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Cubase vs Reaper for composing. Is the grass greener?

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.
 
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 :)
 
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.
 
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.
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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.
 
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 ;)
 
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.
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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.
 
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.
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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.
 
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.
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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.
 
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...
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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.
 
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.
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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.
 
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).
 
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?

.
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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.
 
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.
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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/
 
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.
 
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