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Old 12-29-2017, 04:58 AM   #12
Jason Lyon
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: May 2016
Posts: 720
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My pinch of salt in the pot...

In my opinion, REAPER isn't so much "a DAW" as "DAWness". Its flexibility can actually be its weakness sometimes, because it can bewilder you at first. To be honest, on occasion it can seem a bit more of a programmer's environment than a user's one. Thankfully there's a helpful community.

Plus of course, it's dirt cheap, sleekly coded and user-suggested updates come thick and fast - no waiting a year for Version FantasticPuma and paying for features that you don't necessarily want or need. And no fix for the thing you wanted fixed.

With other DAWs you will inevitably reach a point where the software just says "nope, my way or the highway". With REAPER, there's usually a way to get it to do what you want, although it can take time to figure out. And a little help from your friends on here - you really rather need to haunt the forums for a while to get the most out of it. And don't be afraid to ask - people are quite happy to help (we were all noobs once).

If you're not into tweaking, that's fair enough, but a lot of people have created and shared some great templates and themes. Theoretically it's just about possible to "clone" any other DAW in REAPER, right down to the display and shortcuts - if you wish.

For instance, I have a couple of setups that make it behave a) pretty much like Logic for audio tracking; b) pretty much like DP for MIDI mocking. But both with my own twists.

But then, if you want it to behave out of the box exactly like Cubase or whatever, then you're probably better off buying Cubase. Or whatever.

Fair enough, it's not for everyone.

Actually, the flexibility is an attraction for me. I use it for all sorts of things, but I do quite a lot of classical work. Which, I think it's fair to say, is hardly a majority interest and wouldn't be a development priority in a typical commercial DAW. So I and a few others can cook our own in REAPER.

Last edited by Jason Lyon; 12-29-2017 at 05:10 AM.
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