Reaper

TomCat · 2010-05-31T12:38:58+00:00

Hi All Ive been playing around with Reaper on a Macbook over the weekend and am really impressed with the software. We are looking at recording an album for Mariann shortly and so have been trying out different options. Basic Setup: Main Preamp: dbx 376 Tube strip with digital out. Interface: Tascam FW1884 (8 x mic pre - essential for mic'ing live drums, optical and SPDIF I/O, word clock, 4 x MIDI etc) Monitoring: JBL LSR 2325P Mics..still working on that one....depends on what I can BBS (Beg, Borrow and Steal).... ? ETC...ETC.... A couple of test recordings yesterday came out really good. Most of the Reaper plugins also seem to perform well. Any thoughts/comments out there......?????

guitarboy2828

Donovan Banks wrote
Warren wrote Music Radar had an article a while back about the best DAW software available. I think that the packages were voted for by users, I can't remember, but Reaper was at the top of the list:

http://www.musicradar.com/tuition/tech/the-11-best-daw-software-apps-238905
I see they have Magix Samplitude higher than Protools.. wow! I LOVE that program. I started using Samplitude 6 and it just grew and grew. It is amazingly easy to use.

Then I started on another item on their list, FL Studio... That is amazing software as well.

Isn't FL studio a purely midi driven software? There are too many software programs and I don't even know what is going on.. All I know is I finally unboxed my fast track and audacity doesn't play nicely with it.. ?

Does reaper allow you to use guitar rig before it? Like, can I record in reaper using guitar rig?

Jacquesg4j

I just downloaded reaper for the fun of it just now... Lets see if it works!

ParadoximA

Paul E wrote Quick Question...

Everyone says Reaper is free, but when I downloaded it, it says it's not free and I need to buy a license? Did I download the wrong one?

It's free to try, but if you keep using it you have to buy it. From memory, they have a price for "home use" and another price for "professionals" who make money from its use. It's the same package, it's up to you to decide which price you should be paying - they rely on users to be honest. Wouldn't it be great if all software was like that? (...and if all users were honest...)

[EDIT - ok I didn't see there was a page 2 to this thread and that you'd already gotten a whole lot of answers already... oops.]

ParadoximA

Paul E wrote Does reaper allow you to use guitar rig before it? Like, can I record in reaper using guitar rig?

You can load Guitar Rig into Reaper as a VST plugin - on the track that has your guitar as an input, click the fx button, then go to All Plugins -> VST -> VST: Guitar Rig.

You have to make sure that Reaper has found Guitar Rig first though. To do that go to Options -> Preferences -> Plug-ins -> VST and update your VST plug-in path to include the guitar rig VST plugin - for me, on my XP machine it's C:\Program Files\Native Instruments\Guitar Rig 4\VSTPlugins 32 bit.

Once you've got this working, you can choose to record the input of your guitar before being processed by Guitar Rig, or to record the output from Guitar Rig, or both! This comes in really handy when you want to mess around with changing sounds later.

DonovanB

FruityLoops was the purely MIDI driven version. Then they morphed into FL Studio. It handles midi functions and wav recordings very well. I remember that being an issue when I used Cakewalk 5 back in the day.

@ Warren ?

Not surprisingly because of their attitude to licencing I want to buy it. Also because it is cheap enough to as well. I think it's a good ethos.

Highway-Chile

Pro Tools is much less of an exclusive club now than ever before. With the advent of PT9 you can now use any hardware and they have ADC now as well. In fact even within the PT users there was some "segregation" before between HD and TDM etc and the LE community.... but much of the crippling of the software has been removed. With the CPTK, Complete Production Toolkit, the software functionality is as close to full HD as it has ever been.

While Pro Tools is still undoubtably the industry standard and will be for a very long time, Reaper is really FULLY cool and as someone said the business model is awesome. They leave it up to the honesty of the user to pay for it and they actively promote innovation from users which is often swiftly implemented if it is useful. Updates happen quickly and the company is open to almost anything. There have been guys who develop their own GUI's for it etc....... it's like the code is open platform.....available to everybody or something, I am not a programmer so I don't know how it works.

It just seems that while all other DAW companies are shrouded in secrecy as far as development and releases and in general, very protective about all things and employees bound by NDA's etc ........ the Reaper folks seem wide open....like they are just not threatened by much.

For the budget minded user, Reaper is a fantastic option....plus you can grab all the free plug in's off the web and use them in stark contrast to Pro Tools 9 and previous versions of LE where RTAS only will work....... and it is wonderful software to boot. All you need is a really good interface to get you into a sonic happy place.

What is so trippy about it and a way many have used Reaper is to run 64bit plugins and sample libraries WITHIN a DAW like 32 bit Pro Tools by opening Reaper as a Rewire client on a track in a PT session, and opening the 64 bit plug within that. It also takes the load OFF Pro Tools as the processing is done within Reaper.

I tried it like that and it really worked....I had my CPU useage meter open and compared and it does make a difference. But I just changed to Vienna Ensemble Pro for that which also allows you to use different computers as slaves and open up all the plugin's in that........including VST's where PT is limited to RTAS plugs.......and the slaves are connected via ethernet protocol.

What I was also using Reaper for was to jot down ideas quickly in my laptop. It opens fast and is ready to go with no hardware necessary..... something you could not do with previous versions of Pro Tools.....and I have been a PT user for about 12-13 years.....so for a long time it was a PITA to get a noodle down if away from the studio.

I use Reaper less and less now but it sure is all around a super product. Big thumbs up!!! I have a friend who records on it and he get's mixes that you will be sure were done on some big analog board etc......and he uses 20 or 30 year old monitors and mostly free plug in's.....an extremely CHEAP system.

DonovanB

Highway Chile wrote Reaper is really FULLY cool and as someone said the business model is awesome. They leave it up to the honesty of the user to pay for it and they actively promote innovation from users which is often swiftly implemented if it is useful. Updates happen quickly and the company is open to almost anything. There have been guys who develop their own GUI's for it etc....... it's like the code is open platform.....available to everybody or something, I am not a programmer so I don't know how it works.

It just seems that while all other DAW companies are shrouded in secrecy as far as development and releases and in general, very protective about all things and employees bound by NDA's etc ........ the Reaper folks seem wide open....like they are just not threatened by much.

there's a book called, "what would Google Do." It touches on that, Brilliant stuff.

as for Protools, a Reaper licence is $40, protools is still R5,500 here excluding plugins and an iLok...

Highway-Chile

Donovan Banks wrote.......as for Pro Tools, a Reaper licence is $40, Pro Tools is still R5,500 here excluding plugins and an iLok...

Well yes, the price of Reaper cannot be beat, by any of the leading DAW's. No argument against Reaper here.

As far as PT......I do not know if any of these deals are still available but a great way to do it was to purchase an MBox 2 Mini. I just checked and Amazon.com still have a few at $279. Then what guys would do is take advantage of the $249 upgrade price. You actually get into the latest software AND get an interface for less than the new software alone. The MBox 2 Mini is a great portable solution to augment a laptop.

As far as the Plug In's, Pro Tools comes with all the plugs and VI's you need to make music.You get a ton of stuff with Pro Tools. And if you Rewire Reaper into a session I reckon you could use free VST plugin's within Reaper.

So if anyone is interested in getting into Pro Tools.....see if a dealer in SA has some old stock of an MBox 2 Mini he wants to sell cheaper. However.....do your homework and make sure the upgrade option still applies.

Also, another way guys are doing it is to purchase a USED and REGISTERED 002 or 003 ....either rack or the desktop models, and then transferring the license through iLok/Avid. This entitles you to the special upgrade price. The unit must be all currently registered and have a current license and the owner must be prepared to do the transfer, which usually costs $25 at iLok.

If you are creative there are ways to get into Pro Tools 9 for a reasonable price. When Pro Tools opened up to using any interfaces, many guys sold their secondary Pro Tools interfaces if they had them, and got a slightly better price since the new owner would get the upgrade. For example I have 3 Pro Tools interfaces...the 002R, Eleven Rack and an MBox 2 Mini. I use both the 002 and 11R but I could sell the Mini so someone could get the upgrade. I just want to keep it to use with the laptop as a portable, so I do not have to bring the others out of the studio. If I buy a really nice Apogee or RME, I will sell my 002.

So the included stuff with a Mini is........ The others like 002 and 003 have much the same...not sure about the Ignition Pack.

Pro Tools Ignition Pack

Reason Adapted
Izotope Ozone, Trash and Spectron Lite
Ableton Live Lite
IK Multimedia Amplitube LE
Celemony Melodyne Uno Essential
Arturia Analog Factory SE

Avid included Virtual Instruments.

Boom drum machine and sequencer
DB-33 tonewheel organ emulator with rotating speaker simulation
Mini Grand acoustic grand piano
Vacuum monophonic vacuum tube synthesizer
Xpand!2 multitimbral synth and sample workstation
Structure Free sample player
FXpansion BFD Lite acoustic drum module

M-Audio Torq LE DJ software

Avid included Plug In's

1-Band EQ III
4-Band EQ III
7-Band EQ III
AIR Chorus
AIR Distortion
AIR Dynamic Delay
AIR Enhancer
AIR Ensemble
AIR Filter Gate
AIR Flanger
AIR Frequency Shifter
AIR FuzzWah
AIR KillEQ
AIR Lo-Fi
AIR MultiChorus
AIR Multi-Delay
AIR Nonlinear Reverb
AIR Phaser
AIR Reverb
AIR Spring Reverb
AIR StereoWidth
AIR Talkbox
AIR Vintage Filter
BF76 Compressor
BF Essential Clip Remover
BF Essential Correlation Meter
BF Essential Meter Bridge
BF Essential Noise Meter
Celemony Melodyne Essential
Chorus
Click
Compressor/Limiter
D-Verb
DC Offset Removal
De-Esser
Delay
DigiReWire
Dither
Duplicate
Eleven Free
Expander/Gate
Extra Long Delay II
Flanger
Funk Logic Mastererizer
Gain
Invert
Lo-Fi
Long Delay II
Maxim
Medium Delay II
Multi-Tap Delay
Normalize
Ping-Pong Delay
Pitch
Pitch Shift
POWr Dither
Recti-Fi
Reverse
SansAmp
Sci-Fi
Signal Generator
Short Delay II
Slap Delay II
Time Compression Expansion
Time Shift
TL AutoPan
TL InTune
TL MasterMeter
TL Metro
Trim
Vari-Fi

You also get a boatload of free loops.

Averatu

BMU wrote
Renesongs wrote When I work on my own stuff it always boils down to Reaper because of its simple versatile and has a very small memory footprint that allows me to go mad with plug ins in real time without having to freeze or render down tracks. Reaper - FTW ?
I downloaded Reaper because Cubase 5 is so full of s*t with plugins. And generally buggy. Played with Reaper for a short while and realized I don't want to go through the learning curve again... caught between a rock and a hard place.

I used PODFarm in Cubase but I've now regressed to using my POD XT to do the amp sims externally. It's like the past 5 years never happened.
This is exactly because of freezing issues Rene refers to. So I lose the ability to re-amp. Not cool. Sometimes I hate Steinberg. Their disdain for their customer base is only rivalled by their ability to make things worse with every update.

I had the same issue, been using traction for a few years, cant be assed to learn new shortcuts, basically mess up my work flow.

Jacquesg4j

Pro Tools is really not that expensive, look at these brand new deals... And trust me you can do A LOT with the Pro Tools Essentials package:

I feel the quality is superb... Go listen to my April Challenge entry. First time using it I feel I created something good... First time recording actually, on any program! I have the M-Audio Fast track as in the first link.

http://durban.gumtree.co.za/c-Stuff-for-Sale-musical-instruments-Pro-Tools-Recording-Studio-Bundled-Software-Hardware-W0QQAdIdZ279917861

or

http://durban.gumtree.co.za/c-Stuff-for-Sale-musical-instruments-M-Audio-Fast-Track-PRO-USB-Audio-Recording-NEW-W0QQAdIdZ281666061

or

http://durban.gumtree.co.za/c-Stuff-for-Sale-musical-instruments-M-Audio-Fast-Track-PRO-USB-Audio-Recording-NEW-W0QQAdIdZ281666061

majestikc

I'll give another thumbs up to Reaper, I've used/use Pro Tools, Sonar, Cubase. FL, Logic, Studio One and Reaper and I'm seriously considering moving to Reaper at least for home use, the snobbery and ease of file transfers however means I'll have to stick with Pro-Tools/Logic on Mac ("gotta have a Mac with Pro Tools to be "PRO" duuude") for everything else.

It has almost everything you could need and the new V4 looks pretty impressive, and it's never crashed on me unlike Sonar which crashes WHILE it's trying to crash.

The fact that it's dirt cheap and is growing at an alarming rate is just a huge bonus.

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