Reading up on Reaper

[Thomas Mavian]

...and I thought this deserved a topic of it's own instead of me rambling in the other topic about sleepers.

Short backstory, I'm now on my 8th day in bed suffering severe back pains. No nothing serious just a "sort-of" herniated disc. It's a lot of pain for sure but it will pass I believe. Another week or so...

What to do then when you suddenly can't sit in front of your DAW of choice or walk even? (I need crutches to even get to the bathroom.) After a day of sulking I set out to actually (finally!) read up on Reaper. I have heard it being praised more than once and I've tried it a few times over the years but never gotten into it. So be it!

Another little back story: I started out on Steinbergs Pro 24 back in the day. Followed along with first release of Cubase (which was called Cubeat if I'm not mistaken). Later converted to Logic, just LOVED the environment! After having enough of Apple I decided to change to Studio One which I have used for about 9 years now. Not too impressed with the progress and I'm a tinkerer and there is not much to tinker with in Studio One.

Oboy! I have been a sleeper when it comes to Reaper? From what I can tell after watching far too many YouTube videos and reading forums and actually running it on my laptop (without any plugins or libraries) trying out different things, adding key commands, setting up menus and whatnot.

Just wow. The amount of control, of everything, is simply stunning. Ok, it has some VERY nasty habits (just like Blender) like selecting stuff with the right mouse button?!? Also, not so impressed with the MIDI-editing at first but after setting it up a bit and with the help of some very clever scripters it's way better than what I'm used to.

My main gripe was articulation switching. After Studio One released their Sound Variations, which gets auto-populated from VSL instruments, I thought it would be hard to switch to something else. While Reaticulate is good it is quite cumbersome to setup. I have managed to create two banks, one for Modern Scoring Strings and one for Modern Scoring Brass that I'm eager to try out when I can sit up again.

I feel Reapers biggest Pro is it's expandability and the control you have of everything. That is also it's greatest con. Oh, another BIG pro is that it is actually updated 2-3 times per month!

I searched the forum and it as been a few posts about people switching to Reaper and if those of you that actually did that, have you stayed? What is your take on it now?

And, you that have been onboard for awhile, please share some of your favorite scripts, settings and whatnot, I have a few more days reading I guess

[srkrishnan]

I've worked with Reaper for almost a year. The only thing that bothered me (I might be totally wrong and might be opening a big rabbit hole here) - I preferred the sound of Cubase compared to any other DAW I've used. That's one of the reasons I went back to Cubase. Otherwise, Reaper is a monster and you can end up just playing with it for years and do things you would not have thought about. The only other DAW that I preferred equally (Not counting pro tools here as it unstable on my windows machine) in terms of sound was Samplitude Pro X. Unfortunately the support, user base etc. for this one is not so great so I gave up.

I've watched numerous videos on null test and I've personally done that too but when you stack up a lot of tracks (Synths, sampled instruments, plugins etc.) and work I still feel that Cubase retains the frequencies, and dynamics in a transparent way than any other DAW I've tried. Again, it's highly subjective and anyone who has been working with another DAW can argue the same about theirs.

[Thomas Mavian]

I've watched numerous videos on null test and I've personally done that too but when you stack up a lot of tracks (Synths, sampled instruments, plugins etc.) and work I still feel that Cubase retains the frequencies, and dynamics in a transparent way than any other DAW I've tried. Again, it's highly subjective and anyone who has been working with another DAW can argue the same about theirs.

Ok, havent' gotten there yet but I'll keep that in mind.

One really cool function in Reaper is the ability to actually have more than one audio file playing at the same time on the same track! Never thought it could be done but I see a few cases it would be really useful.

[srkrishnan]

I've watched numerous videos on null test and I've personally done that too but when you stack up a lot of tracks (Synths, sampled instruments, plugins etc.) and work I still feel that Cubase retains the frequencies, and dynamics in a transparent way than any other DAW I've tried. Again, it's highly subjective and anyone who has been working with another DAW can argue the same about theirs.

Ok, havent' gotten there yet but I'll keep that in mind.

One really cool function in Reaper is the ability to actually have more than one audio file playing at the same time on the same track! Never thought it could be done but I see a few cases it would be really useful.

Absolutely. Another great thing is, you can have video, midi and audio all on the same track!

I hope you've tried out the SWS extensions - https://www.sws-extension.org/

[Thomas Mavian]

I hope you've tried out the SWS extensions - https://www.sws-extension.org/

Oh yes! Even the first entry in the menu, Auto Color/Icon/Layout seems worth the installation

[Thomas Mavian]

And, for crying out loud, SUBPROJECTS!

[scherzo]

I've had Reaper installed on the side and have been tinkering with it on and off for many years, so I know it fairly well by now. For me it's a mixed bag. The customization is incredibly good and there is so much cool and useful stuff you can do with it. The default behaviors however are the most bafflingly insane I've ever seen in any applications, and there are just some things you can't change. And I found there's a risk of ending up with a bizarro-world house-of-cards workflow where you're relying on scripts and hacks to do cool stuff and more scripts and hacks to deal with the side effects of your other hacks and so on. Plus I've lost track of how much time I've spent tinkering with scripts and custom actions and stuff, in many cases just to get features and behaviors that Cubase does out of the box with zero effort.

Number of projects I've actually finished in Reaper thus far: 0. But I keep tinkering with it in moments of boredom or disillusionment, because Cubase certainly has its share of problems and annoyances to deal with.

But I have to say... Reaper has come a long way since I started playing with it, and some of the newer-ish features are actually pretty well implemented. The multi-track midi editing and CC curve handling might even be better than what Cubase has to offer. And overall it's a much smoother and more consistent experience these days.

Articulation management continues to be a bit of a barrier for me as well. Reaticulate is fantastic for what it is, but being an external script, there are some things it can't do as well as a native solution probably could, and I really don't like the ergonomics of editing program changes. Cubase's expression maps are still the winner for me there. (Ironically I think the setup phase is more of a problem in Cubase - the built-in editor is so awful that I ended up building my own external tool for it. After experiencing the dread, horror and tediousness of Cubase's editor, coming over to Reaticulate and being able to create your mapping in a plain text file is a breath of fresh air then again, I'm a programmer by trade and training, so that's kinda my comfort zone I guess. I've been toying with the idea of building a graphical editor for Reaticulate banks too at some point though, just for the funzies.)

I anticipate there probably will come a day when I switch over to Reaper completely, but it hasn't quite arrived yet. Maybe tomorrow will be the day...

Check out subprojects if you haven't already. Very cool.

Sorry to hear about your health issues too, man. Back problems are uniquely awful. Hope you feel better soon!

[Thomas Mavian]

Thanks scherzo, on sick leave until May 7, so still time to read up on stuff.

Funny thing is, the more I learn about Reaper, the more I truly appreciate certain aspects of Studio One.

Will therefore read/watch up on Studio One as well. Some things I've seen people do in Reaper are probably much doable even in Studio One, just that the specific workflow hasn't crossed my mind.

Interesting...

[Thomas Mavian]

Logged a few more hours in the (it seems) never ending info about Reaper. I'm starting to think of Reaper not as a DAW first but more of a platform of audio related tasks. It is sooo expandable, in any direction it seems.

Having a coding background I had to try a few lines of scripting and there really are no limits, I see rabbit holes everywhere

I'm going to try to do a setup "for real" and see how I like it. Most of keyboard shortcuts are available, which I feel is good since I don't have to learn, just let Reaper learn how I like it. Also, the right-mousebutton-select and the scroll-to-zoom-timeline abominations were easily fixed once I learned how.

Now, a funny thought hit me while going through menus and customizing icons end menus. Studio One seems like it is trying to be a bit like Reaper. Macros, toolbars and whatnot. The packaging is much nicer but the scope of "getting under the hood" is much more limited.

[Thomas Mavian]

Ok, I'll just keep on with my Reaperramblings

I find it very fascinating. Had I not been forced to lie in bed I wouldn't had had the stamina to read/watch as much as I have about Reaper.

Did a successful experiment today. I know my way around HTML, JavaScript and PHP. Programming is fun. However, trying to learn JSFX, LUA, EEL and ReaScript as fast as I'd like ain't gonna happen so I was eager to see if Gemini Advanced 2.5 Professional to help me out.

After a short chat about sound travelling from source to reciever and ITD (Interaural Time Difference) and ILD (Interaural Level Difference) I gave Gemini the following prompt:
Get me code in JSFX: two sliders, one for distance and one for angle (where 0° is straight ahead).

And lo and behold! After a few debugging runs (JSFX pecularities) I got working code which I simply pasted into Reaper's code editor. Gemini even took upon itself to draw head and angle for visualization even though I didn't ask for it. Just 149 lines of code. Although I'm in no position to say how efficient it is, code structure that is, it works and is a good base for my future explorations

[RobS]

I envy your knowledge of programming! Hope your back is better now Thomas

[Thomas Mavian]

Thanks Rob, yesterday was a good day, clocked almost 600 steps! Woke up this morning (night?) at 03:15 with a lot of pain so today I will file away as a "bad" one. So not better, yet.

Caught myself staring at the about box in Reaper and learned that the name is actually an acronym:
Rapid
Environment for
Audio
Production,
Engineering, and
Recording

Explains a lot

[Lawrence]

I too envy those skills Thomas, and I hope the pain recedes and the healing hurries the heck up.

[Thomas Mavian]

I too envy those skills Thomas, and I hope the pain recedes and the healing hurries the heck up.

Thanks. It's getting slowly better but I'm on week 7 in bed now. Managed to walk 1.2 km yesterday, without crutches, but got some pain in return today. Need to walk though, it's doctor's orders.

So, Reaper. Been enjoying the learning process deeply. Do I want to "switch" from Studio One? Sure. Will I? Nope, I'm too lazy. I need to create articulation maps for all instruments and I'm just not up for that at the moment.

The upside is the immense scalability of Reaper, you can shape it in any form to what you want.