The ShadowMusic Web Community

Anyone using Reaper?

B.

Hi Brian

I have both Reaper as well as Logic Pro on my iMac, the latest version of Logic pro X is quite a step forward, but before this came out I went Reaper for a while and found it to be very good and excellent value for money. It is infinitely configurable with free downloadable skins, this is worth doing as the standard interface looks a bit bland although perfectly functional.

The programmers are very much on the ball and constantly adding/making improvements, which often happens as soon as they have something new worth releasing and they are also very quick to respond to customer feedback.

There is a free trial period of 60 days, which is fully functional.

Regards

Gary

Hi Gary, I bought the programme about a year ago and haven't used it in anger yet. I've been a Sony fan for years but upgrading to Sound Forge 11 costing almost £300 and that's only for the editor. My version 9 wont load even though it's paid for !! Won't use Audacity 'cause it's rubbish or Adobe Prem and I'm brassed off with Sony. Plenty of tuts on U Tube for Reaper but it's a wrench pulling me away fro Acid Pro which wont load MP3 tracks 'cause Sound Forge holds the application for loading mp3 into the twin systems. I want a stand alone editor.

B.

More cowbell!

Hi Brian

If you already have the program I would certainly give it a fair trial, I was impressed enough at the time to switch over from the older versions of Logic Pro for a while, but of course everything moves on and Logic has made another giant leap forward (plus it's very reasonably priced for a blown Daw at £139.00).

There are two thing I would consider, everything that you need is there, but it does take bit of delving sometimes to get the best from it. There are downloadable video tutorials from Groove 3 that are worth considering, I learnt a lot from these, but they are about £22.00. The second is to search on line for "reaper Skins" some of these totally alter the look and feel in a very positive way.

http://www.groove3.com/str/reaper-4-explained.html

If you have not explored the skins before, these may be of help:

http://www.houseofwhitetie.com/reaper/i ... erial.html

http://stash.reaper.fm/theme/1205/REACT ... erThemeZip

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=109867

If there was no Logic available, probably Reaper would be my DAW of choice!

Regards

Gary

I agree with you Gary. I found your vid tuts and their format very informative and for the very small price for Reaper it really is on a par with high end programmes. The cons I found are a suitable skin to give me a white background and the GUI of the massive amount of VST included with the programme doesn't show the controls of a VST but only sliders. Also I need tracks to have beat mapping to set the various tracks to the same BPM. In Acid you do this to each individual track (it's called acidizing a track) so everything's playing to the same beat (essential in re-mixes). However I'll use Reaper in the future.

I mentioned Audacity which for me isn't much use---it's free and if you're just laying 2 tracks down the yes. However you try to assign an effect to a track and it won't give you an instant effect on the track, (on the fly) it has to render the track before you can assess the effect which is tedious. EFX GUIs are shown sliders again--give me a knob to turn anytime.

Bri

Hi Brian

My plugins show up as normal with all the good stuff, I wonder if you have a setting that may be overriding something?

There are a lot of skins out there and I'm sure I came across at least one with a white background, but you can change all this under preferences anyway.

Gary

The built-in VST's generally use a simple non-graphic interface which, as Brian says, just use simple sliders, but Reaper will work with, and display the full graphical front panels of any VST. There are loads of free ones available around the web, many of which I find are excellent. A Google search for "Free VST plugins" yields plenty of results. For example

http://www.pluginboutique.com/free

and this Music Radar article reviews the 'best' 27 free plugins

http://www.musicradar.com/tuition/tech/the-27-best-free-vst-plug-ins-in-the-world-today-277953

I'd also recommend the SWS Extensions which add lots of useful features that allow you to customize Reaper extensively. I particularly like the Marker List which lets you name your markers (e.g. Verse 1, Chorus 1 etc.) and jump straight to a marked section with one click.

Yesterday I had a track comprising 15 'stems' (one artist the rest bass-synths choruses and so on) which loaded on separate tracks in Reaper. My Lexicon 85 delay from PSP VST http://www.pspaudioware.com/plugins/delays/ loaded with the GUI showing so perhaps I was a bit hasty. It's a shame really that the host of VST Reaper has in its EFX banks don't have GUIs but there again the cost would increase so I'll live with it and use my commercial EFX as plug-ins in the main.

Regarding those stems, when loaded into Acid I found them to be more presentable providing I worked to the BPM dictated by the beat mapper.

I found Music Radar helpful. Here's another to drool over. http://www.gersic.com/plugins/

Bri