Is REAPER the current best long term choice?

[sandandpaint]

I would probably be using Bitwig if it wasn't so expensive - actually I would probably use Live with Max extension. But I can't afford that either so I use Reaper. It can do plenty but is not as slick withthe appearance. The scripts people write and give away for free are a big part of the Reaper appeal. It is pretty amazing how many people do that

[xbitz]

^^^ dunno $16 per month seems affordable to me https://splice.com/daws/39084269-bitwig ... -by-bitwig and this is a version-independent rent-to-own access

[sandandpaint]

^^^ dunno $16 per month seems affordable to me https://splice.com/daws/39084269-bitwig ... -by-bitwig and this is a version-independent rent-to-own access

for you that is good but for me not so much - is still maybe 10 times or more the price of reaper

[harddaysnight]

I keep coming back to Reaper. I did go through a while with S1, and I've sussed out other DAWs a lot - currently looking to jump to a new one. Played with Reaper some more this afternoon, it's surprisingly easy to work with.

I'm just not super down with the appearance. Might have to explore some themes.

A couple of things I could get used to are how each track can have any input. I find routing things easy in Reaper too, multi-out stuff is a total breeze (should be simple in Bitwig too but that hasn't worked for me yet, I'll figure it out though).

Since it comes without any stock instruments, it's kinda hard to feel inspired by it, and it doesn't make me feel like returning to it for anything that it offers natively. It feels more workhorse-like, to be used with third-party stuff, than anything all-inclusive or anything. I kinda like the more ITB feel of other DAWs and find stock plugins to be a solid selling point with some of them - soft synths in particular, some excel at where Reaper only offers one option. Bitwig, Ableton Live and FL Studio all offer excellent first-class synths on this front, imo.

One thing Reaper has going for it though, is that no matter what I want to do or replicate in any DAW - Reaper can always do it, and I can always figure out how to do it without needing to google anything or look up tutorials.

With Reaper there's always that "ah cool, I can do that in Reaper" feeling.

There was a time maybe 3yrs ago where I did a lot of voiceover work, and spent many hours in Reaper editing audio and felt like I was pretty quick at it. Maybe that time is part of why I don't find it that inspiring to use for music, as it kinda feel like "work". I don't want music to feel like work. Even though it is, for me.

Ableton Live, Bitwig, FL Studio and Luna are the only DAWs that feel fun and inspiring to me.
Have tried pretty much everything. Reaper is actually down near the bottom for this, alongside ProTools and Logic.

[xbitz]

^^^ the latest version of Cubase also looks pretty good. The mixer was pretty ugly before.

User interface improvements
13.0.30 introduces further user interface refinements that improve readability and the overall look and feel in several areas.

Most of the refinements can be found in the MixConsole and in the track list of the Project window. You will notice that we have reduced the brightness of the white font, icons, and other elements to lower the contrast on dark backgrounds. We have refined the visual appearance of several elements to streamline the user interface and improve the usability when highlighting selected tracks or channels. The inversion of text and icon colors is now more consistent.

There is also a new option "Track Name Font Weight" in the Event Display > Tracks page of the Preferences dialog that allows you to select between "bold" and "regular" font weight for the track name in the track list of the Project window. We have kept "bold" as the default for now, but please give the "regular" setting a try and let us know what you think.

https://www.steinberg.net/cubase/release-notes/13/

I know it's Steinberg but nah, + finally Apple fixed their GPU preformance issue Sonoma14.3+ which is also a piece of good news using Cubase

[harddaysnight]

^^^ the latest version of Cubase also looks pretty good. The mixer was pretty ugly before.

I own Cubase 13 Pro but haven't explored it much, I picked it up for a steal pretty much on a whim - I don't love all the pop-up windows, but I do appreciate ARA support (I use Melodyne and VocAlign) and I do like the MIDI editing capabilities.

I should spend more time with it considering I do own it outright - need to see how it fares with audio editing for (which is mostly just cutting bits out/comping/aligning tracks a little better). Pretty simple needs.

The interface feels so bloated. Prefer a minimalist approach.

[rj0]

Since it comes without any stock instruments, it's kinda hard to feel inspired by it, and it doesn't make me feel like returning to it for anything that it offers natively. It feels more workhorse-like, to be used with third-party stuff, than anything all-inclusive or anything. I kinda like the more ITB feel of other DAWs and find stock plugins to be a solid selling point with some of them - soft synths in particular, some excel at where Reaper only offers one option.
...

Third party synths (and effects) tend to be superior to those you find in almost any DAW's stock instruments, and unless you completely avoid commercial synths, you'll quickly wonder why the inclusion of stock instruments even mattered in your selection of a DAW.

[harddaysnight]

Since it comes without any stock instruments, it's kinda hard to feel inspired by it, and it doesn't make me feel like returning to it for anything that it offers natively. It feels more workhorse-like, to be used with third-party stuff, than anything all-inclusive or anything. I kinda like the more ITB feel of other DAWs and find stock plugins to be a solid selling point with some of them - soft synths in particular, some excel at where Reaper only offers one option.
...

Third party synths tend to be superior to those you find in almost any DAW's stock instruments, and unless you completely avoid commercial synths, you'll quickly wonder why the inclusion of stock instruments even mattered in your selection of a DAW.

I disagree - plenty of stock synths are excellent.

Logic's Alchemy and Retro Synth are awesome, FL Studio has a whole army of synths that are great - Harmor and Sytrus to name a couple but there's loads, Ableton has a slew of great ones, Bitwig has the grid where you can just make your own + it's got Polymer/Polysynth.. so on and so forth.

Third-party offerings often look better/more attractive but I've got no issues with a load of stock DAWs.

That said, I prefer Dune3 over any stock synth.

[rj0]

Since it comes without any stock instruments, it's kinda hard to feel inspired by it, and it doesn't make me feel like returning to it for anything that it offers natively. It feels more workhorse-like, to be used with third-party stuff, than anything all-inclusive or anything. I kinda like the more ITB feel of other DAWs and find stock plugins to be a solid selling point with some of them - soft synths in particular, some excel at where Reaper only offers one option.
...

Third party synths tend to be superior to those you find in almost any DAW's stock instruments, and unless you completely avoid commercial synths, you'll quickly wonder why the inclusion of stock instruments even mattered in your selection of a DAW.

I disagree - plenty of stock synths are excellent.

Logic's Alchemy and Retro Synth are awesome, FL Studio has a whole army of synths that are great - Harmor and Sytrus to name a couple but there's loads, Ableton has a slew of great ones, Bitwig has the grid where you can just make your own + it's got Polymer/Polysynth.. so on and so forth.

Third-party offerings often look better/more attractive but I've got no issues with a load of stock DAWs.

That said, I prefer Dune3 over any stock synth.

I have FL Studio, and Harmor and Sytrus (as VSTi's, not tied to FL Studio), and Alchemy (when it was an independent commercial instrument). As much as I think FL Studio has a number of cool instruments, I'd rather have those instruments as VSTi's usable in any DAW. Stock instruments are typically tied to your DAW (FL Studio has waffled here).If you don't mind that limitation, great.

P.S. I also have Bitwig (innovative DAW), and I can use Harmor, Sytrus, and Alchemy in it.

[harddaysnight]

Since it comes without any stock instruments, it's kinda hard to feel inspired by it, and it doesn't make me feel like returning to it for anything that it offers natively. It feels more workhorse-like, to be used with third-party stuff, than anything all-inclusive or anything. I kinda like the more ITB feel of other DAWs and find stock plugins to be a solid selling point with some of them - soft synths in particular, some excel at where Reaper only offers one option.
...

Third party synths tend to be superior to those you find in almost any DAW's stock instruments, and unless you completely avoid commercial synths, you'll quickly wonder why the inclusion of stock instruments even mattered in your selection of a DAW.

I disagree - plenty of stock synths are excellent.

Logic's Alchemy and Retro Synth are awesome, FL Studio has a whole army of synths that are great - Harmor and Sytrus to name a couple but there's loads, Ableton has a slew of great ones, Bitwig has the grid where you can just make your own + it's got Polymer/Polysynth.. so on and so forth.

Third-party offerings often look better/more attractive but I've got no issues with a load of stock DAWs.

That said, I prefer Dune3 over any stock synth.

I have FL Studio, and Harmor and Sytrus (as VSTi's, not tied to FL Studio), and Alchemy (when it was an independent commercial instrument). As much as I think FL Studio has a number of cool instruments, I'd rather have those instruments as VSTi's usable in any DAW. Stock instruments are typically tied to your DAW (FL Studio has waffled here). If you don't mind that limitation, great.

I've always wished that DAW plugins were available in other DAWs. There's loads of great stock stuff and it would be great to use them in other DAWs.

FL Studio allows for this and it's cool as heck.

Irrelevant, but have you tried FL's multi band delay? That thing has absurd potential.

[rj0]

...

I've always wished that DAW plugins were available in other DAWs. There's loads of great stock stuff and it would be great to use them in other DAWs.

FL Studio allows for this and it's cool as heck.

Irrelevant, but have you tried FL's multi band delay? That thing has absurd potential.

FL Studio was talking about phasing out independent VST support. Have they reconsidered? (Haven't used FL Studio much recently.)

Irrelevant? Do a Google search on multi-band delays. There's some pretty cool ones out there. (Not discounting FL Studio's quality stock stuff, just would rather have my options.)

And in a couple of years (if you haven't already, and Bitwig is already there), you'll discover modulars and semi-modulars with band splitting, and realize that you can do much more with multi-bands than just delays. Multi-band delays are just a start.

[dartfordyes]

yeah i want to like reaper but i can never get into
the flow of it easy , i started on cubase and can migrate easy to reason /studio one / logic / ableton /bitwig / but on reaper i just start scratching my head and hitting a brick wall and it doesn’t look nice uninspiring to me .

[lfm]

yeah i want to like reaper but i can never get into
the flow of it easy , i started on cubase and can migrate easy to reason /studio one / logic / ableton /bitwig / but on reaper i just start scratching my head and hitting a brick wall and it doesn’t look nice uninspiring to me .

Exactly this, unbelievable that after 20 years of development they did not take care of this.

Very competent daw, but having tried so many times to get it to liking, I failed. Long list of themes as well, but they are not fully implemented.

Instead they add half baked features as notation, video editing and such.

To spend as many hours with a daw in front of you, you just have to like what you see, and like the flow of things.

Still liking my 8 years old Sonar Artist the best and only daw installed on new computer.

[Blaster]

FL Studio was talking about phasing out independent VST support. Have they reconsidered? (Haven't used FL Studio much recently.)

Yes. They have a developer working on updating them. It's a slow process though. There are betas for a few of them: https://forum.image-line.com/viewtopic. ... 1#p1886996

[as1988]

I've always wished that DAW plugins were available in other DAWs. There's loads of great stock stuff and it would be great to use them in other DAWs.

FL Studio allows for this and it's cool as heck.

Irrelevant, but have you tried FL's multi band delay? That thing has absurd potential.

I have always wished this too. Especially with all the money I spent on Magix plugins when I had no idea what I was doing making music.