REAPER

The new Reaper 6 is a really great step up. Reaper in general is among, if not, the best DAW for every kind of music.

Working in MIDI is great, its easy to add or change notes, changing velocity, position and length, named keys great for drum samplers, MIDI cc data envelopes, including pitchbend, its like automation just for the MIDI data, something I've always wanted, its finally here, and its perfect.

Super fast audio handling, splits, glue, render, audio clip effects in real time, not rendering with effects no no, its real time on the clip as if inserted on the inserts on a track, and its automatable. Clips are repeatable just by dragging it, its looped, not just cloned to unique clips, changes operate through out the clip loop. Super easy fade in and out slope curves and easy crossfades.

Automation is very powerful, you can toggle automation for the last touched parameter, all automation points can be turned into an automation clip that you can copy-paste all over and even on other parameters over other plugins on different tracks, no limits.

The mixer is very pleasant to work with, inserting effects is fast and its super easy to clone effects just by dragging them onto another channel, and removing then just requires alt+click, bypass is shift+click. Version 6 introduced embedded effects, so you can see minified versions of the compressor or eq f.ex. not nothing i use no matter which DAW, but it works fine. Also minor things like ctrl+clicking the peak indicator digits resets all digits on all channels, solo defeat, grouping, VCA and multiple layout types just makes it the best mixer on the market i think.

Last positive thing i wanna mention is the performance, its ridiculously efficient, super low CPU usage, super fast load on both program and projects, and it sounds just as good as all the other majors, especially with the new samplerate conversation engine introduced in version 6.

Negative things, well there's not much, one thing I'm missing is auto track colouring, but it can be archived by installing SWS which is a free Reaper extension. Actually, if i find that I'm missing something, its most likely already there in Reaper, just open the Actions window and search for it, and maybe assign a shortcut for it, or maybe design a macro including multiple actions, again, Reaper is quite limitless.