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.
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...
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)
I recognize the overall impressions described by the OP, very well. If I had not 2 decades of history on Cubase and other DAWs before this, and felt I had no other choice, I would've found it incredibly frustrating as well.
Reaper does take quite a bit to get going, and it's a real cold shower for anyone coming from closed source and static DAWs, expecting everything to be served for them, and nothing more available than what they immediately see in the GUI. DAWs like Presonus Studio One have become popular precisely because they are simple, direct, pre-set, no fuzz or hundreds of parameters and alternatives. Reaper is more like an opensource operating system which can be altered by code or a prompt, where nothing is static.
The impression that it was just as possible to put multitimbral virtual instruments on video tracks as on audio tracks, and no distinction between track types and channel amounts on each channel, not even an EQ on each track, gave me the impression that this 'unknown and alternative' DAW is so incredibly 'under construction' still, that they haven't even gotten such things organized yet. That was my initial conclusion, like it or not. And I had been around the block quite a bit.
Thankfully, with alot of work and re-learning, the perceived quirkiness was outweighed by advantages
__________________ There are only two kinds of people in the world: those who entertain, and those who are absurd.
- Britney Spears
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.
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.
I think the problem is RTFM. A lot of users think they are musician, not programmer. Well, I say "play the piano or the guitar and go to a pro studio to record". If anyone want to mix and record in a DAW, has to RTFM. No other way.
Reading the manual, anyone can easily resolve the doubts about the grid, can setup a common grid for all contexts, can easily modify the right clicking, ...
When I decided to use Reaper, first I read the manual and passed an online course. Also, when I began with Cubase 10 years ago, I read an 800 pages manual. How many Cubase users have read its 800 pages manual? It's easier asking in a forum.
The easier to use a DAW, the less possibilities for oneself. Maybe Magix Music Maker is the best for many.
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.
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
__________________ mccrabney scripts: MIDI edits from the Arrange screen ala jjos/MPC sequencer
|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
-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.
It's not a windows issue, we just think this doesn't add information. Others may disagree!
That's how I'd expect a list to look like, which has subfolders and collapses... Or, indeed, right/down arrow might look neater but still convey the same point (like in Windows Explorer, for example).
It obviously adds information because some users don't even know they can collapse/expand! Plus, as mentioned above, it already works for subfolders in VST folders, so that also makes it inconsistent, which is not good UI/UX (and lack of good UI/UX is constantly thrown as a negative aspect of Reaper, so why not improve it?).
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
Well, sorry it didn't work for you. Reaper has changed my life. I came from Sonar, Ableton, Pro Tools. Hated them all. Reaper is the only thing that made sense, especially BECAUSE of the customization.
__________________
FREE copyright-safe/DMCA-safe music for Twitch/Kick streamers, classrooms, waiting rooms (playlists on all streaming platforms): https://tinyurl.com/copyrightsafemusic
You know what I hate about Reaper? I should be able to think something and Reaper should implement it. If I think of a melody, Reaper should automatically record it for me, using the instrument that I am thinking is making the melody in my head. If I need a certain feature, it should automatically appear there with only my thinking it. It should write and completely record and master a song with only my having to think it! Edits should almost be done before I think them.
Until Reaper does this, it will never be a real DAW.
I should be able to think something and Reaper should implement it. If I think of a melody, Reaper should automatically record it for me, using the instrument that I am thinking is making the melody in my head. If I need a certain feature, it should automatically appear there with only my thinking it. It should write and completely record and master a song with only my having to think it! Edits should almost be done before I think them.
The most difficult part is the thinking, as we know the rest can be done by Reaper, if not now, in two days or weeks, with the help of this friendly forum users.
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.
Merkury,I agree with few your statements too ... but no software is perfect. Anyway hope you find the most suitable option for you, nowadays there are lots of great DAWs.
As it has been said lots of times Reaper is simply not for everyone ... and will never be.
Ofcourse, Reaper has it's many "cons"
I do experience them daily.
But if you don't see/feel/experience that the number of "pro's" by far exceeds the number of "cons" in Reaper, indeed, Reaper is totally not suited for you.
I am wondering what better alternative DAW('s) you found.
I have worked with the most of them for years and years (Protools / Cubase/Logic/Live) and their cons (for me that is) totally outperform against the numerous pro's in Reaper.
But i know, in the end it's all highly subjective.
I wish you all the luck and pleasure in your replacement DAW.
Maybe, in a year or so, you eventually come back to Reaper (and don't be ashamed of it :0)
Just last night I told a friend that one person might prefer Sears Craftsman power tools while another might prefer Makita power tools. Each has the potential to build fine houses, and should use the tools they like to work with.
DAW software is just a tool. Use the one that you can work with the best and build your house.
__________________
Glennbo
Hear My Music - Click Me!!!
--