Anyone use Reaper?

Hi Everyone,

I've been using Logic for well over 20 years, but bounced around between various DAWs once they stopped making the PC version ages ago.

I've been using Reaper for the past three years or so and I really like it. I could never get comfortable with Ableton - despite it being excellent software. Main thing for me was lack of customization for key commands.

Anyway, Reaper has so many advantages for electronic music production, especially those requiring flexibility in routing or microedits: Excellent bounce in place functionality, ability to have effect chains on a per EVENT (rather than per track) basis, sample-edit editing in the arrange window, plus about a million more things. 

I suppose some downsides could be the relatively "primitive" GUI and simple built-in effects.

If anyone is curious, here's a DAW runthrough of a recent track in Reaper.

Anyone else using it? Happy to hear all your tips and tricks...

Thanks for listening,

Jake

I started using it a few years ago instead of Pro tools for the occasional bit of editing I do on the side at home, mostly dialogue and fx for radio and installations and whatnot. It is a superb multitrack editor, maybe the best. The main issue I have is that there are too many customizables and options which slows down the learning process. Because i don't use it every day I have to refresh my memory with it a lot. There are resources out there for people coming from Pro tools to achieve a similar workflow and change keyboard shortcuts etc. 

David Farmer from Skywalker Sound did some nice tutorials for it 

http://designingsound.org/2016/07/25/reaper-tutorial-series-an-interview-with-david-farmer/

I used reaper for a while but I never quite got the hang of it for larger projects, mostly for recording in hardware, it's definitely a powerhouse and I wish I knew more. Super cool to see an artist such as yourself fully utilizing it's features like this. If this video isn't an advertisement for Reaper then I don't know what is. Also, welcome to WATMM! Dr. Mandell - listening to your new album right now and it's pretty rad!

I love it, I've been using it since the first version came out in 2006. I've only recently started customising it to my workflow (e.g. setting up shortcuts for when I make sample packs) but haven't even scratched the surface in terms of customisation.

I didn't even know about per-event effect chains; that'll be a huge help for my sample packs!

Bought the cassette based on this track, thanks man

  On 1/20/2019 at 11:41 PM, modey said:

I love it, I've been using it since the first version came out in 2006. I've only recently started customising it to my workflow (e.g. setting up shortcuts for when I make sample packs) but haven't even scratched the surface in terms of customisation.

 

I didn't even know about per-event effect chains; that'll be a huge help for my sample packs!

Per-event effect chains are awesome!

Just show FX Browser (View -> FX Browser; I have this set to Shift-F)

Now you can drag any individual effect or FX Chain onto any event : )

  On 1/20/2019 at 11:45 PM, oscillik said:

Bought the cassette based on this track, thanks man

Wow, thanks!

  On 1/20/2019 at 11:29 PM, Bubba69 said:

I used reaper for a while but I never quite got the hang of it for larger projects, mostly for recording in hardware, it's definitely a powerhouse and I wish I knew more. Super cool to see an artist such as yourself fully utilizing it's features like this. If this video isn't an advertisement for Reaper then I don't know what is. Also, welcome to WATMM! Dr. Mandell - listening to your new album right now and it's pretty rad!

Thank you! No need to be so formal though : )

  On 1/20/2019 at 11:22 PM, Crossword Enthusiast said:

I started using it a few years ago instead of Pro tools for the occasional bit of editing I do on the side at home, mostly dialogue and fx for radio and installations and whatnot. It is a superb multitrack editor, maybe the best. The main issue I have is that there are too many customizables and options which slows down the learning process. Because i don't use it every day I have to refresh my memory with it a lot. There are resources out there for people coming from Pro tools to achieve a similar workflow and change keyboard shortcuts etc. 

 

David Farmer from Skywalker Sound did some nice tutorials for it 

 

http://designingsound.org/2016/07/25/reaper-tutorial-series-an-interview-with-david-farmer/

Thanks - agree that its customizability (is that a word?) is also its Achilles heel, as it really requires some sort of system to learn, else all your carefully programmed key commands will be lost to the ether. I write down key commands on an index card - after a little while it becomes second nature and much faster. 

Also, I must have googled, "How do you X in Reaper" about a bazillion times....

Switched to Reaper from a  totally legitimate backup copy of Steinberg Nuendo back around 2012 and haven't looked back.  I was also using Pro Tools 10 a LOT for a job I had it 2012 and 2013 and the difference couldn't have been starker.  Pro Tools was like taking a time machine back to 1999 and it still boggles my mind that anyone would choose it in this day and age.

The head of the studio I was contracting with had a degree from Berklee and had literally never used a DAW other than Pro Tools.  He thought things like offline rendering were "gimmicks" that "nobody actually needs" which was extra rich since we were editing and mastering audio books, so you ha to go through all kinds of clumsy workarounds to avoid having two or three 10+ hour realtime renders for any given project (which we usually had 10 days or less to complete).  So you'd have to get your mastering chain tweaked using RTAS plugins, then replicate the settings in the non-realime versions, apply those to the selected clips on the timeline manually (becasue that was the only way to perform an offline render, although I'm fairly certain it was rendering to fixed point without dither, because it sounded noticeably worse than the realtime versions), THEN you could analyze the resulting files to see if you hit the company's target RMS range, but you were a little off so back to tweaking the RTAS plugins a bit more and repeating the whole procedure...

Pardon me, I still get annoyed over the Pro Tools 10 workflow to this day.

Reaper is easily the best conventional DAW I've ever used.

I don't do a ton of customization or anything, but I definitely recommend the Paulie theme once you're comfortable with the Reaper workflow and don't need to have your interface look like the interface in the manual/tutorials/whatever.  It works really well, makes more efficient use of screen space, and is easy on the eyes if you're staring at the screen for hours. I've been using it exclusively for about 3 years now.

If you haven't installed the SWS extensions yet, DO IT NOW!

Some fundamental stuff to mess with that can be easy to overlook at first:

-Parameter modulation, especially using dynamics (i.e. every parameter of every plugin can be comprehensively sidechained)

-The render matrix is something that seems fundamental in retrospect but I neglected it for a long time.

-The ReaFIR plugin has all kinds of uses as a creative tool AND for stuff like noise reduction

-The Megababy step sequencer is pretty decent but the Nandy Mod version is much better, and I actually use it a lot even though I do most of my sequencing in hardware.  It's a bit impenetrable at first since most of the interface uses kind of cryptically minimal labeling, but the key commands and basic documentation are in comments at the top of the source code so you can just open it up in the JS editor .if you need to figure something out.

-For remembering key commands, you can always bring up the action list with the ? key or even keep it docked in a tab. It works well as a searchable command reference, even if you never use it to make custom actions or anything,and it can also be a faster way to access commands that aren't bound to keyboard shortcuts and are buried in a submenu someplace.

What is this event based FX loops thing? Do you need a Facebook account for this?

Thanks for the really nice track and welcome to the forums. :)

Reaper is great and cheap.

Doesn't quite have that instrument like feel that Renoise gives but as far as DAWs go its deep as u want.

Dragging and dropping fx onto regions and then opening region envelopes for that fx is so easy

Configuration is simple to especially with all the extensions (sws)

I used it for a while but the lack of an internal wav editor, the way too frequent updating, and lack of "destructive" tools turned me off on it. You can set it up to use an internal wav editor, but when I do that I just think "Why am I doing this in Reaper when I can just use the editor?" The frequent updating really pissed me off because I felt like I could never 100% understand the software. I went through the manual and it feels unnecessarily complex sometimes with the amount of options they have just for changing defaults and UI settings (it was over half of the manual), though I think it is wonderful for multitracking and changing through different styles of user interfaces. Finally, wav files are not actually edited directly (goes back to the internal wav editor thing) so this leads to sound experimentation being limited and you can't really change the wav file into something different; its just piling a bunch of fx chains into your track. Being able to edit the LUA files for modding things is really cool, however. It feels more geared for people wanting to record with live instruments or vocals. I also had problems with how a track can share MIDI, samples and VST instruments graphically. I always liked having those grouped separately.

I would still use it for hardware or vocals, but for sample editing and composing I'd look to other software.

To me, Reaper's totally counterintuitive to write tracks (and anything MIDI related) but is my very fave DAW when it comes to mixing.

  On 1/21/2019 at 7:29 PM, RSP said:

I don't do a ton of customization or anything, but I definitely recommend the Paulie theme once you're comfortable with the Reaper workflow and don't need to have your interface look like the interface in the manual/tutorials/whatever.  It works really well, makes more efficient use of screen space, and is easy on the eyes if you're staring at the screen for hours. I've been using it exclusively for about 3 years now.

 

Thanks for the heads up on the Paule theme - I tried it and it's the first 3rd party theme that doesn't mess with basic functionality. Makes reaper look more like the "big boys" audio software, it's very nice, thanks : )

  On 1/27/2019 at 9:23 PM, JakeMandell said:

 

  On 1/21/2019 at 7:29 PM, RSP said:

I don't do a ton of customization or anything, but I definitely recommend the Paulie theme once you're comfortable with the Reaper workflow and don't need to have your interface look like the interface in the manual/tutorials/whatever.  It works really well, makes more efficient use of screen space, and is easy on the eyes if you're staring at the screen for hours. I've been using it exclusively for about 3 years now.

 

 

Thanks for the heads up on the Paule theme - I tried it and it's the first 3rd party theme that doesn't mess with basic functionality. Makes reaper look more like the "big boys" audio software, it's very nice, thanks : )

 

Cool, glad you like it.  It's also the only one I've really clicked with.  The computer I record on is getting a bit old and the monitor is pretty small, so switching to Paulie from the stock theme made a big difference for me, I can fit a lot more on screen now.

Technically I'm using Paulie_CLR not the regular one, basically the same except for how it works with track colors.