Groups and Playlists

[jschwartz@berklee.edu]

I mostly use Pro Tools, which is flawed in many ways, but the playlisting and grouping capabilities are essential to my workflow.

Reaper is a near perfect program that dominates PT and I would love to use it exclusively, but I keep going with PT because I need the groups and playlists. Switching to Reaper would be a no brainer for me if it had these functions. I'm sure many would agree that these would be life-changing additions!

Incredible DAW. Thank you Cockos <3
- Jan

[sam26]

All I can do is totally agree, and hope that one day the devs give us playlists and track based grouping/editing abilities. Then for me, Reaper will be perfect.

[Robkress]

Hey gang I have a question out of ignorance....

I've never used pro tools so I don't know...

What are playlists and grouping all about? Just a quick explanation is fine. Nothing detailed.

But maybe even more significantly....

What is the Reaper technology that the devs have put in place to do this work flow? How does Reaper want you to do this thing? Do the devs believe their native way is better and the reason they haven't yet built playlists and groups a la Pro Tools?

Just wondering what I am missing out on... not knowing either software solution

Cheers
Rob

[SymboliC]

Originally Posted by jschwartz@berklee.edu

I mostly use Pro Tools, which is flawed in many ways, but the playlisting and grouping capabilities are essential to my workflow.

Reaper is a near perfect program that dominates PT and I would love to use it exclusively, but I keep going with PT because I need the groups and playlists. Switching to Reaper would be a no brainer for me if it had these functions. I'm sure many would agree that these would be life-changing additions!

Incredible DAW. Thank you Cockos <3
- Jan

Hi,

You can have several (unlimited?) playlists with SWS extension if your intention is to have different arrangements of regions for checking the flow of your songs.

https://www.sws-extension.org/index.php

Since I don't know about PT I'm not sure if you are referring to Grouping Matrix that Reaper has in it.
Are you talking about grouping faders, sends, mutes/solos, pans etc? If so, you can achieve this by using grouping matrix. Sorry for my ignorance if this was not the thing you're asking for.

[bolgwrad]

Playlists from a Reaper perspective: Reaper's *default* take system is a step or two away from intuitive so that separating takes as you record them, and placing each one on a new track takes a lot more clicks than it does in PT, and Reaper needs them for every take. But there are workarounds, that once you're set up, make Reaper workflow just as simple, if not simpler.

Obv. the argument is that you shouldn't have to customize Reaper to get PT-style workflow but if Apple can sue another company because their phone icons are similar shapes, I don't blame Cockos for maybe being cautious about making Reaper's take system too similar.

FWIW here are my workarounds, several involving custom actions.

Have a discrete record track in the folder set to 'free item positioning' (FIP). All new takes will just line up within a time selection set to auto-record. I give the takes different colors that accord to a numerical sequence, which is like the PT playlist number. [Is there a script to make new takes different colors?]

I copy (Ctrl+down arrow, another custom action) all the takes from the record track to my 'mother' comp track. For this track you can assemble an action to exclusive-solo items.

To comp, I just have a time selection that I move (Shift+drag, or customize to L/R arrows) along the track and exclusive-solo each take section in turn, removing (Ctrl+Shift+X) the sections in the time selection that I don't want.

For mixing down different sets of takes (which I rarely if ever do) Reaper would need an exclusive-OR button for folder mutes. Maybe someone can point out a suitable script.

[Ann-82]

Hello jschwartz@berklee.edu,

i can feel with you, many people (me included) wish to have playlist function & group editing like pro tools does. Here is a big thread already concerning this topic, if you wish to join the party

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread....ight=pro+tools

[sam26]

Originally Posted by Robkress

What are playlists and grouping all about? Just a quick explanation is fine. Nothing detailed.

But maybe even more significantly....

What is the Reaper technology that the devs have put in place to do this work flow? How does Reaper want you to do this thing? Do the devs believe their native way is better and the reason they haven't yet built playlists and groups a la Pro Tools?

Playlists in PT (and other DAWs, not just ProTools... many DAWs have adequate playlist features) are really really easy and intuitive to use. You can do a take, and then hit "new playlist" and do a fresh take, or you can duplicate the playlist and edit and leave the original one untouched. You can group tracks together to do multiple takes of a drumkit for example. It's just sooo easy especially when running a session with a lot of musicians.

Reaper out of the box is really confusing, especially how if you record over a certain part of your track, it puts splits on all the previous takes inside the track. A familiar cast of characters will post saying that there are workarounds, or that people who don't learn the Reaper way are lazy, or you can get extensions that make it possible. There are arguments for or against all of these. I am in the camp that I just want my damn playlists. If I just had playlists I would be happy, I don't want workarounds, I don't want custom scripts that might break for future releases, I just want playlists. Many others do too, but it's really hard to post about this without "learn the reaper way" contingent getting up in arms. I've used Reaper since 2009 and I still want playlists. I've read the manual and tried workarounds and tried the Reaper way and I still want playlists.

The other thing about grouping is track based editing. This is the other thing in PT that is done extremely well. Reaper has item based grouping/editing, but not track based. People will argue that "reaper has grouping for editing" but they're talking about items, not tracks, and there is a key difference. With track based grouping, you can have sub groups. With item based grouping, you can't. For example in PT, I could have a group for drums, and have a group for toms. I turn the drums group on, and I can now select/edit the waveforms on all those track at the same time. I can turn this group off and turn the tom group on, and now I can edit all the toms at the same time. Try to do this in Reaper. You can't. You have to group items. It's so frustrating.

Any of this may have changed in the past few years, I don't know. What I believe in my heart is that if Reaper addressed these two issues, a lot of studios would use it. I tried to introduce Reaper to the studio where I used to work and it was rejected for exactly these two reasons. And that's the whole thing the forum users don't seem to realize... the "read a bunch of posts and install these scripts and use these custom actions" method is only going to fly with a small subset of people... everyone else just wants to group tracks for editing and use some playlists! It is the most baffling thing in the world to me that Reaper won't offer this functionality.

[enroe]

Originally Posted by sam26

Playlists in PT (and other DAWs, not just ProTools... many DAWs have adequate playlist features) are really really easy and intuitive to use. You can do a take, and then hit "new playlist" and do a fresh take, or you can duplicate the playlist and edit and leave the original one untouched. You can group tracks together to do multiple takes of a drumkit for example. It's just sooo easy especially when running a session with a lot of musicians.

"Reaper" is not "ProTools"! And "ProTools" is not "Reaper"!
These are two different DAWs, each with different terms and
different workflows!

In Reaper an item can have any number of "takes": You can
record a part as often as you like and you have all versions
in "takes".

In addition, any number of items can be superimposed in a
track (FIPM "on").

Takes and items can be duplicated as required.

There are also sophisticated track groups in Reaper, see
manual chapter 5.5 "Track and Track Parameter Grouping".
There is even a grouping matrix for track groups, which
makes this very clear.

All in all: Everything that you can do in Protools with the
playlists, you can also do that in Reaper. However, you have
to deal with other terminology and possibly other processes.

Remember: When you initially learned Protools, you also had
to deal with the terminology and processes of Protools and
learn them. Unfortunately, you will not be spared all of this
with Reaper, here too you have to learn again, read the
manual, define key commands and try them out.

[karbomusic]

Originally Posted by enroe

All in all: Everything that you can do in Protools with the
playlists, you can also do that in Reaper. However, you have
to deal with other terminology and possibly other processes.

As big of a fan I am of Reaper's takes and agree with most of what you said, there are some features in PT Playlists that you can't do in Reaper... at least to any efficient extent where some who are coming from PT Playlists would be the least bit relieved to hear about. Much of that is comping or "track version" related IIRC.

Granted "intuitive" is often the thing one is most used to, and the worst possible approach to Reaper is to try to replicate one's previous DAW, that's a fact. But there are some Playlist/Track Version features that people legitimately miss.

[Robkress]

Thank you Sam for the detailed response.

Surely each DAW comes to features of their own interest and no two DAW's are the same.

I can definitely understand that a user who has become accustomed to a particular workflow would be reticent to learn an entirely new way of thinking. Regardless of better or not. Human psychology I suppose trumps all.

So then it seems right to wonder why the devs have not already implemented these things a la Pro Tools. Considering that these folks are not ego maniacs.... it must be hard to do. Means......
within the existing architecture
because of patent restrictions
disrupts existing user experience
fill in the blank on all those things you can't even imagine and then add 1 or 5637 more

I mean, what right minded individual wouldn't want to implement features that encouraged new users to hop on the platform.

Cheers

Rob

[DogBBQ]

Look how long it took avid to implement clip gain and track freeze?

People seem to think reaper was made to dispose of pro tools it's just an alternative?

Why has the original poster ghosted the conversation

[benmiller]

yes this comes up regularly! I would like to see this happen one day. Wouldn't have to exactly be modeled on pt, but something inspired by PT, cubase(lanes), studio1 (layers).


As much as you tweak reaper you can't come close enough to that workflow. Not saying that PT is the best here, put from my point of view, the way PT, Cubase and Studio1 handle this stuff works a lot better than in reaper.

In reaper, if your not recording to a clic the take system becomes unusable.

the playlists concepts lets you have different versions of the track material. so you can make for example 2 comps and compare them. Your original takes stay unchanged and you can try wild edit on a new playlist.

if you tweak the timing of a take in reaper your are shifting all the takes.

I guess the main difference in concept is that in reaper, the takes are at the item level. in Pt and some other daws the takes are at the track level, as alternate tracks.

yes in reaper you can split takes to multiple tracks and back. but if you are working a multi-mic takes which involveseveral tracks (say 8 for a drum). then that becomes a total mess. this for example is handled nicely in PT with track edit groups.

I love reaper, and I've rarely used anything else for the past years but i still REALLY miss a playlist(or layer/lane) system and track edit groups.



In fact you could have a Playlist system (or what ever you want to call it) in reaper which wouldn't collide with the current take system. You could use both or which ever suits the current task best.

Some years back I started working on some pt style playlist scripts to have this

[sam26]

Originally Posted by enroe

"Reaper" is not "ProTools"! And "ProTools" is not "Reaper"!
These are two different DAWs, each with different terms and
different workflows!

I could never possibly convey the immense feeling of a defeated groan and massive eyeroll I experienced while reading your post, especially the parts that were incorrect. First of all, I don't want Reaper to be Pro Tools. I love Reaper. As I stated in my post, I've used Reaper since 2009. I want TWO functions from Pro Tools that I believe are missing in Reaper. This is a huge difference. I think Reaper is better than Pro Tools in every other way.

Originally Posted by enroe

There are also sophisticated track groups in Reaper, see
manual chapter 5.5 "Track and Track Parameter Grouping".
There is even a grouping matrix for track groups, which
makes this very clear.

As much as I want to give you use cases as to why the take system either doesn't work or is simply inadequate, I'll address the grouping option. You cannot edit items/waveforms using the grouping options. In Pro Tools you can, and it's easy and awesome. Thank you for pointing out where in the manual it is. I've read the manual. This functionality is missing in Reaper. Yes you can group volume, and panning, but you can't group item editing based on tracks. You can group the items themselves, but this is vastly inferior to grouping based on tracks.

Originally Posted by enroe

All in all: Everything that you can do in Protools with the
playlists, you can also do that in Reaper. However, you have
to deal with other terminology and possibly other processes.

Remember: When you initially learned Protools, you also had
to deal with the terminology and processes of Protools and
learn them. Unfortunately, you will not be spared all of this
with Reaper, here too you have to learn again, read the
manual, define key commands and try them out.

This last bit is just so condescending it's hard to wrap my head around, and I wonder why "that person" always has to exist in a forum post. I've used Reaper for 12 years, it is my DAW of choice, I've read the manual, I've learned the terminology, I've actually used Reaper a ton more than Pro Tools. I wish pointing out my subjective perceived inadequacies didn't necessitate me listing how much effort I've actually put in to learning this program just so my post could have some kind of credibility. Do I need to take a Reaper test to show how much I know the terminology? Isn't it possible that a person can adapt to the Reaper system and STILL believe that playlists AND track based item editing options would make Reaper better?

[sam26]

Originally Posted by Robkress

I can definitely understand that a user who has become accustomed to a particular workflow would be reticent to learn an entirely new way of thinking. Regardless of better or not. Human psychology I suppose trumps all.

So then it seems right to wonder why the devs have not already implemented these things a la Pro Tools. Considering that these folks are not ego maniacs.... it must be hard to do. Means......
within the existing architecture
because of patent restrictions
disrupts existing user experience
fill in the blank on all those things you can't even imagine and then add 1 or 5637 more

I mean, what right minded individual wouldn't want to implement features that encouraged new users to hop on the platform.

Cheers

Rob

Hi Rob. I'm not against learning a new way of thinking. I love Reaper style more than all other DAWs I've tried, with the exception of lack of playlists and track based edit groups.

Why will the DEVs not implement playlists? Honestly I don't know. I know there are user made scripts that allow for playlists, so maybe they think that's enough. For me playlists and track based edit groups go hand in hand. So even if I can have playlists, without the track based edit groups, it still doesn't work.

I doubt the reason is a patent because other DAWs have playlists.

If you scroll through the various threads over the years asking for playlists, it's pretty obvious there is a sizable contingent of Reaper users who want these things, and I don't think each one is simply unwilling to learn a new system. I found an elevated feature request from 2009 that asked for track based edit groups lol. I wish the DEVs would explain why we can't have playlists.

Anytime someone posts about wanting these features, I always chime in. My hope is that eventually the DEVs will decide this is important.

[enroe]

Originally Posted by sam26

This last bit is just so condescending ...

Oh sorry!

I didn't mean to sound condescending, and I see too
that you are probably asking a very sensible question
here.

It is often the case that inexperienced people, but also
people who have worked with DAWs for a long time, have
requirements that, on closer inspection, turn out to be
superfluous, or that can never be implemented one-to-one
due to the different architectures of a DAW.

But that is not the case here, and I will take away that
there is a very elegant, efficient workflow with playlists in
ProTools that cannot be achieved with Reaper at the moment.

But I also ask for your clemency: Even an experienced
DAW user who does not know ProTools can hardly understand
where the advantages of playlists and track-based item
groups lie without a specific application example. Perhaps
it would be interesting to present such an application
example - step by step?

In any case: Sorry for my inappropriate tone and my
incorrect assessment!

[sam26]

Originally Posted by enroe

Oh sorry!

I didn't mean to sound condescending, and I see too
that you are probably asking a very sensible question
here.

It is often the case that inexperienced people, but also
people who have worked with DAWs for a long time, have
requirements that, on closer inspection, turn out to be
superfluous, or that can never be implemented one-to-one
due to the different architectures of a DAW.

But that is not the case here, and I will take away that
there is a very elegant, efficient workflow with playlists in
ProTools that cannot be achieved with Reaper at the moment.

But I also ask for your clemency: Even an experienced
DAW user who does not know ProTools can hardly understand
where the advantages of playlists and track-based item
groups lie without a specific application example. Perhaps
it would be interesting to present such an application
example - step by step?

In any case: Sorry for my inappropriate tone and my
incorrect assessment!

***edit - all good on the tone before, apology accepted. I'm sensitive on this topic because I've been down this road before, many reaper users here have, and there is always a chorus of people saying the reaper take system is better, we haven't read the manual, PT isn't reaper, the whole thing... so I'm sorry if my response was emotionally charged, I passionately want playlists and track based edit groups***

Let's say I want to edit drums. Sometimes I want to edit toms, sometimes I want to edit all the drums. I can group the toms, and group all the drums as well, and turn either group on or off. Drum group off/tom group on, edit out huge chunks of silence of the toms. Drum group on, edit a fade after a cymbal crash that's followed by silence. Drum group off/tom group on, continue editing toms.

For me, track based edit groups are convenient. If I wanted to do this with item based grouping, I constantly have to highlight the waveforms, group together, highlight other waveforms, group those together. And once a bunch of silence exists, I have to make sure I'm in a part of the song where the tom waveforms still exist if I want to make another drum group.

Yes I know there are ways that kind of come close to this with custom actions and scripts, it's just that doing this in PT is soooo easy.

Now take this one step further. Say a drummer did 5 takes, and in each part where there was a cymbal hit before the silence, the drummer's take is a different length. On one take the drummer hits on the one, the other take the drummer plays for one more quarter note, the other take the drummer played for a whole bar.

A producer is sitting next to me and says fade each track so it goes to silence and then cycle through each take so I can hear the difference. In PT, this is quite easy. Each take is in its own playlist, the drums are grouped, so playlist one, fade, playlist two, fade, playlist three, fade, playlist four, fade, playlist five fade. It's very fast and intuitive. Now I can cycle through each one. I'm not sure how to even accomplish this in Reaper.

I love the take system when I'm recording the exact same thing every time. In that use case, it makes tons of sense. If the take system was a bit more flexible, like splits only affected one take, and items could be moved around, kind of a combo of lanes and takes, it would probably suit my needs just fine. It's so close.

I also love the take system if I'm working on dialog. When I'm doing that it makes tons of sense that the takes are kind of one big thing.

I love the takes system for certain uses.

Here's another scenario that even if not impossible, I find confusing in Reaper, and in PT I find easy. Say I'm tracking guitar. I have a DI for a clean signal and then two mics on an amp, so three channels total. I do a take, play through the whole song. Then I want to do a new take, but I don't want to play through the whole song. I want to only play on the choruses. If I want to alternate between hearing only the part on the chorus, and the original take, to me this is confusing in Reaper. It's not impossible at all, but I don't like it. I could make different tracks for each input, and group them, and mute and unmute. That's cumbersome. I can turn on the allow for empty take lanes to be selected, and then group all the takes together, and then when I want to just hear the take with the chorus I think I have to highlight everything since just doing the take has added a split and basically made it a new item. So yeah eventually I can figure it out, it's all quite confusing to me.

Compare this to PT. I have three guitar tracks that are grouped. Playlist one. Do a pass. New playlist. Play on the choruses. I want to hear the 1st pass, click on playlist one, all the tracks are grouped, I hear the 1st pass. Want to hear 2nd pass? Click on playlist 2, all the tracks show up, all the silence is there no problem, nice and clean.

In this song, the chords in the pre chorus and chorus are actually the same. So say I want to move the 2nd take chorus parts to the prechorus. In PT this is still really easy. The 2nd take is not associated with the other takes. I can highlight everything on the track, and move it back 8 bars. In Reaper, I know I can do slip editing, but still, the splits are there. So I'm not sure how to accomplish it. I could move the splits, and then do the slip editing. Otherwise I'm not exactly sure how I'd do it. You can explode the takes, group everything, make the edit, and then implode the take back. It's all just, in my view, hard and confusing. Is it unintuitive because I'm not used to it? Maybe. Impossible to say. Perhaps intuitive isn't the word. In PT the presentation of using playlists for takes to me looks and feels elegant. It was easy to learn and understand.

Using Reaper's folder system for tracks and audio was a breeze for me to pick up. It was so simple, and I thought clearly superior to PT. Same with fades, and automation items, and basically everything in Reaper made sense to me really quickly, and a lot of it was very different from PT. The take system to me however is still strange, and only superior to PT in a couple situations. I can usually accomplish what I want by changing enough options, but in PT I never really needed to change options. It just worked for what I wanted. I still want playlists and track based edit groups. I don't think I will ever not want them. I have friends that would 100% switch to reaper from PT is these things were implemented. The former studio where I worked, where Reaper got them out of a bind when there was a weird iLok problem and PT wouldn't open... they won't switch because of this reason. And there are tons of users who just want this functionality. I will always hope for this to be implemented.

[sam26]

Originally Posted by enroe

Oh sorry!
But I also ask for your clemency: Even an experienced
DAW user who does not know ProTools can hardly understand
where the advantages of playlists and track-based item
groups lie without a specific application example. Perhaps
it would be interesting to present such an application
example - step by step?

Oh and here's one more situation where I think playlists make things really easy: radio edits. Say I want to cut a couple of parts out of a song to shorten the length. Select the 'all' group, make a new playlist for every active track of a song that's mixed and finished, and then start removing parts. In Reaper I don't know how you would even go about doing this. Probably the easiest way would be to save a new version of the session. Say you do that, and then realize you needed to make an edit. Now you have to edit two projects. In PT you can go to the previous playlists, make the edit, highlight copy, new playlist, paste, good to go.

Some users are up in arms about them being called playlists. I don't care what they're called, playlists, track alternatives, layers, whatever... I just want the functionality.

[ChristopherT]

100%
After many years on Reaper, hoping for Playlists and Track Grouping, using all of the work arounds and customising it to the best it could be, I gave up and now use ProTools.
A thousand features and "work arounds" don't make up for the lack of these two fundamental working methods.

The Playlist work arounds are a confusing mess - hopeless in a busy studio multitracking session / and mixing environment when the clock is ticking.

The lack of comprehensive track grouping for automation / plug ins / panning etc is a deal breaker in a complex mix. SO slow and cumbersome.

I'm a huge fan of Reaper, and what it can do is astonishing - but when recording and mixing, I have a job to do.

I'll come back if these ever get resolved.

[jschwartz@berklee.edu]

Hey all sorry I haven't been posting, this is my first forum post and I wasn't expecting this many replies! I agree that using reapers "workarounds" just can't give you the same track based grouping and playlist functionality that you get in Pro Tools. It really feels like these are the only two things reaper needs to have in order for me to switch DAWS. I find myself using reaper a lot because the workflow is so much faster than PT, but as soon as I need to record or edit I go right to PT so I can use the groups and playlists. I would be a reaper enthusiast, I would run around the streets shouting "Reaper is the best DAW!" but it's these two things that are holding me (and many others) back. Please Cockos!!! <3