Software (free or otherwise) for making long-form mixes

Hey all -- I don't normally ever post here because I am not an EKTer.  However, with all this extra time at home, I have been itching to start putting together some seamless mixes/sound collages/podcasts for my own listening enjoyment.  What would you say is the best software to do this?  I don't care to get into Traktor or Ableton -- I just want to make mixes.  

Thanks!

People bag on Audacity, but it has basic multitrack capabilities, and it's free.

I would say Mixxx if you want to DJ it - then you can have it record while you play and full recording after you are done.

If you prefer more drag and drop and fade samples, loops in and out, I would go for Reaper.

Definitely Reaper.

Cool edit, innit.

  On 4/12/2020 at 5:28 PM, oscillik said:

Definitely Reaper.

Yep - Aside from using it as for final track mix-downs that's the main thing I've used Reaper for over the last 10+ years. Perfect for putting together long form mixes and compilations (and album mastering)

If anyone has used both Wavelab and Reaper: How does the actual audio editing compare between the two? I got hooked on Wavelab in the 90's because it was the smoothest experience.

  On 4/13/2020 at 7:18 PM, hijexx said:

If anyone has used both Wavelab and Reaper: How does the actual audio editing compare between the two? I got hooked on Wavelab in the 90's because it was the smoothest experience.

Never used reaper,  but isn't that more of a daw? I'd think a wave editor like wavelab would have deeper editing capabilities, especially the pro/full fledged versions. 

  On 4/14/2020 at 8:46 AM, plugexpert said:

Never used reaper,  but isn't that more of a daw? I'd think a wave editor like wavelab would have deeper editing capabilities, especially the pro/full fledged versions. 

Nope, it's both

Actually it really depends on why you feel like doing it. Reaper and Audacity are great options if the output is what matters to you. Now, if you feel like you might enjoy the process itself (and maybe end dipping a toe in "real time DJing"), I'd go for Traktor or Live. 

  On 4/13/2020 at 7:18 PM, hijexx said:

If anyone has used both Wavelab and Reaper: How does the actual audio editing compare between the two? I got hooked on Wavelab in the 90's because it was the smoothest experience.

I was a big Wavelab fan for a long, long time but I haven't updated since 8.5 and have only run it once this year for about 5 minutes, because Reaper does nearly everything I need now, faster and more reliably. Wavelab 8.x has given me some weird problems - playback position indicator doesn't work when using the most current ASIO driver for my interface so I have to use WDM; some commercial VST plugins that work perfectly in every other piece of software aren't compatible with mono rendering in Wavelab - if I tried to render a mono file with these plugins, which I relied on for my job at the time, on the master it would go through the entire render process (which took a long time because I was mastering audiobooks, so these were 10-20 hours of audio) but wouldn't actually save a file to disc, so the only way to end up with the mono files the company I was working for required was to render everything in stereo and then batch convert to mono - workable but clumsy. Steinberg tech support overtly refused to provide support if I wasn't willing to install remote admin access on my production computer, and when I told them that I kept my working computer airgapped the support person literally said in so many words "all professional users keep their DAWs connected to the Internet" and said they couldn't provide me support.  That was around when I switched to Reaper full time and never looked back. After some adjustments and a custom script to replicate one editing function in Pro Tools that I was really reliant on to meet deadlines for long edits, it's been the smoothest DAW experience I've had across the board (was using Nuendo and Wavelab for a long time, then Pro Tools and Wavelab for a couple years, then Reaper almost exclusively since 2013 with Pro Tools 10 still installed but never used anymore, and Wavelab used a handful of times a year, usually for some of its analysis and batch processing tools that I like, and sometimes for the noise reduction that shipped with it before Brusfri came out - now I can get equal or better results with Brusfri and/or ReaFIR than I was able to get with the other FFT based noise reductions I've used over the years. Reaper doesn't allow manual sample-level editing (there's nothing comparable to the pencil tool in Sound Forge hat I'm aware of, but I could be wrong) and even with SWS installed Reaper doesn't have the same depth of analysis tools, but for editing I prefer it now.

When I got a new laptop about a year ago I didn't even bother installing Wavelab on it.

If you already own Wavelab you still have it as an option but you should really give Reaper a try, it's VERY quick once you get a handle on it.

  On 4/15/2020 at 4:50 AM, TubularCorporation said:

Reaper doesn't allow manual sample-level editing (there's nothing comparable to the pencil tool in Sound Forge hat I'm aware of, but I could be wrong) and even with SWS installed Reaper doesn't have the same depth of analysis tools, but for editing I prefer it now.

I remember working in Reaper and zooming into the waveform so you could see individual samples and edit the clip gain automation/modulation could basically achieve sample level editing. It is clumsy but maybe does the trick?

  On 4/15/2020 at 4:50 AM, TubularCorporation said:

If you already own Wavelab you still have it as an option but you should really give Reaper a try, it's VERY quick once you get a handle on it.

Nice, thanks for the detailed response! Think I'll give it a go.

  On 4/15/2020 at 3:53 PM, hijexx said:

Nice, thanks for the detailed response! Think I'll give it a go.

No problem!  If you have any use for the custom action that replicates Pro Tools' "paste to selection" function (more or less, you need to have SWS installed, save the audio you want to paste into selected ranges as a file and then load it into the SWS resource list, but since it's specifically for pasting room tone into spoken word recordings that's actually MORE convenient than the Pro Tools approach, since it doesn't use the clipboard at all and you can stop a session and reload it without having to find a suitable bit of room tone and copy it to the clipboard again; for other kinds of editing it might get limiting though) let me know and I'll share it. The guy from Reaper Blog came up with the basics for me and then I modified it to suit my workflow more. It's kind of a specific use case, but that was the only thing I needed to do that Pro Tools had a big advantage over Reaper for.

  On 4/15/2020 at 1:23 PM, thawkins said:

I remember working in Reaper and zooming into the waveform so you could see individual samples and edit the clip gain automation/modulation could basically achieve sample level editing. It is clumsy but maybe does the trick?

Goot point.  TBH I haven't used Wavelab in so long that I don't remember if it lets you manually change the value of individual samples, either.  When I first started using it that wasn't possible, and I kept Sound Forge 4 around specifically for the pencil tool because back then I was making really harsh noise by manually drawing sounds a sample at a time. I've never actually needed it since then.

As far as automation and moving clips, Reaper actually lets you work at higher resolutions than the sample rate, if you zoom in enough you can position clips at fractions of a sample.  No idea what it's useful for (or if it's actually rounding to the nearest sample during playback) but I do it a lot when I'm doing things like manually adjusting the timing of stuff that I've bounced through hardware, since the latency compensation isn't always 100% accurate even if you manually ping it.