I started using Reaper because I liked the idea of working without dongle (cubase user) and I tried to live with R's imperfections... but it's too painful to write music in R, sorry. There are too many mistakes in the software, too many options, I think they should restart it from scratch. Sorry if I sound rude.
Here are the things that drove me crazy about R.
- Snap settings. Seriously, there are like 30 checkboxes in this window, and good luck if you can figure out what they all mean !
-Different snap/grid settings for both Arrange view and, sometimes, for EVERY SINGLE MIDI ITEM. Weird and time consuming
to always fixing note snap values ! ONE setting for all the software please, like every other DAW !!
-Cycle recording it's unusable, bad to look at and clunky.
-Recording different takes it's counter-intuitive. The software should help the user work in an intuitive way. Why do I always have to fix non-precise take endings and cut them ?
-Right clicking.... seriously ? Why in the world ? Just to be different ?
-The PLUGINS / FXs window. Oh my god, what an endless list of stuff. They made it even longer now by adding categories . Instead of making things easier, they Complicate it with every update.
-The included Plugins, most of them they didn’t even bother to design a GUI.
The Reaper Delay plugin tells you a ‘tempo multiplier’ that you have to calculate manually…
In a 2017 software, no thanks, unacceptable.
-The CLICK sound, so annoying, yes I know I can change its frequency,still, it sounds WEIRD. Plus, by default, the HIGHEST PITCH NOTE should be the 1st Beat!
-The Menus. The infinite amount of Menus / Options / Checkboxes. Also, I want to MAKE MUSIC, I don’t want to Re-Program the software with Scripts so that it can make things
that Other DAWS made easily on a Windows 95 machine…..
ON THE OTHER HAND, Here's where Reaper EXCELS in my opinion :
-Multitrack recording (no takes, one go).
It works really well and audio is easy to cut.
-FXs ROUTING . If you can imagine it, you can route it in Reaper. That's good for creative FXs use.
-Audio warp / WAV tempo manipulation
-Probably Sound Design because you can route so many FXs / SENDS
Feel free to hate on me. I gave R a shot, but it always feels like an incomplete piece of software.
Props to the Devs for their work so far, but... to me there are better options out there. Sorry.
You knew the flexibility of all the settings, so you don't HAVE to live with Reaper's imperfect defaults. You just never bothered to change them. MIDI editor can follow arrange's grid settings, you missed that setting, for example. Cycle recording is very usable when you set up take auto-coloring and use time selection punch-in, for example. Right-clicking for marquee selection can be sorted out by tweaking mouse modifiers. Etc.
You knew the flexibility of all the settings, so you don't HAVE to live with Reaper's imperfect defaults. You just never bothered to change them. MIDI editor can follow arrange's grid settings, you missed that setting, for example. Cycle recording is very usable when you set up take auto-coloring and use time selection punch-in, for example. Right-clicking for marquee selection can be sorted out by tweaking mouse modifiers. Etc.
I actually customized tons of stuff, but still was unable to have that 'flow' if you know what I mean
You say that Midi Editor can follow Grid settings, but... for every MIDI ITEM I have to manually input the Grid Values every single time. Not fun .
Cycle recording is not usable at all IN MY OPINION, even with the auto-coloring
It's ok. Merkury. REAPER is not for everybody. But don't tell how REAPER should be or should start from scratch haha... For the rest of us, we like even more options!
I bet you will come back to REAPER in some months and you will read the guide and you will love it. (That happened to me too)
Next time I make some material,mix,script or anything I will make a thread "F%#! you Reaper! You and your 11MB of customizable bull$!%$ I quit!" And then It will get much more views and feedback since these kind of threads get much more traction
Hi Mercury,
for all these reasons you mentioned, I came the last 3 months and I will stay to Reaper. Plus many many more of course.
Keep in mind that in my pro studio the last 20 years I was using Cubase, Logic X, Pro Tools 12 and Studio One. Reaper won me. I like options. I like when I'm thinking "Hey.. I want to do that.. "
Magically, in Reaper is already there! Now, with the upcoming ARA implementation the circle goes wider!
However I have to agree with you that "takes comping" is a pain...
Feel free to hate on me. I gave R a shot, but it always feels like an incomplete piece of software.
Props to the Devs for their work so far, but... to me there are better options out there. Sorry.
No hate here. There are dozens (at least) of DAWs available and one reason for that is that different people like to do various different things and work in different ways. No one DAW will ever suit everyone. If Reaper doesn't work for you then thanks for giving it a try and good luck with whatever you do choose.
I have to admit that your list of things that drive you crazy gave me a bit of a chuckle because quite a few of them are on my list of things I like about Reaper. Which is just more proof that we're all different.
Location: Near Cambridge UK and Near Questembert, France
Posts: 22,754
And that, my dears, is why there is always strawberry and vanillla.
The only bit I always find a little sad about posts like the original is that people who don't gel with reaper occasionally feel the need to tell the rest of us how badly it sucks, etc.
Shame, as it always provokes timewasting threads like this one.
And that, my dears, is why there is always strawberry and vanillla.
The only bit I always find a little sad about posts like the original is that people who don't gel with reaper occasionally feel the need to tell the rest of us how badly it sucks, etc.
Shame, as it always provokes timewasting threads like this one.
And that, my dears, is why there is always strawberry and vanillla.
I don't think it's as simple as just different flavours.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ivansc
The only bit I always find a little sad about posts like the original is that people who don't gel with reaper occasionally feel the need to tell the rest of us how badly it sucks, etc.
Perhaps highlighting things it doesn't do well will lead to improvement. I often find these threads the most interesting actually because they highlight things I may not have scrutinised.
I don't think it's as simple as just different flavours.
Perhaps highlighting things it doesn't do well will lead to improvement. I often find these threads the most interesting actually because they highlight things I may not have scrutinised.
I agree.
If there's something from another DAW that people find useful, why not steal it? The reason I'm happy sticking with REAPER is because it can be chocolate and vanilla... and rum n' raisin... and mint choc chip...
What I do find strange is people defending the lack of a feature, like it would devalue REAPER to have more features. Doesn't make sense to me.
If there's something from another DAW that people find useful, why not steal it? The reason I'm happy sticking with REAPER is because it can be chocolate and vanilla... and rum n' raisin... and mint choc chip...
What I do find strange is people defending the lack of a feature, like it would devalue REAPER to have more features. Doesn't make sense to me.
Just my opinion, but I don't really defend REAPER for lacking anything. I champion it for exactly the opposite reason - if you want to "steal" a feature from another DAW, you can. Case in point - I've tended to use it mostly for audio work in the past, but I've spent rather a lot of time recently templating and tweaking it to behave rather like DP. Or rather, my version of DP.
The devs often put a new feature on the list for a quick interim release if there's enough demand and they think it's a good idea - and they're regularly involved in these forums. Or you can actually roll up your sleeves and dive into actions, scripts and templates to implement it yourself. Your contribution, whether as just an idea, a request, a moan or an inefficient solution sometimes feeds back in for the potential benefit of all.
It's very rare to hit an impenetrable black box in REAPER. With other DAWs run on a more traditional commercial basis, you get far more "nope, sorry, it can't do that" moments. You have to wait until JackDAW 2019 for that (and what you want might not be included even then).
The one thing that does seem to be a sticking point for a lot of people is the unpretty UI interfaces on the stock plugins. Some love it (afaic, all param EQs and compressors are basically the same under the hood) but...
Perhaps packages of scripts, bundled with necessary extra graphic assets, and named much like themes to GUI up the stock plugins would be an interesting avenue to explore. Perhaps using Lokasenna's library (referenced passim). I'd be willing to contribute to this kind of PlugSkin project.
What I do find strange is people defending the lack of a feature, like it would devalue REAPER to have more features. Doesn't make sense to me.
Never heard of "bloatware"? Software full of features that no-one or maybe one or two users of the shouty variety wanted? And all of those features take effort designing, coding and maintaining. Effort that then can't be used to maintain or improve existing features because, despite what some users seem to think, development effort is not infinite. Just like users with no programming experience always think that their pet feature "should be really easy to program, can't take more than a few minutes". If it's that easy, get writing .
There's no harm in asking for a new feature. Just as there's no harm replying to that request with "I don't think that's needed" or "I already do that but this way...".
Location: Near Cambridge UK and Near Questembert, France
Posts: 22,754
Quote:
Originally Posted by bladerunner
I don't think it's as simple as just different flavours.
Perhaps highlighting things it doesn't do well will lead to improvement. I often find these threads the most interesting actually because they highlight things I may not have scrutinised.
The biggest problem with the majority of these threads is that the original poster in the majority of cases hasn`t spent enough time with Reaper and starts talking about deficiencies which, if he/she/ had RTFM or watched the videos, would realise are due to their lack of understanding/education and not something that either is missing in reaper or doesn`t work.
YES there are things we would all like to see fixed or improved, but a lengthy thread devoted to discussing imaginary faults simply clouds over the real things that actually DO need doing and predictably provokes confrontational responses from the fanbois.
Unfortunately Reaper users as a breed are far to reasonable and open to suggestions
The biggest problem with the majority of these threads is that the original poster in the majority of cases hasn`t spent enough time with Reaper and starts talking about deficiencies which, if he/she/ had RTFM or watched the videos, would realise are due to their lack of understanding/education and not something that either is missing in reaper or doesn`t work.
YES there are things we would all like to see fixed or improved, but a lengthy thread devoted to discussing imaginary faults simply clouds over the real things that actually DO need doing and predictably provokes confrontational responses from the fanbois.
Unfortunately Reaper users as a breed are far to reasonable and open to suggestions
These threads alert me to functionality I was previously unaware of with surprising regularity!
The biggest problem with the majority of these threads is that the original poster in the majority of cases hasn`t spent enough time with Reaper and starts talking about deficiencies which, if he/she/ had RTFM or watched the videos, would realise are due to their lack of understanding/education and not something that either is missing in reaper or doesn`t work.
YES there are things we would all like to see fixed or improved, but a lengthy thread devoted to discussing imaginary faults simply clouds over the real things that actually DO need doing and predictably provokes confrontational responses from the fanbois.
Unfortunately Reaper users as a breed are far to reasonable and open to suggestions
As I stated above, I've been a Reaper user since ver 3, and have no plans of quitting. I've watched all of the videos and read portions of the manual that pertain to my workflow.
All that said, my day job as an audio professional is Post for broadcast. So, I have to be a multiple DAW user, because no matter how much I would like to make it so, in my research, I haven't found a workflow yet to match Pro Tools' Audio Suite functionality in Reaper, and I don't have time to learn work arounds on the clock. I simply use PT for Post work, and Reaper, Studio One and Logic for music. Each program brings something to the table, and excels in certain areas, where the others may not.
The point I tried making earlier is that there is a sort of universality in other DAW's. Like the NLE world, there are key commands and a structure that is identical or similar across Final Cut, Premiere and Avid. As a part time editor, I can sit down in front of any of those programs and know that the J,K and L keys do the same thing in each. There are other similarities, and of course, huge differences. But a user only needs to know that, "Ok... it's like THIS in Premiere...", making it easier to feel your way around because most of the "basic" functionality is the same.
If one is a multi DAW user long enough, one begins to see the similarities and shared functionality in many of the programs. Reaper is a different beast. That's not a criticism, and people shouldn't be so quick to be offended by someone that questions what they perceived to be missing functionality, or a clunky workaround when compared to other programs. In my post above, I questioned the methodology in instantiating a single plugin on multiple tracks. After realizing that it didn't work as it does in other DAW's, I researched it and found that I didn't like the answer(s). Does that mean Reaper sucks? Does it mean my workflow needs are dumb or "silly" (as another user pointed out)? Nope. It just means that I should make a feature request, learn to script it myself (I don't do this to be a coder) or stick to other programs.
All and all, threads like these are good. Question everything, because nothing is perfect. Reaper is a fantastic program. It will hold up to questioning and scrutiny.
tg
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The biggest problem with the majority of these threads is that the original poster in the majority of cases hasn`t spent enough time with Reaper and starts talking about deficiencies which, if he/she/ had RTFM or watched the videos, would realise are due to their lack of understanding/education and not something that either is missing in reaper or doesn`t work.
YES there are things we would all like to see fixed or improved, but a lengthy thread devoted to discussing imaginary faults simply clouds over the real things that actually DO need doing and predictably provokes confrontational responses from the fanbois.
Unfortunately Reaper users as a breed are far to reasonable and open to suggestions
I agree, but I think there is something to be said for the fact that reaper is kind of a tinkerer's DAW, and I understand how people would want it to work a certain way right out of the box.
I mean, it's easier to find a DAW that works very closely to how you'd prefer, over configuring a DAW so that it works how you'd want.
I get that. I don't know what I'd do if I lost my version of reaper. I'm still figuring things out and making modifications every once in a while. For instance, I just figured out about a minute ago, that I needed to check "ignore mousewheel on top of track faders" on top of what I already had for "ignore mousewheel on all faders", if I wanted to prevent mousewheel from moving the envelope trim sliders in tcp.
Granted, if I had to redo it from scratch, I could go through all the options and know exactly what I want, so it would go faster than it did for learning reaper from scratch, but still. For somebody new, I get it how it would be frustrating to have menus the way reaper ships, and to have to make all those modifications.
Even if I remembered everything I have done so far, it would take me many hours to get reaper to work for me exactly the way it is now.
So, I have my reaper settings backed up in a few places, including online.
And I still get sort of frustrated with things like menus, because when new features come out, it means I need to fix my menus.
So, I really understand the sentiment that people just want to make music, and not spend forever tinkering with their DAW.
That said, I don't really care that much that this random individual chooses to stop using reaper. There are a lot of DAWs out there. Different people like different ones for different reasons, and I'm good with that.
Reaper is what it is. It's not for everybody. There's nothing wrong with that. It definitely is a tinkerer's DAW, and it has a certain way of doing things that some people might not like, and it has feature limitations that some people may not like. So use something else, I don't care.
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Last edited by Sound asleep; 01-01-2018 at 05:40 PM.
The PLUGINS / FXs window. Oh my god, what an endless list of stuff. They made it even longer now by adding categories . Instead of making things easier, they Complicate it with every update.
I think this is entirely fair comment, even though there's a solution, because the solution is non-obvious. An IRL user complained to me about this exact thing, and I didn't know the answer, but I knew enough to try right clicking and double clicking things to see what happened. Ah, there you go; double clicking expands and contracts categories.
The convention is that double clicking on a list will open it; expand / contract gets a plus box.
Ignoring such conventions has a price, and its not one that is highlighted with any regularity in FR / pre threads. If "I'm out of here" threads like this are the place where these things get flagged up, then such threads have value. You may think its funny to GTFO this chap, but ...please don't.
So yeah, why is it that those lists don't have +/- boxes?
Even weirder is that if "include plugins found in subfolders" in VST Plugins list is enabled, they DO get those +/- boxes! Bizarre and inconsistent, and it's clearly not that hard to add it, since it's ALREADY THERE for those VST Plugins subfolders...
On the other hand, +/- boxes look gnarly. Why not just an arrow (pointing right for closed, pointing down for open), that seems easier on the eyes (and also, seems to be a convention in both Windows and macOS default file browsers).
the "i just want to make music, not work on computers" crowd is what keeps recording studios in business.
"i just want to be a graphic designer, not a Photoshop expert" etc, other analogous statements
when you're talking about digital audio, "the computer" and the programming that makes it tick is quite literally the medium of the art. i get the frustration of the seemingly endless study that underlies a flashy hobby/career, but fighting computer proficiency in 2017 is sisyphean
i am conversant with a pretty large number of areas of employable computer skills and i owe it all to digital audio and the tertiary skills i picked up while learning it
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|sis - - - anacru| isn't what we performed: pls no extra noteons in loop recording
| - - - - - anacru|sis <==this is what we actually performed.
The forum is amazing, if he wanted a solution to an issue all he has to do is ask...posting your leaving is kind of silly instead of just asking for solutions to these issues. Maybe he needs to get an IO for his iphone and just record songs on it which is a great solution, the quality isn't perfect but if he just needs to write then thats a great solution. Good luck to you Merkury
The forum is amazing, if he wanted a solution to an issue all he has to do is ask...posting your leaving is kind of silly instead of just asking for solutions to these issues. Maybe he needs to get an IO for his iphone and just record songs on it which is a great solution, the quality isn't perfect but if he just needs to write then thats a great solution. Good luck to you Merkury
My OP was probably out of frustration, I realize I was a bit harsh and apologize.
It was more the rant of a long time Cubase user that was missing his pencil and eraser lol.
-Cycle recording it's unusable, bad to look at and clunky.
.
For me , the "cycle recording" (recording multiple takes) is great, very easy and very intuitive ...the best I came across (to do the same in Samplitude is just terribly frustrating process).
What can be easier ? You start recording cycle multiple takes , record as many you want, then you see them all one by one, you select the best parts by just clicking on it, you can select as many different parts in all the takes you like, then by one click you make a ready combined one track that you can still adjust later.
There are some bugs in Reaper which make me switch back to Logic or Studio one from time to time.
The hanging note issue drives me crazy, with u-he Tyrell N6 plugin for example.
I need to stop playback or hit the panic button on my keyboard every minutes to get ride of these stuck notes.
It's annoying and frustrating, Reaper and Tyrell N6 are my favorites but don't work well together.
This issue is Reaper related because these notes dont get stuck inside other DAWs.
There are some bugs in Reaper which make me switch back to Logic or Studio one from time to time.
The hanging note issue drives me crazy, with u-he Tyrell N6 plugin for example.
I need to stop playback or hit the panic button on my keyboard every minutes to get ride of these stuck notes.
It's annoying and frustrating, Reaper and Tyrell N6 are my favorites but don't work well together.
This issue is Reaper related because these notes dont get stuck inside other DAWs.
I hope Cockos will find a fix.
Just add a switchable_transpose before Tyrell N6 and try again.
There are some bugs in Reaper which make me switch back to Logic or Studio one from time to time.
The hanging note issue drives me crazy, with u-he Tyrell N6 plugin for example.
I need to stop playback or hit the panic button on my keyboard every minutes to get ride of these stuck notes.
It's annoying and frustrating, Reaper and Tyrell N6 are my favorites but don't work well together.
This issue is Reaper related because these notes dont get stuck inside other DAWs.
I hope Cockos will find a fix.
man ! I was having the same exact issue with Tyrell N6 the last week
man ! I was having the same exact issue with Tyrell N6 the last week
Can you explain in more detail when you got hanging notes with TyrellN6? A small example project with just it in it, that can replicate the issue, would be great. I love that plugin too, but never noticed such things happening over here, it might be due to some preferences...
BTW regarding pencil and eraser tools... once you adapt to them being on temporary mouse modifiers, it's actually making work much faster!
Can you explain in more detail when you got hanging notes with TyrellN6? A small example project with just it in it, that can replicate the issue, would be great. I love that plugin too, but never noticed such things happening over here, it might be due to some preferences...
Is TyrellN6 a SynthEdit plugin, or is it based on something else? I thought about downloading it, coz I always like the old Rolands I owned, but hesitated because I sort of avoid SynthEdit plugs, due to some issues in the past with them.
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Is TyrellN6 a SynthEdit plugin, or is it based on something else? I thought about downloading it, coz I always like the old Rolands I owned, but hesitated because I sort of avoid SynthEdit plugs, due to some issues in the past with them.
It shouldn't be, it's U-He.
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