The lowest though I got with the old way is 24% load, with your script lowest is around 29%. Strange as yours indeed should lower the load.


----------



## tack

meradium said:


> @tack: Have you in the meantime successfully moved to Reaper now?


I've always been on Reaper, save for a brief flirtation with Cubase about 15 years ago.  But my needs are fairly modest. A ~200 track orchestral template with tracks disabled until needed works nicely for me.



hsindermann said:


> The lowest though I got with the old way is 24% load, with your script lowest is around 29%. Strange as yours indeed should lower the load.


The core recipe of my script is just the 2 things you mentioned (offline FX, bypass FX) plus muting and locking track controls. The other logic bits are applicable only during the execution of the short-lived script.

It's hard to imagine those things would _increase_ CPU utilization. One thing to add is that in order to benefit from the track muting, you need to ensure the "Do not process muted tracks" option is enabled.


----------



## hsindermann

tack said:


> The core recipe of my script is just the 2 things you mentioned (offline FX, bypass FX) plus muting and locking track controls. The other logic bits are applicable only during the execution of the short-lived script.
> 
> It's hard to imagine those things would _increase_ CPU utilization. One thing to add is that in order to benefit from the track muting, you need to ensure the "Do not process muted tracks" option is enabled.



Yes sir, that's enabled. Maybe in the end it's just measuring inconsistencies due to the constant load up and down, but at least the muting doesn't seem to lower the load.


----------



## tack

hsindermann said:


> Maybe in the end it's just measuring inconsistencies due to the constant load up and down, but at least the muting doesn't seem to lower the load.


It does depend a lot on how the routing is set up. But muting tracks shouldn't cause any increases in load. So I'm not sure about your measurements.

Related: https://vi-control.net/community/th...-load-on-a-blank-template.62330/#post-4092982


----------



## storyteller

Another thing I’ve noticed is that loading a saved Track Template that is pre-disabled will almost always result in lower ram usage than loading the track then disabling it. And also, frequent enabling/disabling can cause ram fluctuations. Not much mind you, but the fluctuations exist which tells me there is a small ram leak somewhere still that has yet to be fixed.


----------



## EvilDragon

That might be related to this option:

Preferences->Plugins->VST->[x] Allow complete unload of VST plugins (reduces memory use, but _may not be compatible_)


Not exactly sure it's a memory leak, it could simply be some differences in how memory is allocated in chunks of particular sizes. Or something.


----------



## robgb

So has the OP's question been answered?


----------



## Stevie

tack said:


> In terms of CPU efficiency, another important part of the recipe is to mute the track. There are other benefits to the script I shared. Notably that it will also lock/unlock the track to give a nice visual indication as to whether the track is disabled, and there is also a workaround with what looks to be an intermittent Reaper bug when onlining FX on a track that has automatic record arming on selection.
> 
> So it gets sophisticated enough beyond what a simple SWS cycle action can do.
> 
> Yes, not a bad idea.


A thought here: would it make a difference to also mute the sends of deactivated tracks?


----------



## EvilDragon

That might help additionally, indeed.


----------



## tack

Stevie said:


> A thought here: would it make a difference to also mute the sends of deactivated tracks?


It can't hurt but when I tested it it didn't help all that much. The reason I didn't include it in my script is that sometimes you actually want a send muted even when the track is enabled, but a naive mute/unmute sends would force them all back on when you enable the track. The script would need to be cleverer to remember the prior state of the send before disabling the track. Since I didn't see any compelling cpu benefit I didn't bother with the complexity.

But if you have a project where muting sends makes a big difference I'd be interested to know.


----------



## Stevie

Ahh good point! I will investigate, if it makes a huge difference.


----------



## peksi

I am seriously considering a switch from malfunctioning Cubase to Reaper. I long for stability.

I saw someone mention that Midi CC in Reaper is lacking / very bad but when I look at the demos I see it well supported if not better than Cubase. What excactly in Midi composing / Midi CC is lacking in Reaper when compared to Cubase?

This one looks very good to me:


----------



## calebfaith

peksi said:


> I am seriously considering a switch from malfunctioning Cubase to Reaper. I long for stability.
> 
> I saw someone mention that Midi CC in Reaper is lacking / very bad but when I look at the demos I see it well supported if not better than Cubase. What excactly in Midi composing / Midi CC is lacking in Reaper when compared to Cubase?
> 
> This one looks very good to me:




Thanks for linking my video haha 
Let me know if you have any more questions?

I don't find Reapers MIDI functionality limiting at all. You can find a lot of scripts to help extend functionality as well. (I can't remember what the best one is off the top of my head sorry)


----------



## peksi

Nice to see you here  My composing is mostly of Midi and thats why I am interested in that side of the story. Does reaper have any arpeggio scrips / plugins?


----------



## SchnookyPants

Not that there aren't a lot of helpful and knowledgeable forum members here, but you may get faster answers and/or additional information over on the REAPER forums:

https://forum.cockos.com/forumdisplay.php?f=20


----------



## gregh

peksi said:


> Nice to see you here  My composing is mostly of Midi and thats why I am interested in that side of the story. Does reaper have any arpeggio scrips / plugins?


yep  - also the free randarp from codeFN42, or bluearp are worth using too


----------



## novicecomposer

NYC Composer said:


> Why the heck should I invest months in learning another sequencer


Because you can free yourself from Steinberg's slow upgrade cycle, high price tags, usb dongle, and shitty customer service.


----------



## NYC Composer

novicecomposer said:


> Because you can free yourself from Steinberg's slow upgrade cycle, high price tags, usb dongle, and shitty customer service.


I take your point, but as I’ve been semi-happily producing music on Cubase 6.02 since 2011, I cant say I’m caught up in an upgrade cycle of any sort


----------



## silentunion

A new Reaper user here except I came over from FL Studio (but I would argue FL Studio's just as good as Cubase for MIDI and not so good for routing so it's probably a similar change in some respects).

At first I had a ton of issues with the MIDI in Reaper but, through changing the editor, I was able to actually get it very similar to FL. I'm sure the same can be done for making Reaper feel like Cubase.

It takes a bit, but I think it's possible to make Reaper into pretty much what you want, which means you can make it more efficient for YOU than any other DAW out there IF you are willing to put in the work.  It's about the long term gains and not the short term imo.


----------



## DS_Joost

silentunion said:


> A new Reaper user here except I came over from FL Studio (but I would argue FL Studio's just as good as Cubase for MIDI and not so good for routing so it's probably a similar change in some respects).
> 
> At first I had a ton of issues with the MIDI in Reaper but, through changing the editor, I was able to actually get it very similar to FL. I'm sure the same can be done for making Reaper feel like Cubase.
> 
> It takes a bit, but I think it's possible to make Reaper into pretty much what you want, which means you can make it more efficient for YOU than any other DAW out there IF you are willing to put in the work.  It's about the long term gains and not the short term imo.



That is until you find workflows in other DAWs that are simply not possible in Reaper, workflows which can be approximated but it feels like trying to hammer in a tiny nail with a sledgehammer. One example is transforming CCs or automation in Studio One or Cubase for example.

Yes, you have juliansader's scripts for that in Reaper. Except they only work on CCs, not on automation. Yes, you can do that with automation, but the workflow is different, and frankly way more difficult. Can I compress automation in Reaper? Yup, but you need to change the automation to an automation item, then go into a menu (or map it to a button), then change the amplitude value with a slider.

That's three steps instead of two by selecting and pressing T (which is how I have set it up in Studio One). Biggie, you'd say, three instead of two. But when that is the number one thing you do almost every time, it becomes worse. Instead of two actions, of which one is a simple keystroke that you have to remember for both automation and CCs, you have to remember three for automation alone. Even worse, I can't have the same workflow with CCs. You have to download all kinds of different scripts for different operations. Have to map them to different keystrokes (I have used five of those scripts, so that's five (!) different buttons for what is one in the other DAWs). I have to remember the difference between automation and CCs. I have to remember that I can't force my mouse outside of the CC lane, because that terminates the script (though he is working on it). I have to remember to update the scripts. I have to remember two completely different workflows for what should've been consistent in between the two.

That's when you start to think, is this DAW helping me, or am I trying to force myself to work against the rules of the DAW? I truly appreciate juliansader's work, but they try to patch something that I believe the DAW should have natively, and implemented consistently.

No DAW is perfect, but that's what stopped me from using Reaper. Not possibilities, but inconsistency. I vowed to only take a look at it again when they implement a similar system the the described above. Consistent across the board. Which is what most DAWs do. For an action so basic and so used, it should be as easy as it can get. Studio One is my benchmark for this, Cubase is second.


----------



## silentunion

DS_Joost said:


> That is until you find workflows in other DAWs that are simply not possible in Reaper, workflows which can be approximated but it feels like trying to hammer in a tiny nail with a sledgehammer. One example is transforming CCs or automation in Studio One or Cubase for example.
> 
> Yes, you have juliansader's scripts for that in Reaper. Except they only work on CCs, not on automation. Yes, you can do that with automation, but the workflow is different, and frankly way more difficult. Can I compress automation in Reaper? Yup, but you need to change the automation to an automation item, then go into a menu (or map it to a button), then change the amplitude value with a slider.
> 
> That's three steps instead of two by selecting and pressing T (which is how I have set it up in Studio One). Biggie, you'd say, three instead of two. But when that is the number one thing you do almost every time, it becomes worse. Instead of two actions, of which one is a simple keystroke that you have to remember for both automation and CCs, you have to remember three for automation alone. Even worse, I can't have the same workflow with CCs. You have to download all kinds of different scripts for different operations. Have to map them to different keystrokes (I have used five of those scripts, so that's five (!) different buttons for what is one in the other DAWs). I have to remember the difference between automation and CCs. I have to remember that I can't force my mouse outside of the CC lane, because that terminates the script (though he is working on it). I have to remember to update the scripts. I have to remember two completely different workflows for what should've been consistent in between the two.
> 
> That's when you start to think, is this DAW helping me, or am I trying to force myself to work against the rules of the DAW? I truly appreciate juliansader's work, but they try to patch something that I believe the DAW should have natively, and implemented consistently.
> 
> No DAW is perfect, but that's what stopped me from using Reaper. Not possibilities, but inconsistency. I vowed to only take a look at it again when they implement a similar system the the described above. Consistent across the board. Which is what most DAWs do. For an action so basic and so used, it should be as easy as it can get. Studio One is my benchmark for this, Cubase is second.



I've found there are things I can do in Reaper that I can't do in other DAWs as well though. Personally, I haven't worked a lot with automations in Reaper yet so I don't really know enough to comment on that part.

That being said, what I will say is I don't feel it's about finding the perfect DAW. It's not going to be out there, as it is with software in many different fields and not just with music. I look at what is providing me with the most efficiency rather than the perfect efficiency; therefore, it's okay for some things like automation aren't perfect. If I can set things up so that it's faster than the base model then great. That being said, I didn't use a whole bunch of automation in FL. I used some, but I wasn't crazy like some other people that I've seen. FL is terrible for audio though so Reaper's a welcome change with vocals for me.

So, I think if you're asking the question of "is this DAW helping me" because of one area, which is how I'm interpreting what you are saying at least, I think perhaps it's putting a lot of weight on just one aspect rather than looking at the picture as a whole. At the end of the day to each their own, but I would think, based on your argument, that the flexibility of Reaper would make it king as the other DAWs are going to have more limitations than Reaper altogether. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting though?


----------



## Consona

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=176878


----------



## Xaviez

Consona said:


> https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=176878


As good as these scripts are, and they are pretty awesome, they can do things you won't find in other DAWs, they are still rather fiddly and inconvenient to use compared to the basic features found in Cubase and Studio One.
You have to spend some time getting used to them, but even if you do they are a far cry from being as easy to use.


----------



## EvilDragon

I value "can do things you won't find in other DAWs" way more than "convenience of using basic features found in other DAWs".


----------



## DS_Joost

silentunion said:


> I've found there are things I can do in Reaper that I can't do in other DAWs as well though. Personally, I haven't worked a lot with automations in Reaper yet so I don't really know enough to comment on that part.
> 
> That being said, what I will say is I don't feel it's about finding the perfect DAW. It's not going to be out there, as it is with software in many different fields and not just with music. I look at what is providing me with the most efficiency rather than the perfect efficiency; therefore, it's okay for some things like automation aren't perfect. If I can set things up so that it's faster than the base model then great. That being said, I didn't use a whole bunch of automation in FL. I used some, but I wasn't crazy like some other people that I've seen. FL is terrible for audio though so Reaper's a welcome change with vocals for me.
> 
> So, I think if you're asking the question of "is this DAW helping me" because of one area, which is how I'm interpreting what you are saying at least, I think perhaps it's putting a lot of weight on just one aspect rather than looking at the picture as a whole. At the end of the day to each their own, but I would think, based on your argument, that the flexibility of Reaper would make it king as the other DAWs are going to have more limitations than Reaper altogether. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting though?



Thing is, it all comes down to preference. However, I have looked hard at my own workflow. Sure, there are things I can do in Reaper pretty much faster than everywhere else. But for me, I found, that's the wrong way to look at things. My question is, out of all these advanced features, which ones do I ACTUALLY use? I came to the conclusion that I used almost none. My workflow isn't that difficult; instrument track, record, bang in some notes and automation, and voila. Rinse and repeat. Throw a little mixing in along the way as I go. Get a scene, look at said scene, get some instruments, and start playing. Most times unorganized, but that's where my best ideas come from. As I am a pretty good piano player after years of practice, I find I mostly don't even use input quantize because it only destroys the feel I went for (what with sample libraries and instruments having different attack times and such). What does that leave when editing midi? Mostly some transposing stuff to try out different things, and some automation smoothing. That's it.

I found that in that case, a simple, well organized workflow can do wonders. Reaper hasn't got an organized workflow (it doesn't pretend to have one, so can't blame it for that) it expects you to create one. I, however, cannot create a faster workflow than I already have in Studio One in Reaper, because for all it's advanced features, it doesn't have something so basic to me. And that's where my problem with Reaper lies. Everytime I get close, there's always this nagging thing it just can't do. These are mostly tiny things, but a lot of tiny things add up. Especially if they are tiny things where they actually matter to me. I want to use Reaper for it's more advanced features, for it's freedom of workflow. Heck, because I like Justin's vision and I truly stand by it.

However, what worth are advanced features when the most basic of workflows isn't represented as a whole? When I have to implement workarounds (and not very elegant ones at that) for my most basic of workflows? These things simply keep me from enjoying the better things in Reaper. Reaper can adapt to my workflow, yes, but only to a certain level. And the most basic of levels is where, for me, it matters the most. So, is the grass greener? Perhaps, one day for me. But not yet.

What I want to say is, before you get persuaded to spend weeks or even months learning the program, check if you can actually better the basic workflow you already have. Advanced features come later, as are features that other DAWs cannot do.


----------



## robgb

DS_Joost said:


> Yup, but you need to change the automation to an automation item, then go into a menu (or map it to a button), then change the amplitude value with a slider.


I'm pretty sure you can create an action to do all of these things by pressing T in Reaper as well.


Xaviez said:


> You have to spend some time getting used to them, but even if you do they are a far cry from being as easy to use.


Someone needs to define "easy." Because I have no problem using them at all.


EvilDragon said:


> I value "can do things you won't find in other DAWs" way more than "convenience of using basic features found in other DAWs".


Amen.


DS_Joost said:


> When I have to implement workarounds (and not very elegant ones at that) for my most basic of workflows?


Workarounds to what? They aren't workarounds, they are simply the way Reaper works. And the price of endless customizability is that you sometimes have to work a little harder to set your DAW up. At least Reaper gives you the ability to do that. But it also works FINE right out of the box. With most other DAWs it's my way or the highway. And I don't think Reaper should be penalized because it doesn't—right out of the box—conform to another DAWs workflow. The fact that it CAN conform at all, with some work, makes it pretty invaluable.


DS_Joost said:


> before you get persuaded to spend weeks or even months learning the program


Learning to program? Really? All you have to do is learn how to create your own custom macros—something that can be learned in about two minutes flat. That's hardly programming. It's a matter of choosing the actions you want, dragging them over to a custom action screen, saving them to a new action and assigning a key stroke or a toolbar or a menu.

I get that people want an easy solution out of the box—and Reaper will give you that—but to complain that Reaper can't give you that Cubase or Studio One experience without having to work a little for it is just silliness. There's the old meme "there's an app for that." With Reaper, if you want something done, "there's a script for that."


----------



## Xaviez

EvilDragon said:


> I value "can do things you won't find in other DAWs" way more than "convenience of using basic features found in other DAWs".


While I agree, and I too use Reaper for this reason, that doesn't mean these are issues not worth mentioning. To someone who is spending a lot of time tweaking CC in their DAW, this can actually be a make or break feature. 

And even though Robgb is wearing his shining white armor and defending Reaper valiantly by saying "it's not an issue for me, so the problem must be you", that actually doesn't change the fact that for some, the scripts just are too fiddly and tedious for some to use on a daily basis.
Noone's attacking your choice of DAW Rob, and if you want to see the "definition of easy" vs julians scripts, re-read some of the previous posts in here because they very clearly explained it.

Personally, I make do with them, I moved from Cubase to Reaper knowing I was giving up some things but I sincerely hope Cockos will do something about the CC editing capabilities in Reaper sooner rather than later (though I'm not holding my breath as it has been requested for years).

@DS_Joost I know what you mean regarding workflow, I had the same with Studio One, I could not get past it's UI and the fact that it can't handle multiple MIDI channels per track, so even though I loved many things about S1 at the end of the day it's workflow didn't fit me. I had an easier time making Reaper work according to my workflow than I had changing my concept of workflow to fit S1.


----------



## DS_Joost

robgb said:


> I'm pretty sure you can create an action to do all of these things by pressing T in Reaper as well.
> 
> Someone needs to define "easy." Because I have no problem using them at all.
> 
> Amen.
> 
> Workarounds to what? They aren't workarounds, they are simply the way Reaper works. And the price of endless customizability is that you sometimes have to work a little harder to set your DAW up. At least Reaper gives you the ability to do that. But it also works FINE right out of the box. With most other DAWs it's my way or the highway. And I don't think Reaper should be penalized because it doesn't—right out of the box—conform to another DAWs workflow. The fact that it CAN conform at all, with some work, makes it pretty invaluable.
> 
> Learning to program? Really? All you have to do is learn how to create your own custom macros—something that can be learned in about two minutes flat. That's hardly programming. It's a matter of choosing the actions you want, dragging them over to a custom action screen, saving them to a new action and assigning a key stroke or a toolbar or a menu.
> 
> I get that people want an easy solution out of the box—and Reaper will give you that—but to complain that Reaper can't give you that Cubase or Studio One experience without having to work a little for it is just silliness. There's the old meme "there's an app for that." With Reaper, if you want something done, "there's a script for that."



Rob I find your answer is nitpicky at best. I get your point, but the arguments come across as just taking whatever suits you and turning it to the betterment of your argument. Some things you say just don't fly.

1) If I have to download an app called ReaPack, written by someone else, in order to find in there a script, written by someone else, that resembles what I have in mind, and I have to access the forums because things are generally pretty unclear as to how they exactly work, and I have to dive into the code to get mousewheel speed to my liking, saving it, hoping it works, hopping on the forum again because it didn't, and I have to map these scripts to different keystrokes, and have to find they only work on CCs, and not automation, and find they are finicky because they terminate automatically outside the CC lane bounds, and hope they will work in the next iteration of Reaper because the user actually updates them accordingly (which, in this case, thank god Julian Sader seems adamant about) instead of selecting both CCs or automation and pressing T and dragging some points, then yes, I call that a giant workaround. Make it rosy all you want, but elegant it ain't, and there are far better solutions to this. Problem is, it's the only way I know of to approximate that workflow, there is no alternative coming close. So, I have to do it with that, or not at all. I am completely at the mercy of another user who may or may not continue to support these scripts at all. You can say it's the way Reaper works. I can say it's a great example of where Reaper doesn't work, and relies on others to plug a giant hole in it's feature set, at least for me.

2) I didn't say programming. I said learning the program. The software, the app, take your pick. I can tell you it took me quite some time to get to grips with all of the above, because it isn't exactly a showcase of intuitivity. Reaper was created by coders, and it shows. Nothing wrong with that, but some things are just less intuitive with Reaper. It's part of it's very nature of development. Yes, there is a basic workflow, but it doesn't just not conform to other DAWs, it doesn't even conform to things that other DAWs do that are kind of seen as standards out of the box. Some of these things became standards because hey, they work, and generally people like it that way. Yes, it can all be changed within Reaper to conform to your own workflow. I have students that have asked me about Reaper, and I have told them that if they want to actually make music and are looking for a first DAW, to stay as far away from it as they can. Maybe come back later, when they know what they are missing from the program they use at that time. Reaper is great, but I'm pretty sure a lot of these students would've thrown their hands in the air and said ''ff this I just wanna play'' if Reaper would've been their first DAW.

If I wanna teach them about input quantize, I want to point them at a button that leads to a dropdown menu containing beat divisions. Select and go. Not tell them to right click the main toolbar, select open toolbar x, docking it, right click that, explaining the way toolbar customization works, open the action list, search for ''track: set all tracks to xx input quantize'', add that to a toolbar, and rinse and repeat for all the others, then explain them that they have to look at the tracks instead of the toolbar buttons because there is displayed at what quantize value the tracks are set, and then explaining that there are seperate actions for both the arrange view grid, input quantize, and the midi editor, and that you have to think about their implementation inside a macro so you don't have to have sixteen buttons dedicated to grid, IQ and midi editor settings.

For a new student:

One button. One dropdown. Select and go. Simple and intuitive. There's a reason why most programs work this way.


----------



## robgb

DS_Joost said:


> 1) If I have to download an app called ReaPack, written by someone else, in order to find in there a script, written by someone else, that resembles what I have in mind, and I have to access the forums because things are generally pretty unclear as to how they exactly work, and I have to dive into the code to get mousewheel speed to my liking, saving it, hoping it works, hopping on the forum again because it didn't, and I have to map these scripts to different keystrokes, and have to find they only work on CCs, and not automation, and find they are finicky because they terminate automatically outside the CC lane bounds, and hope they will work in the next iteration of Reaper because the user actually updates them accordingly (which, in this case, thank god Julian Sader seems adamant about) instead of selecting both CCs or automation and pressing T and dragging some points, then yes, I call that a giant workaround. Make it rosy all you want, but elegant it ain't, and there are far better solutions to this. Problem is, it's the only way I know of to approximate that workflow, there is no alternative coming close. So, I have to do it with that, or not at all. I am completely at the mercy of another user who may or may not continue to support these scripts at all. You can say it's the way Reaper works. I can say it's a great example of where Reaper doesn't work, and relies on others to plug a giant hole in it's feature set, at least for me.


I'm sorry, again, I'm not sure why Reaper gets penalized because it doesn't work like Studio One or Cubase. It works like Reaper. It can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. The fact that the community provides scripts to do just about anything you want, isn't a deficit but an asset. And if there's something you can't find in the scripts, a simple request on the forum will likely get someone to create it for you. I'm not sure Studio One or Cubase have that kind of user base.

Also, you seem to be criticizing Reaper because it's constantly updated. I also consider that a good thing as opposed to the occasional fixes and updates we get for other DAWs.

As to your mouse speed, isn't that controlled by your computer's OS? I adjust my mouse via the preferences on my Mac.

As for automation, you need to look more carefully at it. There are some amazing things you can do with automation, including saving and loading repetitive tasks. For example, I have a library that uses the pitch wheel to create portamentos and I don't have enough hands to control it, plus the mod wheel, plus the keyboard. So I've saved automation information for the pitch wheel, added it to a menu and simply right click to add the portamento where needed after the fact. Works like a charm. Those same automation parameters can be copied and dragged to any point in the track I need them to be by simply using Command+left mouse. But, hey, if I don't want it to be Command+left mouse, I can easily change it to some other combination.



DS_Joost said:


> 2) I didn't say programming. I said learning the program. The software, the app, take your pick. I can tell you it took me quite some time to get to grips with all of the above, because it isn't exactly a showcase of intuitivity. Reaper was created by coders, and it shows. Nothing wrong with that, but some things are just less intuitive with Reaper. It's part of it's very nature of development. Yes, there is a basic workflow, but it doesn't just not conform to other DAWs, it doesn't even conform to things that other DAWs do that are kind of seen as standards out of the box. Some of these things became standards because hey, they work, and generally people like it that way. Yes, it can all be changed within Reaper to conform to your own workflow. I have students that have asked me about Reaper, and I have told them that if they want to actually make music and are looking for a first DAW, to stay as far away from it as they can. Maybe come back later, when they know what they are missing from the program they use at that time. Reaper is great, but I'm pretty sure a lot of these students would've thrown their hands in the air and said ''ff this I just wanna play'' if Reaper would've been their first DAW.



And once again, WHY does Reaper need to conform to other DAWs at all? I think that's the problem with your entire argument. Reaper isn't other DAWs. That said, it adheres to most DAW standards. The biggest confusion for most people is the routing, and once they wrap their head around it, they discover that its routing capabilities are AMAZING.

But, honestly, anyone who approaches ANY DAW for the first time will quickly discover that learning it is not even remotely intuitive. It took me awhile to learn Sonar. Then it took me a while to learn Nuendo. Then it took me a while to learn Logic. And again, with Studio One. Yes, each became easier than the last because of what I already knew, but each DAW has a fairly steep learning curve when it gets down to the nitty gritty of workflow. Reaper is no different. It works just fine out of the box if you don't have preconceived expectations from it. And when I came to Reaper from Studio One, it took only a half dozen or so short FREE tutorials from Kenny Gioia (which are available on the Reaper website) to get up to speed fairly quickly.



DS_Joost said:


> For a new student:
> 
> One button. One dropdown. Select and go. Simple and intuitive. There's a reason why most programs work this way.



There is not a single DAW that works that easily. For the new student, even Garage Band has a learning curve.


----------



## DS_Joost

robgb said:


> I'm sorry, again, I'm not sure why Reaper gets penalized because it doesn't work like Studio One or Cubase.



Never said I penalize Reaper for that. I said I penalize Reaper for missing basic functionality which I have come to expect from DAWs of a certain complexity, not because they aren't THAT DAW.

Plus, this argument is pointless. Saying this I can forgive every single flaw and wave it away because ''that's just how it works, eh?''



robgb said:


> The fact that the community provides scripts to do just about anything you want, isn't a deficit but an asset.



Never said that was a bad thing, it is an asset. However, I find it a bad thing that it's up to the community to provide functionality that, again, in my opinion, should be standard. You NEED scripts to transform CCs. It can't do this out of the box. Which I feel, given it's complexity and advanced functionality, is a strange oversight and completely unforgivable oversight, given the pedigree it receives.



robgb said:


> Also, you seem to be criticizing Reaper because it's constantly updated. I also consider that a good thing as opposed to the occasional fixes and updates we get for other DAWs.



I wasn't. Are we actually gonna discuss anything or will you keep tossing and turning everything everyone says into your own viewpoint?

Also, the updates aren't all rosy either. Not a lot has happened in the last few months to really entice new users to it. Nothing interesting has truly materialized (no, beta testing ARA2 is not materializing) unless you script or do video (which is kinda baffling too, I mean I like some basic video editing in it but is that really priority number one right now?). All in all, it's arguable wether Reaper has actually received really substantial updates the last few months. Really depends on what you're looking to get out of it. For me, nothing. Absolute zero. At this rate, I could argue that Studio One is updated substantially faster, even though the updates are further apart.



robgb said:


> As to your mouse speed, isn't that controlled by your computer's OS? I adjust my mouse via the preferences on my Mac.



I was talking about the speed with which the mousewheel moves the curve in some of Julian Sader's scripts. You have to change that in his scripts. He details it in the instructions.



robgb said:


> As for automation, you need to look more carefully at it. There are some amazing things you can do with automation, including saving and loading repetitive tasks. For example, I have a library that uses the pitch wheel to create portamentos and I don't have enough hands to control it, plus the mod wheel, plus the keyboard. So I've saved automation information for the pitch wheel, added it to a menu and simply right click to add the portamento where needed after the fact. Works like a charm. Those same automation parameters can be copied and dragged to any point in the track I need them to be by simply using Command+left mouse. But, hey, if I don't want it to be Command+left mouse, I can easily change it to some other combination.



Yet there is no simple way to easily transform it without redrawing. It involves a lot more steps than other DAWs. Can be changed to be made easily, yes, but requires a lot more learning than with others. Also, all this is easy to do in many other DAWs, including Studio One. This functionality isn't new.




robgb said:


> And once again, WHY does Reaper need to conform to other DAWs at all? I think that's the problem with your entire argument. Reaper isn't other DAWs. That said, it adheres to most DAW standards. The biggest confusion for most people is the routing, and once they wrap their head around it, they discover that its routing capabilities are AMAZING.



The routing capabilities are second to none, yes. But as for the other point, it doesn't have to conform to other DAWs, it has to conform to me. That's what it advertises, that's it's whole schtick. My problem is with saying Reaper can be anything you want it to. Well I tried, and came across the fact that it can conform to me only up to a certain point, and some of these gaps baffle me. There are advanced tools you can find nowhere else, and there are gaps in basic functionality that make me question wether they just develop the program completely randomly.



robgb said:


> But, honestly, anyone who approaches ANY DAW for the first time will quickly discover that learning it is not even remotely intuitive. It took me awhile to learn Sonar. Then it took me a while to learn Nuendo. Then it took me a while to learn Logic. And again, with Studio One. Yes, each became easier than the last because of what I already knew, but each DAW has a fairly steep learning curve when it gets down to the nitty gritty of workflow. Reaper is no different. It works just fine out of the box if you don't have preconceived expectations from it. And when I came to Reaper from Studio One, it took only a half dozen or so short FREE tutorials from Kenny Gioia (which are available on the Reaper website) to get up to speed fairly quickly. There is not a single DAW that works that easily. For the new student, even Garage Band has a learning curve.



Dangerous assumption here. Yes, learning your first DAW is always pretty though, but some are a bit more forthcoming with the learning curve than others. And if it wasn't for Kenny, I'd bet there would be a LOT less Reaper users out there.


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## Olivier1024

I discovered 2 years ago that it was possible to create musique with a PC (I'm a noobie). I got Cubase 9 AI with my audio interface and start with it. I updated to cubase 9 element and then to cubase artist 9.
I was inconfortable whis the way to work with Cubase and couldn't get it to work the way I was expected. I ask Steinberg support why I couldn't do what is decribed in the cubase artist 9 user manual, they answer me that what is described in the manual is not contratual and if I wanted the feature that is decribed in the cubase artist 9 user manual I need to update to the Pro version !
I had a look to the Steinberg forum and discover that users add 1 000 new bugs per year and they were never resolve. From that day I decided to never buy a Steinberg product.

Now I use three "DAW"
- "One button. One dropdown. Select and go. Simple and intuitive" : Mixcraft Pro
- "I want a workflow that feet to my needs, the DAW do what want I it to do" : Reaper
- "A simple DAW with very advance videos capabilities" : Magix Vegas Pro

So there is no perfect DAW, but some DAW that feet your needs and your workflow.


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## Tod

EvilDragon said:


> I value "can do things you won't find in other DAWs" way more than "convenience of using basic features found in other DAWs".



Yeah, me too, I don't want to take the time to explain all the things that I can do with Reaper, but ED explains it in a nutshell.

I agree, Reaper could improve the midi editor, and hopefully Reaper 6 will be the time. However, I live in the midi editor and with all the custom actions and scripts I've got there's no way I could change to another DAW.


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## Stevie

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I switched from Cubase to Reaper and the mileage I get out of Reaper's MIDI editor is amazing. I can work so much faster, of course it's a matter of setting it up.
But once it's done, I'm ready to roll. Julian's scripts are actually better implemented than any other DAW solution. Yes, it's true, you have to fiddle around a bit and dig into ReaPack. But nevertheless, it was absolutely worth it. And I gotta admit, that Reaper gives me the room to geek out compared to all other DAWs out there.

EDIT: concerning the automations curves: yes, there are missing tools for all kinds of curve manipulation, I completely agree. A workaround is indeed the use of automation items or using or kawa' scripts:
https://kawa.works/reascript-envelope-section


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## novaburst

DS_Joost said:


> I came to the conclusion that I used almost none. My workflow isn't that difficult; instrument track, record, bang in some notes and automation, and voila. Rinse and repeat. Throw a little mixing in along the way as I go. Get a scene, look at said scene, get some instruments, and start playing. Most times unorganized, but that's where my best ideas come from.



And this is what every one should be doing, once you can find the record button well said @DS_Joost 

It really makes me wonder when people say they can do so much more with Reaper you would think they are building a rocket for space entry when its really all about your music and that record button and your ideas. 

I have Reaper and keep it updated must say it does get updated a lot, I think its a great DAW and have nothing against it but I prefer Cubase and I never felt the need to go past Cubase 6.

For great work flow and connection, and feel you really should be using a controller mixer to control your DAW and plugins and all you favourite go to tools you need to be moving faders, pressing buttons turning scroll wheels, cc this and cc that, assign this and that call up this and call up that all with your controller the idea is to use your mouse as least as possible or never at all.

once you boot your project up weather you using Reaper, Cubase, Logic, Pro tools it should all be about you and your controller and your music if your not doing this then you have lost the plot.

Your mouse should be in a mouse trap not Cubase or Reaper just learn to hit the record button and your 99% there


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## DS_Joost

novaburst said:


> And this is what every one should be doing, once you can find the record button well said @DS_Joost
> 
> It really makes me wonder when people say they can do so much more with Reaper you would think they are building a rocket for space entry when its really all about your music and that record button and your ideas.
> 
> I have Reaper and keep it updated must say it does get updated a lot, I think its a great DAW and have nothing against it but I prefer Cubase and I never felt the need to go past Cubase 6.
> 
> For great work flow and connection, and feel you really should be using a controller mixer to control your DAW and plugins and all you favourite go to tools you need to be moving faders, pressing buttons turning scroll wheels, cc this and cc that, assign this and that call up this and call up that all with your controller the idea is to use your mouse as least as possible or never at all.
> 
> once you boot your project up weather you using Reaper, Cubase, Logic, Pro tools it should all be about you and your controller and your music if your not doing this then you have lost the plot.
> 
> Your mouse should be in a mouse trap not Cubase or Reaper just learn to hit the record button and your 99% there



Indeed. I like the ideas that some people come up with here, but sometimes people seem to find the most needlessly complicated solutions to problems that weren't there in the first place. TouchOSC, or Lemur or what have you come to mind. Pretty cool that you can have updated pages of controls, but how long does it take to hook a controller and midi learning CC1, 11, 2 and 7? And how much control do you need? Do I need all the controls for reducing slur times, rebowing up or down, changing fingering positions, automating the bridge position, etc?

I find that those things I don't use daily, I just quickly automate that in the rare occasion I really need it. How long does that take? Maybe 5-10 seconds? Do I really save a lot of time if I put 30-40 hours into creating templates for them in Lemur? Having to learn the thing? Having to find out how to make my tablet connect to my PC? 

Hit the record button. Record things. Maybe quantize a bit, smooth out some automation, and move on to the next part. The moment I find one of these things takes more than three clicks I write a program off.

Harsh? Maybe. But we have figured out this workflow a long time ago, and every single 'update' or iteration on this hasn't improved on this at all. By the time I learned some programs I could've created an album. Not everything that is new is better, and not every idea that sounds good on paper works out in the real world.

Once I see the word 'script', my mind is out of musical mode and in engineering mode. And engineering mode means not making music. Now, sometimes we need to be in engineering mode to tailor a program to do something that in the end will save us a lot of time. Sometimes investing in another program is worth it because it either heightens our creativity or helps us remove even more barriers in creating music. However, once a program starts creating barriers where previously I had none, I start to long for simplicity, and I am quickly done with it.

I found that, in Reaper, I was more spending much more time thinking about how I could make music in it than ACTUALLY making music in it. I was so caught up in making my workflow more efficient that I forgot to actually make the music itself. Too much engineering, too little musical experimentation. Here's some advice for some people here:

Hit that record button. Try it. You'll be surprised what comes out of it.


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## Rasmus Hartvig

DS_Joost said:


> I found that, in Reaper, I was more spending much more time thinking about how I could make music in it than ACTUALLY making music in it. I was so caught up in making my workflow more efficient that I forgot to actually make the music itself. Too much engineering, too little musical experimentation.



You're almost saying it yourself here: it is not an inherent problem of Reaper. It IS quite simple out of the box, and then also gives you all the tools to tinker with if you want. Fine if you need constraints to stay focused but don't blame a product's flexibility for you inability do so.


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## PeterKorcek

Reaper is like a framework that you can adjust to your liking, but that takes time and effort. The times I WANTED to start working in it, but somehow did not like it in the end - MIDI editor, the overall GUI feel, mixer, even the skins - some are nice, but eventually did not stick to it. I still have it here in my PC, but I always got back to Cubase, because all these things are just better there. Cubase has problems as well of course, I remember when video was not working one time and Reaper saved me, but as overall package Cubase just feel better to me and more streamlined. As a part-time programmer I really appreciate the coding in Reaper, however :-D


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## robgb

Rasmus Hartvig said:


> You're almost saying it yourself here: it is not an inherent problem of Reaper. It IS quite simple out of the box, and then also gives you all the tools to tinker with if you want. Fine if you need constraints to stay focused but don't blame a product's flexibility for you inability do so.


There's a concept called the Paradox of Choice that suggests that while people want choice, too many choices can give them anxiety. I think the problem with Reaper is that it gives us endless choices. Some people embrace this, others are repelled by it.


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## novaburst

robgb said:


> I think the problem with Reaper is that it gives us endless choices. Some people embrace this, others are repelled by it.



You just don't need a lot of options to make music with your DAW, if these endless choices are giving you a better audio signal then maybe some options are founded but they are not giving you a better signal to make your music sound better that will need the final mix.

If your clicking away to make this work then your not making music, because it only takes a few clicks or button presses to make music and that is weather your using reaper or any other DAW.

All this customize this and customise that is not justified and does not make you faster and if we all are honest with our self's why the 1000 and 1 options when all you want to do is hit record and render because when its all done your not doing much more than that apart from automation and working with 3rd party plugins or stock 

If there is anything about reaper that it may have over other DAWs it may have stability


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## Rasmus Hartvig

novaburst said:


> All this customize this and customise that is not justified and does not make you faster



This is 100% untrue. Maybe not for you, but for someone using Reaper 40 hours a week for years, the speed and productivity increase is definitely tangible.


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## d.healey

novaburst said:


> You just don't need a lot of options to make music with your DAW.


A DAW has more uses than just making music.


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## robgb

novaburst said:


> You just don't need a lot of options to make music with your DAW, if these endless choices are giving you a better audio signal then maybe some options are founded but they are not giving you a better signal to make your music sound better that will need the final mix.


Making music is more than just an audio signal. The greatest DAW in the universe won't improve your music or your sound, but the process of getting it to the rendering stage can either be a pleasure or torture. And being able to customize your workflow in Reaper makes making music a pleasure.


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## novaburst

d.healey said:


> A DAW has more uses than just making music.


If your doing other things with your DAW other than music not sure what to say, vidio work, movies, lights I think the correct software is best suited, 

Don't want you guys to think I'm slamming Reaper because I'm not, generally the thought when talking about DAW is associated with music production, and it does not take much clicks to get your music going and that's with any DAW, if you are using your DAW for other things maybe you do need a 1000 options.


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## Rapollo

That’s kinda the joy of Reaper, it’s flexible enough to use for many areas of audio whether it be music production, sound design, voice over, podcasts or whatever. Custom actions and 3rd scripts help make doing any repetitive tasks a faster, and of course the ability to re-bind everything


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## novaburst

I have Reaper and its not rocket science for any type of audio production its quite simple 1 2 3 steps and your done, no need for customizable options, sound design are mostly created with 3rd party plugins,



Rapollo said:


> repetitive or mundane tasks a breeze which is why it’s consistently growing quickly and gaining favour in other parts of the audio industry, not just music


Not sure what this means but surely a lot of task like this should be achieved with letter keyboard, if not a hardware controller, 

You what ever way poeple try to spin it and make excuses for customizable clicks, it all boils down to the same thing record and render and all DAWs are simple at doing that, and absolutely none is better at doing that than the other no matter how much you customize.


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## gregh

Rapollo said:


> That’s kinda the joy of Reaper, it’s customizable enough to use for many areas of audio whether it be music production, sound design, voice over, podcasts or whatever. Custom actions and 3rd scripts make doing any repetitive or mundane tasks a breeze which is why it’s consistently growing quickly and gaining favour in other parts of the audio industry!


But none of that flexibility is relevant to, say, a composer, or a podcaster. They want a product that is good for their specific needs and maybe Reaper is it, but I dont see the greatness for the individual user in that their DAW can be made to do everything with enough effort. Thats more a tweaker thing. Im not going to recommend Reaper to a midi composer because it can sharpen steak knives, read bedtime stories and make toast or whatever as well

But that flexibility is great if you want to make a specialised product based around Reaper - there's that great podcasting product based on Reaper that I've posted here before - can never remember the name coz I dont do podcasting, but it is the best example I have seen of what Reaper can be tweaked to do


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## Rapollo

gregh said:


> But none of that flexibility is relevant to, say, a composer, or a podcaster.



Actually, it is. That is why OTR was created, as well as multiple 3rd party scripts designed to speed up workflow as well as midi tool scripts. Yeah, Cubase arrives with great MIDI ready to go, but comes along with a much bigger price, dongle, heavy CPU usage, and a boat load of other stuff a lot of users consider "bloat".

Reaper is appreciated by composers like Will Roget, who composed the entire 4 hour COD soundtrack in a single project for keeping the overall sound cohesive and due to Reaper's CPU, flexibility and region matrix. As well as Gareth Coker who chose Reaper over Cubase and Studio One describing their CPU usage as "woeful" in comparison, Reaper lacked the out-the-box MIDI but guess what? That can be improved and customised! Those are just two top industry composers that come to mind.

So yes, that flexibility is absolutely relevant to composers. I also have hands on experience using Reaper for podcasts and made use of custom actions and the play rate to make the editing process for those faaaar less time consuming.



gregh said:


> They want a product that is good for their specific needs and maybe Reaper is it, but I don't see the greatness for the individual user in that their DAW can be made to do everything with enough effort.



Of course. But the second part of that sentence.. I guess I just disagree :/ if a tool can do multiple tasks I would personally always choose that single tool over several different tools if its just a small amount of effort. It's not like changing a few settings, creating a custom action or track template is a huge task or even takes more than 10 minutes.. but that's just me!



gregh said:


> Im not going to recommend Reaper to a midi composer because it can sharpen steak knives, read bedtime stories and make toast or whatever as well



That is an odd comparison. I also freely recommend Reaper to people because its not only free to try and use, its wonderfully cheap. Non of the usual "what do you recommend?" met with a "How much?! Ugh".

I'm not trying to sell Reaper to anyone funnily enough, the tools don't even matter to me at least. Just bringing light to your comments!


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## gregh

Rapollo said:


> Actually, it is. That is why OTR was created, as well as multiple 3rd party scripts designed to speed up workflow as well as midi tool scripts. Yeah, Cubase arrives with great MIDI ready to go, but comes along with dongles, heavy CPU usage, and a boat load of other stuff a lot of users consider "bloat".
> 
> Reaper is appreciated by composers like Will Roget, who composed the entire 4 hour COD soundtrack in a single project for keeping the overall sound cohesive and due to Reaper's CPU, flexibility and region matrix. As well as Gareth Coker who chose Reaper over Cubase and Studio One describing their CPU usage as "woeful" in comparison, Reaper lacked the out-the-box MIDI but guess what? That can be improved and customised! Those are just two top industry composers that come to mind.
> 
> So yes, that flexibility is absolutely relevant to composers. I also have hands on experience using Reaper for podcasts and made use of custom actions and the play rate to make the editing process for those faaaar less time consuming.
> 
> 
> 
> Of course. But the second part of that sentence.. I guess I just disagree :/ if a tool can do multiple tasks I would personally always choose that single tool over several different tools if its just a small amount of effort. It's not like changing a few settings, creating a custom action or track template is a huge task or even takes more than 10 minutes.. but that's just me!
> 
> 
> 
> That is an odd comparison. I also freely recommend Reaper to people because its not only free to try and use, its wonderfully cheap. Non of the usual "what do you recommend?" met with a "How much?! Ugh".
> 
> I'm not trying to sell Reaper to anyone funnily enough, the tools don't even matter to me at least. Just bringing light to your comments!



very few people have been using Reaper longer than me - I know what it does and I hate the way people overstate the wonders of Reaper compared to Bitwig (for some things) or Cubase or Live etc etc. Reaper is just another piece of software not some "all things to all people"


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## storyteller

novaburst said:


> If your doing other things with your DAW other than music not sure what to say, vidio work, movies, lights I think the correct software is best suited,


I think he was referring to sample library developers using Reaper for scripting an efficient means for sample library editing (among other things).


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## robgb

novaburst said:


> I have Reaper and its not rocket science for any type of audio production its quite simple 1 2 3 steps and your done, no need for customizable options, sound design are mostly created with 3rd party plugins,
> 
> 
> Not sure what this means but surely a lot of task like this should be achieved with letter keyboard, if not a hardware controller,
> 
> You what ever way poeple try to spin it and make excuses for customizable clicks, it all boils down to the same thing record and render and all DAWs are simple at doing that, and absolutely none is better at doing that than the other no matter how much you customize.


While most DAWs are perfectly capable of doing what you need to do, I've always said that the beauty of Reaper is that you control it rather than it controlling you. Because of its seemingly infinite customizability, you aren't stuck with the developer's idea of good workflow.


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## robgb

gregh said:


> very few people have been using Reaper longer than me - I know what it does and I hate the way people overstate the wonders of Reaper compared to Bitwig (for some things) or Cubase or Live etc etc. Reaper is just another piece of software not some "all things to all people"


It's not overstated. It just is. But that takes nothing away from Bitwig or Cubase or whatever, if those are the DAWs you prefer.


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## Ivan M.

I use Reaper exclusively, all for midi, which has both good and bad sides to it.

Editing notes in piano roll is ok (there's no science to it). What I find great there is: it allowed me to setup a shortcut L for legato (which I use most of the time), predefined S to split notes, and Q to quantize, actions to change a CC lane to a particular CC (mod, pitch, expression) which I put in a toolbar.

However, zooming is strange, it almost never zooms to the content in a convenient way, so when I open an item, I often have to move and zoom around to find the notes!

CC editing definitely needs improvement. It makes me want to throw my computer out the window!
For example: when I want to edit multiple values with a mouse, sometimes it will modify only one, regardless if many are selected, so I have to undo and try again.
Or if I want to simply draw events over existing ones, and in the process click on one, it will not draw new values, but just select.
Or, if you want to use shift+drag to apply a linear transition to a range of cc values, and while doing that I happen to click on a cc event, it will again select and edit only that event, so you have to click elsewhere just to avoid clicking on any existing event (which makes me enter values I don't want, that need additional corrections).
So, essentially it gives priority to changing individual values over changing a group of values from a selection.
_EDIT: not quite true, with some careful settings adjustments most of these are solved_

I also waste a lot of time drawing curves with mouse (did try scripts, but they are not user friendly).

I'm really looking forward to v6, hoping for improvements and hoping it comes out soon.
_
Edit: I typed the use cases from memory, they might be a bit different_


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## Tim_Wells

IMO, the grass is greener. I went through a period of jumping from one DAW to another, thinking I was going to find that magic bullet. For me, there is no panacea... and all the DAW switching killed my productivity. I say pick a good DAW and stick with it. The features and tools available in the top tier DAWs are very similar. I would include Reaper in that group. 

I'm a Cubase user and it's great. But I'm sure I would be happy with Reaper, as well.


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## Tod

Ivan M. said:


> I use Reaper exclusively, all for midi, which has both good and bad sides to it.
> 
> Editing notes in piano roll is ok (there's no science to it). What I find great there is: it allowed me to setup a shortcut L for legato (which I use most of the time), predefined S to split notes, and Q to quantize, actions to change a CC lane to a particular CC (mod, pitch, expression) which I put in a toolbar.
> 
> However, zooming is strange, it almost never zooms to the content in a convenient way, so when I open an item, I often have to move and zoom around to find the notes!
> 
> CC editing definitely needs improvement. It makes me want to throw my computer out the window!
> For example: when I want to edit multiple values with a mouse, sometimes it will modify only one, regardless if many are selected, so I have to undo and try again.
> Or if I want to simply draw events over existing ones, and in the process click on one, it will not draw new values, but just select.
> Or, if you want to use shift+drag to apply a linear transition to a range of cc values, and while doing that I happen to click on a cc event, it will again select and edit only that event, so you have to click elsewhere just to avoid clicking on any existing event (which makes me enter values I don't want, that need additional corrections).
> So, essentially it gives priority to changing individual values over changing a group of values from a selection.
> I also waste a lot of time drawing curves with mouse (did try scripts, but they are not user friendly).
> 
> I'm really looking forward to v6, hoping for improvements and hoping it comes out soon.
> 
> Edit: I typed the use cases from memory, they might be a bit different



That was a strange way saying Reaper is your DAW of choice Ivan, but I totally agree with you on all you say.

The one thing that separates Reaper from other DAWs for me is the ability to customize it and create your own toolbars. That along with all the "actions" and available "scripts" that you can either tie to a key, or put in a toolbar. Also the ability to use those actions and scripts to build *Super Tools*.


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## juliansader

Ivan M. said:


> CC editing definitely needs improvement. It makes me want to throw my computer out the window!



Some customization of the mouse modifiers should solve all the problems that you listed:



Ivan M. said:


> Or if I want to simply draw events over existing ones, and in the process click on one, it will not draw new values, but just select.


Change the default "Move CC event" to something like "Draw/Edit CC events ignoring selection".




Ivan M. said:


> Or, if you want to use shift+drag to apply a linear transition to a range of cc values, and while doing that I happen to click on a cc event, it will again select and edit only that event, so you have to click elsewhere just to avoid clicking on any existing event (which makes me enter values I don't want, that need additional corrections).


The mouse modifier contexts "CC event" and "CC lane" (open space in the CC lane) can use different actions. By default, shift+drag in the CC event context is linked to "Move CC event ignoring snap", while in the CC lane context it is linked to "Linear ramp". Shift+drag can be linked to linear ramp in the CC event context too, which would allow you to start dragging while the mouse is over a CC event.




Ivan M. said:


> I also waste a lot of time drawing curves with mouse (did try scripts, but they are not user friendly).


In case you are referring to my scripts, please let me know if I can help!


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## Ivan M.

Tod said:


> That was a strange way saying Reaper is your DAW of choice Ivan



Actually, I choose it because of the price and good reviews 



juliansader said:


> Some customization of the mouse modifiers should solve all the problems that you listed:
> 
> Change the default "Move CC event" to something like "Draw/Edit CC events ignoring selection".
> 
> The mouse modifier contexts "CC event" and "CC lane" (open space in the CC lane) can use different actions. By default, shift+drag in the CC event context is linked to "Move CC event ignoring snap", while in the CC lane context it is linked to "Linear ramp". Shift+drag can be linked to linear ramp in the CC event context too, which would allow you to start dragging while the mouse is over a CC event.
> 
> In case you are referring to my scripts, please let me know if I can help!



Hey Julian, thank you very much for the detailed info. I was just fiddling with the settings today, and did something similar: changed "shift + r. drag" to the "ramp ... ignore selection" variant, which helped.

However, there is something you apparently can't do. If you have a note selected, and click drag on it, it will always go into edit event context. It doesn't matter if you set "action... ignore selection" in the mouse CC lane settings. 
Any action initiated in the event rectangle is handled by the "cc event edit" context/settings. To get the actual "ignore selection" from the cc lane context, you have to click outside of a selected event.
You can't have a draw tool (like in envelope lane) which overwrites anything underneath it, regardless of selection, and that exact thing is causing much friction.

I should take this to the cocos forum.

About the scrips, it was long time ago, they are probably much improved by now.


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## juliansader

Ivan M. said:


> Any action initiated in the event rectangle is handled by the "cc event edit" context/settings. To get the actual "ignore selection" from the cc lane context, you have to click outside of a selected event.
> You can't have a draw tool (like in envelope lane) which overwrites anything underneath it, regardless of selection, and that exact thing is causing much friction.



If I understand correctly what you want to do, this should work: set the default left-drag action in *both* contexts, MIDI CC lane and MIDI CC event, to the same action, "Draw/edit CC events ignoring selection". (You can also set shift+leftdrag in both contexts to "Draw/edit CC events ignoring snap and selection" to draw smooth curves without snapping to grid.)


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## Ivan M.

Tried again, and this time was able to configure it to work for most use cases. So 90% of the problem was me, and not reaper. Should have explored the settings more thoroughly before complaining, sorry cocos team, now I feel bad. Not to digress the thread anymore, I'll stop here.


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## Synetos

I too have bounced around several DAWs over the years. Yet I always seem to go back to Cubase. However, I do think it might be that I have worked with it so long that it seems to be what looks and feels "right". 

That said, I like Logic, but my Mac hardware is aging. Had the Mac Pro not taken so long to refresh, I might have gone that route 3 years ago. 

I am giving Reaper a serious try again. I know if I "had" to use it all the time, I would get comfortable and likely fall in love with all it's flexibility. I just have not stuck with it long enough in the past to get there. 

I am sure it is subjective hearing, but it seems to my ears that Reaper sounds better than Cubase...richer, more open? I don't know. Maybe it's wishful thinking?


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## Gminorcoles

I purchased reaper, and I keep it because I am happy that it can do ”anything” and it is efficient. But since I do mostly arranging of my own parts in midi, I HATE using reaper.

So I support it and understand that it is infinite and vast, and all-encompassing, and obviates everything else that is either a DAW, or not a DAW. I know with my brain, that reaper liberates us from suffering, but I do all my midi editing in FL studio and am considering trying Cubase.

Ergonomics are not just a nicety to be waved away. The tool has to disappear. reaper, in its effulgence, refuses to recede, and its acolytes Plying these multiple Internet forums converting the wicked also refuse to cede, accede, or concede.


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## synkrotron

Gminorcoles said:


> The tool has to disappear



"Tool?" What tool?

your whole post confuses me... Too many long words. I had to google "effulgence" for starters...


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## Gminorcoles

synkrotron said:


> "Tool?" What tool?
> 
> your whole post confuses me... Too many long words. I had to google "effulgence" for starters...



now you know how i feel using reaper


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## synkrotron

Gminorcoles said:


> now you know how i feel using reaper



No, not at all.


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## Xaviez

Gminorcoles said:


> now you know how i feel using reaper


Lol, touché! :D
I have learnt to bend Reaper mostly to my will, but I still see where you are coming from. I too chose to use another DAW for now because I felt that despite Reaper being very very good, it kinda got in the way of the creative process for me. I still have it and see myself both using it occasionally for audio stuff and quite possibly returning to it should they improve the MIDI editing out of the box, I'm just not very happy with the workarounds that are out there atm (except Reaticulate, that thing is awesome!)


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## Tod

Gminorcoles said:


> now you know how i feel using reaper





Xaviez said:


> Lol, touché! :D
> I have learnt to bend Reaper mostly to my will, but I still see where you are coming from. I too chose to use another DAW for now because I felt that despite Reaper being very very good, it kinda got in the way of the creative process for me. I still have it and see myself both using it occasionally for audio stuff and quite possibly returning to it should they improve the MIDI editing out of the box, I'm just not very happy with the workarounds that are out there atm (except Reaticulate, that thing is awesome!)



I'm strictly a Reaper user, but I know what you guys mean, the midi editing is less then desirable. For what it's worth, they've been working on the midi for a while now, but it's still a "let's wait and see".

There's one thing on the table that I think could fix it for everybody. That's giving us the ability to use "actions, custom actions, and scripts" in all the mouse modifiers.


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## Stevie

Tod said:


> There's one thing on the table that I think could fix it for everybody. That's giving us the ability to use "actions, custom actions, and scripts" in all the mouse modifiers.



Completely agree!


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## synkrotron

My needs must be simple... I don't even use any of the fancy themes... Out of the box all the way.

REAPER that is, in case you were wondering.

Only thing I do, and I do with any software I use, is to un-set all the keyboard shortcuts keeping only a few that I use all the time and don't do something drastic when I hit one of them with my fat fingers.


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## kitekrazy

With all of the DAWs I have Reaper is updated the most. I haven't gotten really deep into it. Long term it's a great value. More developers are making upgrade windows much shorter to get revenue. I'm not a fan of Cubase charging a .5 release. I just got Cubase over the summer.


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## Me No Sum

EvilDragon said:


> It is VERY far from a toy.



very far indeed


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## Me No Sum

Reaper v6 has a lot of midi improvements including CC's lanes!!


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## Michael Antrum

This thread kind of reminds me of that joke about Vegans.

How can you tell if someone uses Reaper......


Don’t worry, they’ll tell you......


(I’ll get my coat)

But seriously, nearly all modern DAWs are capable of great things, and I invested my time and learnt Cubase. I doubt very much that the amount of learning I would have to do to learn and become comfortable in a new DAW would outweigh any time saved by running a few scripts.

Years and years ago I used a software package called Lightwave 3D. It was one of those programs that really needed a lot of scripts and plugins to add functionality it really should have had as standard. This resulted in no real ‘all in one place’ comprehensive documentation, and a shed load of scripts and plug-ins, some of which didn’t like each other, and often broke when updates arrived. Having to re-install the software took ages, and you had to remember where all the download locations were etc. In short, we ended up spending as much time arsing about with the software as we did modelling with it.

I’m sure Reaper is fab, but I don’t think it’s for me.

Mind you - I mainly use a piano and pen and paper to compose, and then it goes to the DAW. Or sometimes in Dorico/Noteperformer and then over to Cubase For titivation. So it’s probably not for me anyway.

It really does seem to have it’s fans though, which shows it must be a pretty decent bit of kit.....


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## Tim_Wells

Michael Antrum said:


> ...
> But seriously, nearly all modern DAWs are capable of great things, and I invested my time and learnt Cubase. I doubt very much that the amount of learning I would have to do to learn and become comfortable in a new DAW would outweigh any time saved by running a few scripts.
> 
> Years and years ago I used a software package called Lightwave 3D. It was one of those programs that really needed a lot of scripts and plugins to add functionality it really should have had as standard. This resulted in no real ‘all in one place’ comprehensive documentation, and a shed load of scripts and plug-ins, some of which didn’t like each other, and often broke when updates arrived. Having to re-install the software took ages, and you had to remember where all the download locations were etc. In short, we ended up spending as much time arsing about with the software as we did modelling with it.
> 
> I’m sure Reaper is fab, but I don’t think it’s for me.
> 
> Mind you - I mainly use a piano and pen and paper to compose, and then it goes to the DAW. Or sometimes in Dorico/Noteperformer and then over to Cubase For titivation. So it’s probably not for me anyway.
> 
> It really does seem to have it’s fans though, which shows it must be a pretty decent bit of kit.....


^This. From what I know of Reaper, it is great. Clearly a fantastic value. If I were new, or really, really had to switch DAWs, it would be at the top of my list. 

But that's just the thing. Switching DAWs is such a huge productivity killer for me that there would have to be some incredible improvements for me to even consider it. I've done it a few times and it was a royal pain (for not much gain). I guess some of you can change software like you change underwear. But I'm not one of those people.


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## Vartio

Reaper grass is definitely greener than any other grass.


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## Joakim

Here we go again
🤦‍♂️


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## ProfoundSilence

version 6 might have me swapped for longer than I expected. that and combined laziness of not feeling like reinstalling Cubase after formatting. 

Between flexrouter and envelope CC lanes - not much to miss from Cubase except the ability to scale midi natively - but reaper users seem to have scripts for most of this stuff(just not as pretty)


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## Chris Richter

Having subprojects makes more than up for that. I’d rather have a utility to not be pretty than missing such a powerful feature.


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## DS_Joost

The scripting reminds me of modding Skyrim. I have a PC that can easily run it, yet I always played on my PS4. Reason for this is on my PC I was always busy modding it, but I forgot to actually play

This is my real and serious problem with Reaper. There is no predetermined workflow. I found I need that. But only because I tried it for a long time.


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## Chris Richter

OTR by Storyteller can give you just that. Paired with @juliansader ’s multiscript for midi CC and you have a very good start.


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## Rapollo

DS_Joost said:


> The scripting reminds me of modding Skyrim. I have a PC that can easily run it, yet I always played on my PS4. Reason for this is on my PC I was always busy modding it, but I forgot to actually play
> 
> This is my real and serious problem with Reaper. There is no predetermined workflow. I found I need that. But only because I tried it for a long time.



Understandable to a degree - although for me I only need to change a couple settings to have my desired "workflow" which is better than.... every other DAW I've tried, for me anyway


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