Most ProToolers will know the name Kenny Gioia, a Multi-Platinum music producer, engineer, mixer and songwriter from New York City, and also a kickass tutorial creator. Kenny has done some awesome tutorials for both Pro Tools and Reaper. In this post Kenny discusses what Reaper features perhaps should make their way into Pro Tools. Enough of me, over to Kenny. – stiff
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There has been a lot of debate on the forums lately about the positives and negatives of using Pro Tools vs. using Reaper. As someone who makes tutorials for both, I thought I may have some interesting insight.
I am well aware that this is a Pro Tools Blog so it probably wouldn’t make much sense to try to convince people in droves to head to the other team (and I certainly wouldn’t suggest that). Pro Tools is still great program. So let’s not jump ship just yet…
But…
There are definitely a few things I wish Pro Tools would borrow (or steal) from Reaper.
Firstly, while I was originally against the current Pro Tools theme, I have gotten used to it. It’s fine by me, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could have the option to change it? I’d love to have themes that users can create, customize and share, or at least let us choose the colors that show up in our color palette. The colors are pretty random right now. What about colored presets that change according to what’s on a given track? With Reaper, you can have it set up to choose a specific color based on the name of the track or what it’s function is (ex: FX return, Master etc). If you want your guitar tracks to all be green, just having the word “guitar” in the name can make that happen, automatically.
If you use the Pro Tools “smart” tool, you already know the benefit of NOT having to switch tools constantly. My fingers would ache switching between F6, F7, and F8 just to Trim, Select or Grab in the Edit window. The smart tool avoids all that, but we do still have to switch modes (using F2 or F4) to toggle between Grid or Slip mode. If you do a lot of music production in Pro Tools, you’ll know the frustration of always being in the wrong mode. Reaper has solved this problem utilizing the feature Snapping. Snapping doesn’t require switching modes. You can leave it on all the time and as your Region (or Item) is dragged closer to a grid line, it snaps to it, just like a magnet. How strong that magnet is can be adjusted to your taste (by the pixel). If you set it to 25 pixels and drag regions within that value, they will fall right on that grid line. I find that much more productive than hitting keys each time. If the Snapping feature is not what you want for a certain move, simply holding down the Shift key disables it.
How about Keyboard Shortcuts? While Pro Tools has many of them, we still have so many actions that have to be chosen through a menu or a mouse-click. Why can’t every single action have a keyboard command to go with it (or at least the ability to have one)? Greater productivity can clearly be achieved by keeping your fingers on the keyboard and only using the mouse for visual necessities. With Reaper, not only can you do everything with a keystroke, you can also change or customize each one and create Macros (multiple actions with one keystroke) and assign keystrokes for them as well. If you want the “V” key to make a new track, name it vocal, and adjust it’s volume to -2dB, you can do that. Reaper knows when you’re renaming a track so it won’t execute a shortcut by accident. While both programs allow you to compile multiple takes to create the perfect performance, only Reaper allows you to choose those takes with keystrokes for a much improved workflow. Not only can you choose next or previous takes with a keystroke, you can also choose specific takes, each with their own (ex: 1-9 could be takes 1-9).
Reaper is customizable. (Picture is animated, by the way)
Another big one that’s been asked about for years has been Track Freezing. This one took me by surprise because I never thought it was that big of a deal. Users would complain and I would think, just print it to a spare track and disable the original one. That works, but you have to print it in real-time, buss it to a separate track and decide if you want to print the automation and use certain plugins or not. A time-consuming process if you’re dealing with 40 to 60 tracks of instrument tracks or soft synths. In Reaper, it’s done with one menu command. Hit Freeze Track and almost instantly it turns your midi track into an audio track. Everything printed. Or any plugin or FX. You can also choose, plugin by plugin, what gets printed. If you have a Virtual Instrument plugin, an EQ and a compressor on a track, you could just Freeze the instrument. Or the Instrument and the EQ. Or all three. This gives you the flexibility of still adjusting some plugins while having others frozen, freeing up as much CPU power as you need. The best part is the ability to Unfreeze with one command as well, quickly back and forth when you need to edit a note or two, or even change the whole key or tempo of your song. You also have the ability to keep all of your automation and effect sends on the track in tact, rather than having to print or bypass it and copy it to a new track so it all looks and behaves the same.
How about adding Multiple Tracks that are already named? Again, Reaper makes this easy. Pro Tools has the New Track dialog and we can choose all kinds of different types of tracks, but we still have to name them individually after they’re added. In Reaper you can say, I want to add 16 tracks and name them Vocal and they will be named “Vocal 1, Vocal 2, Vocal 3 etc.” This should be the standard. How many times have you had a singer have to sit around and wait for you to name all of your vocal tracks before you begin? This explains why I get so many songs to mix with track names like “Audio 1″ or “Audio 1.dup”. Speaking of tracks: do we really need so many track types? Reaper somehow manages to get away with just one. Any track can be used for anything. Midi, Instrument, Audio, Aux, Buss, FX return. They can perform multiple functions as well.
Now Pro Tools finally has Clip Gain (hooray). Reaper already has (had) many different areas to adjust volume, including Pre-FX (great for adjusting vocals before it hits your compressor) and separate envelopes based on track, item (region) or even takes. As you’re comping takes, you can adjust the takes level so it matches the others in case there were recording inconsistencies. It also has Pan, Mute and even Pitch envelopes as well. All happening in real-time non-destructive.
Another huge difference is a preference called Mouse Modifiers. These allows you to decide what happens when we click, right click, or drag the mouse to different areas of the screen. It can change the behavior based on putting the mouse on the upper or lower half of regions (items) or just changing how all the modifiers (Control, Command, Alt, Opt etc) will behave. You can have your mouse turn into a Zoom tool depending on where you place it or you can trigger any action in any way throughout the program. You can also click any open area and have it open any window or dialog or perform a unique custom action. Pretty much anything you can think of, can be done. Between mouse modifiers and keyboard shortcuts, everything can be customized. These settings can also be saved and exported as well.
Another biggie is Track Defaults. Not only can you save FX chains to open a group of plugins on a track with unique settings, but you can also save Track Templates that can easily be imported into any session (project) at any time. If you set up all your drum tracks the same way each time with settings, effect sends, and inputs you can just choose “Import Tracks from Template” and they’ll pop into your session (project) ready to go. Imagine how much time can be saved with this feature! Yes, this can be done in Pro Tools but it requires importing from another session, choosing tracks one by one, and deciding to not bring in the audio. Not quite as intuitive.
Users have been begging for Offline Bounce for years. While it seems like a small thing for people who only do music, I can imagine it’s a bit more important for people working on two hour movies. Even for those of us who work on three minute pop songs, the Queue Rendering features in Reaper can be very useful. Imagine that you needed to bounce twelve different mixes of your song ex: a few alternate versions, a TV, Acapella and an Instrumental mix. In Reaper, you can set each one up and add it to the Render Queue. You can then take a break, run that queue and each version will open up, render a mix, close, and do the next one in the queue all on it’s own. In Pro Tools, we still have to run each mix in real-time and set each one up separately. A tedious task for running stems for movies or TV.
I’m sure there’s a few more features that I can’t think of at the moment but I think these are some of major ones that I really wish Pro Tools would consider adding to the program. I know it looks like I’m trying to run down our favorite DAW but I assure you, I’m not. My goal here is to hopefully inspire one of the best programs ever created to stay competitive with all of the latest features while speeding up our productivity in the process. Maybe we could all put some pressure on them as well. (wink)
To be clear, there’s still many things that Pro Tools does much better than Reaper or any other DAW (Elastic Audio, VCA tracks and Automation), but that’s an article for a different time, directed at the other team.
Thank you for your time.
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From Wikipedia: Kenny Gioia is a Multi-Platinum music producer, engineer, mixer and songwriter from New York City, who is best known for working on the #1 hits “Sex and Candy” and “Crush”. Together with his long-term partner Shep Goodman, he owns a production company and record label.
Pro Tools really misses all these small things that could speed up workflow a lot. Especially offline bounce.
Reaper, by now should be really be on every radar of any audio engineer or producer taking her/ his job seriously.
It’s not replacing PT for now, but is has taken second place single handedly.
The Future? Time will tell.
I’ve been meaning to do something similar and outline some areas of improvement for Pro Tools. This is really great! Thanks.
Some good (and frequently discussed) feature request here – not really unique to Reaper though…
Also, regarding grid mode and snap – you can hold down Command in PT to temporarily suspend grid mode. And, even better than snapping in other DAWs, grid mode doesn’t force you to get close to the line in say 1 bar mode – very quick to rearrange big chunks then – don’t have to be precise since you’re in grid mode
Also, I have yet to see a Reaper theme that I personally like better than PT’s new UI. AVID got that right IMO.
been a protooler since sound designer… the gui is stale and clunky. the amount of poking around to do simple stuff that i can do easily on sony vegas, makes me crazy. i like reaper but its still not ready for prime time… as you know, going from pre- production to session to mix, in any studio or pre pro setup is where pt rules…. plus when you have a studio full of musicians,[ in my case union sessions,] the last thing you need it a crash, or issues. yes avid is stuck in the mud, reaper is getting more mature, but it still a work in progress…. i am also sick of shelling out mega bucks for updates and hardware, only for minor updates. i am still looking for the protools killer, and i havent found it….. i do love skins on reaper, black on lime green is very cool………
I’m not convinced about customizable keyboard shortcuts. If there’s a good mechanism for saving/loading them and transferring them from system to system then it’d be OK, but if you’re a sound editor/engineer who is constantly moving between edit systems it could be a complete PITA. Customizable macros would be awesome though. I’d particularly like to see a shortcut for snapping a clip (or a whole lot of them) to its ORIGINAL timestamp.
Is that theme available for download?
An interesting article Kenny, I do however feel that while Reaper might have some workflow advantages in some area, it is incredibly clunky, disorganized and ‘Linux-y’.
Reaper seems to be programmed and pushed forward in areas that are the flavour du jour or area of interest for the programmers, rather than looking at the whole and spending time in tightening up the user experience.
Customization and flexibility is great, up to a point – the UI is an awful mish-mash of menus and has inconsistent vibe throughout.
Reaper will for me always remain an interesting tool to fire up on occasion for something specific or for a change, but until someone throws big money at it, be it Cockos or someone else, it will never become widely used, accepted or as polished as Pro Tools, Logic etc are.
Hey Kenny,
it would be really nice if you would do the same in the other direction: Which features (of Pro Tools) does Reaper need from your view to be finally able to replace Pro Tools?
Thank you for the article,
Nils
“but until someone throws big money at it, be it Cockos or someone else, it will never become widely used, accepted or as polished as Pro Tools, Logic etc are.”
I don’t agree with this, (what does $$$ have to do with it?) but I DO agree with the Linux part…for years I have said Reaper is the Linux of DAW’s!
[...] ProTooler Blog has a nice comparison of Reaper vs ProTools if you use either it’s an intresting article looking at the differences in approach. [...]
Hmm, ProTools vs Reaper? Seems like there are a good handful of great DAW ‘s now days. All seems to have the few things they do well. That in mind Reaper caught my eye because of the $60.00 price tag. I’m also convinces that the battle over which DAW to use has a ton to do with what a person chooses to get use to. At any rate, great article with some good info and thanks for posting.
Dave
You should compare it to SawStudio as well. SawStudio is AMAZING and super smooth. Extremely fast and light on the CPU.
Not only can you save you keyboard shortcuts to bring to another computer, but you can save ALL your customizations, including theme, to one file. Or you can just keep Reaper installed portable on a flash drive since it’s less than 100MB installed. (!)
I will preface by saying I have only ever used Reaper as a DAW, but you make me feel like it was a lucky choice. I use all the feature you spoke off, take them for granted actually….. But I thought they would be industry standards….it would be really disappointing to lose them by switching DAW’s……when you render in Pro tools, you have to do it in real time????? really?
Sorry to pile it on but after dealing with an Avid Customer Service nightmare this week (had to buy ANOTHER support code to just speak with a representative about the previous support issue and now have to fax in a form to get a refund!!!) I think its time to compile a list of demands for Avid. I have an HD2 system which will soon become obsolete because of their own lack of foresight in terms of creating a flexible infrastructure. Sure I can trade them in for half the price of an HD Native Card but thats a big step down.
-Better, cheaper upgrade paths.
-Ability to use ANY midi device as a controller for ANY parameter (ala Ableton Live).
-Better integration with Virtual Instruments
-More responsive interface (takes way too long to copy plugins from one channel to another compared to most DAWs).
-Customizable Plug-in folders
-Track templates (like Digital Performer’s clipboard feature)
-Track freeze (including for hardware inserts)
-Resolve memory leak issues so that previous sessions don’t continue to eat up memory after they’re closed.
-More accurate and responsive system usage indicator. On a laptop Pro Tools feels like a fragile toy that I have to tiptoe around or else it will error or crash. And this is a brand new laptop!
-64-bit!
-Better customer service!!!
This is just for starters…I’ve got dozens of improvements for this dinosaur of a program.
I get it. Pro Tools designed their engine so long ago that bringing it up to speed takes a lot of work. But thats THEIR problem not ours and we shouldn’t have to pay for it. And if we have to pay for it we should at least see results! What about the HD Pro Tools 10 upgrade was $1000.00 more than the native upgrade. Same new features right? Once you’ve bought into the HD club you shouldn’t have to keep paying your dues each time.
Pro Tools is nearly useless for anyone using Vienna Instruments, Kontakt or Omnisphere. The memory leaks cause it to freeze and pinwheel at about 1/50th (no exaggeration) of the load of Ableton Live. I can load over 40 instances of Omnisphere in Ableton with plenty of other synths and plug-ins. In Pro Tools I’m lucky if I can get 3 or 4 going in a session without it stopping or freezing or just behaving unpredictably. I think thats the worst part. You’re never quite sure what it can handle on any given day when you introduce software instruments. I’ve had to use Vienna Ensemble Pro just to pick up the slack on their outdated program.
I like so much about Pro Tools and their audio functionality. Tab to transient should be universal for all programs. Audio editing is fantastic. Elastic audio is genius and intuitive. I’m usually the one defending Avid but we need to see some effort from them. Stop resting on your laurels guys. Name a substantial improvement since elastic audio? Elastic pitch? No. Clip gain? Not exactly a game changer for a 1500.00 upgrade on HD. I can’t even tell a difference with the new Cache feature. Feels like snake oil to me.
I think if people begin to throw their support behind more agile forward thinking companies like Cuckos or Ableton or whatever seems best to you then they will overcome the tenuous strangle hold Avid has on the recording world. Or the next generation will just opt for better more affordable software.
I’ll end my rant with this thought. Download the iPhone app Figure by Propellerhead’s. I think this is a brief vision of things to come. This kind of simplicity, elegance and willful abandon of outdated linear recording protocols will give birth to a new and more imaginative way of creating music. Its just a matter of how quickly we want to get there and whether Avid wants to join us.
Thanks for a highly useful comparison of practical features in Reaper and Protools.
I still use Protools for very specific tasks, mainly dialogue editing and re-recording mixes in post, but the things I now do in Reaper, I don’t want to do in Protools any longer. Those workflows have become less practical and more painful to pull off in Protools. I too would love to see the necessary improvements made in Protools.
However it looks like we’ll be stuck with what we’ve got for quite a while.
Concerning Reaper not being ready for prime time, you’d do the Protools and Reaper communities a great service in laying out specifics and general feelings greater detail. People record concerts with small laptops and decent interfaces on Reaper, even netbooks. The AVID hardware, especially the HD and newer MBoxes run great with it at extremely low latencies. HD Native cards for example have no trouble whatsoever at doing 32 samples latency.
Protools is quite superior in automation recording features and the fact that they have VCA faders(an extra automation layer of volume & mute[temp-override]). Then there’s the hardware integration. All that means however, is that Protools is only more useful for mixing, at least to me.
It has become a less flexible DAW, so again, I’m thankful Kenny brought this up. It’s the right kind of pressure to challenge Avid.
I’m a begginer and pro tools seems to be the industry standard but, reaper cost 40 bucks only, I don’t care about industry standard, but do you get the same results with both about quality in the end? my records can be polished and sound great with both? or reaper will never make a song sound like PT would?
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home-page/2010/8/6/pro-tools-v-reaper-sound-test-the-results.html
Try this test. Reaper sounds as good as PT. If there is a difference no one could tell it.
Great article Kenny. I was a Pro Tool user but I discovered Reaper two years ago. I switched totally and I’m doing tracking, editing and mixing ITB with Reaper. I felt in love with the filosophy of Cockos tired of my m-powered 8 limitations, bugs and crashes and expensive crossgrades and updates filosophy of Avid. Reaper does everything I need and every day I discover more funcionalitty and versatility. In fact, your tutorials help me to master it. Kenny Gioia’s Reaper Tutorials are a must for Reaper users.
For small and big studios Reaper is a great choice if you don’t spend expensive hardware Avid interfaces already. But if you have PT HD with an 003 and you master it and have great workflow, then you need to recover the investment you made using Avid products.
I decided not to invest more in Avid products and start to look the other way. I think PT needs to be redesign in order to stop losing market share. They reign in the expensive recording studios and post-production market but the way music is being produced, recorded and mixed is changing very fast, and there are DAWs that do that job now better than PT. For me Reaper is the best DAW I’ve ever work with, and I used Frutty Loops, Cool Edit, Cubase and PT over my 8 years in the industry.
Reaper has an amazing community of dedicated followers,with tremendous support.A fantastic team of developers committed to improvement,responsive to ideas,and extremely flexible in their approach. Thanks Kenny for your endorsements,criticisms and loyalty.
ive used all daws in the past but reaper is the biggest joke of them all. if you are serious about your business and clients, steer away from it.
GUI i mean is your business really running so bad that you have time to configure a GUI?
offline bounce – is your business really running so bad that you cant afford hardware?
reaper is a joke and i aint laughing…
“reaper is a joke and i aint laughing…”
Care to explain the punch line?
Cubase has all of these things and more.
Reaper is great, too. It is highly customizable and has many workflow-orientated features, that Kenny has outlined.
Pro Tools is clunky in comparison and, despite owning it, I think it is inferior.
Just my 2c.
Cheers
I’ve tried switching from Pro Tools to Reaper, Logic, Cubase and Nuendo and I use Fairlight about 60% of the time at work (for the last 3 years). Everything I’ve tried sacrifices features or workflow that have become essential for me. There is no way in hell you can convince me that Pro Tools is clunky or inferior in comparison to any of these. At most they’re just different. They all have their advantages but if those advantages don’t align with your needs then they’re useless. That goes both ways- PT isn’t for everyone.
All reaper does is crash. And when it does it takes my creativity and motivation and crushes it. DTR!!! F*** reaper!!!!!!
I have both Pro Tools 10 and Reaper. I had made the switch back from Cubase to Reaper 2 years back and I hardly use Pro Tools until I get files done in Pro Tools these days. Very small tasks are just too easy in Reaper to get back to Pro Tools, probably the only area it will shine is when you record an orchestra or something of the sorts where you need a lot of track counts with the lowest of latency and you are dealing with a lot of people and of course a great deal of money. And should that come at a high price is a question that only we can ask as of now!? But one would definitely wonder what is the fuss all about in terms of money regarding Pro Tools, when what you can actually acomplish with Reaper for only $60. Its crazy. There is no DAW like Reaper. And Kenny only makes it too easy.
It is possible to set up a VCA fader in Reaper, you just have to assign a track as a group master for all the tracks you want to control.
I have done a lot of sound design over the years and have always used Sound Forge. I need a tool that includes a loop tuner and and in-situ cross fade of that loop. SF is a gem for that. From the sound of it, PT has all of that functionality. I have just begun to look at Reaper and am not at all sure that I could get that level of ability for designing sounds. Could someone describe the PT vrs Reaper abilities regarding creating loops, tuning and cross-fading. My interests have to do with compatibility with a client who uses PT. I don’t think I would quit using SF. I do not particularly want to learn PT unless I really need to. I also do some music production and am looking for a tool for THAT. That is why I am considering PT or Reaper.
Any insight into what PT and Reaper can do for the sound designer regarding loop creation would be much appreciated. Thank You. -Pat
great article.
adjohnson:
if your machine is crashing, upgrade your machine. i’ve yet to have a crash on a 3.4ghz with 12gb ram with reaper. i dont consider it luck either.
test driver:
business MUST be good if you are making your clients wait to render in real time. thats not very fair to them. specially if they are paying you by the hour to do an audio book and they need it immediately
protools is seeming to be like apple, beats by dre, tight pants, checkered shoes, and thick framed glasses with no prescription. cosmetic and fashionable with no purpose.
[...] [...]
Tried both, between a 8 month period & I’m sticking with Pro Tools. Before Pro Tools I was strictly using Nuendo to track, edit, mix & master. Pro Tools is the industry standard software for a reason though. Those who say Reaper can do everything Pro Tools can is only telling half truth. It can’t & probably will never be able to give you a better sound because its sound engine isn’t as strong or great. Only those who haven’t been doing this long can’t distinguish the difference, but to a trained ear the difference is huge. It’s just like saying “why go analog when the digital plugins sound exactly the same.” If you can’t distinguish the difference then you don’t know any better, but if you can you’d never state something like that. Neither the waves nor bombfactory 1176 plugins sound nearly as great as the hardware 1176, for example. Reaper indeed has features Pro Tools lack, but Pro Tools is the overall best DAW out there & it’s been industry standard for this long for a reason. Oh yeah & for those complaining crashes, that’s a personal problem. Try maxing out your ram & getting a hard drive that spins faster than 5400rpm.
I started out with Samplitude, was turned off even trying pro-tools when I started using reaper because of their requirement for you to spend $60 just to run their trial, besides you can spend over 3K and STILL not have 7.1 down-mix in Pro-tools or Samplitude. Now nothing can make me steer away from using Reaper because nothing so far out there can touch it.
PT vs Reaper?
I’ve been using PT for over 15 years & became a certified PT Instructor about 12 years ago (if that counts for anything). I had to take the certification course to be able to teach it at an Avid / Digi certified school. Now, I’m not saying that I know everything but I am very comfortable with the systems. My problem is more with Avid (no wonder their employees call it ‘Avoid)’. I got tired of their gouging & terrible support & their horrible MIDI implementation.. A year ago I downloaded Reaper after hearing so much good press; that was one of the smartest moves I’ve ever made. I can have two different interfaces at the same time; one for inputs & one for outputs. It will generate & receive SMPTE LTC even though I’m using a 003R, I can’t do that with PT. It’s incredibly stable, in fact it’s never crashed. I can have multiple sessions (tabbed) open at the same time, all with different tempos & loop lengths & they all play in sync at the same time. Each track can be of a different sample rate & bit depth; there’s no conversion. I can create a send by dragging from one send to another on the mixer. The list is so long that it would take many pages to describe the differences. How about exporting a track with all of the processing on it? All I have to do is hold down a couple of keys & drag it to the desktop. A five minute sample takes about 3 seconds. DONE! As for the quality of the sound, it’s as good as PT. If you think PT is so much better then do some double blind comparisons, I’ve never met anyone who can tell the difference. Just yesterday I took my MBP into school & gave a Reaper demo to my PT class; they were ‘gob smacked’ & several said that they would be buying it this weekend. As for the GUI, check out the ‘Imperial’ skin from ‘House of White Tie’. It’s modeled after a Neve desk with a Studer transport. Absolutely beautiful; the nicest DAW GUI out there. If you have PT then give it a try, it’s Rewire compatible so you you can launch Reaper from within PT on an Instrument track. In closing may I sum it up with this: The developers have made a mockery out of the old expression “You get what you payed for.”
And I say BULLSHIT!!! That’s just my two cents for what it’s worth.
“It can’t & probably will never be able to give you a better sound because its sound engine isn’t as strong or great. Only those who haven’t been doing this long can’t distinguish the difference, but to a trained ear the difference is huge. It’s just like saying “why go analog when the digital plugins sound exactly the same.” If you can’t distinguish the difference then you don’t know any better, but if you can you’d never state something like that. Neither the waves nor bombfactory 1176 plugins sound nearly as great as the hardware 1176, for example.”
So you’re comparing two software DAWs and then telling us you must judge their sound quality like you would compare a plugin to the hardware equivalent. I think you are full of crap! Everyone that has had any experience knows that opinions on sound quality are relative. It seems like more and more professionals are incorporating Reaper into their tool kit. Of course PT will be around for quite a while because it’s an industry standard but, Reaper is on its way up for many reasons. Sound engine quality? Give me a break. What’s your OS? What interfaces are you using? Cabling? Internal/External clocking? The “sound engine” may not be as big a factor as you think. I’ll bet “trained ears” can hear a difference between one PT rig and another. I would love to see a scientific comparison of Reaper and PT on that one – Put both DAWs on the same piece of hardware and shoot it out with measurable results.
I’m a PT10 native owner, the dualling here has really got me thinking hard about Reaper! After all that, I’ve got to try it out before the PT11 happens. Great article, and extremely informative discussion!
Final year sound production student here (and ex IT professional).
At RMIT Melbourne we are taught and assessed in Tools and Logic, I find myself procrastinating big assignments because I KNOW I can get them done at least twice as fast in Reaper. I’ll be an ‘employable pro tools expert’ by the years end, but once I graduate I won’t be touching tools again unless I absolutely have to. It’s a backwards dinosaur still trying to drag the analog era and workflow into this digital age. For the record, I also think that the 4.0 Reaper gui is more intuitive and clean than any other theme, or daw I’ve used in the past (Cubase, Ableton Live, Logic, Tools, ACID). Prior to 4.0 yes you could say the gui sucked, and was very ‘linuxy’.
Pro Tools? Ha! It seems like I’ve wasted the last 3 years or more waiting for those jokers to get there act up to scratch, only to be told as a ‘Vanilla’ user that one of the main functions I’ve been waiting for, a software facility that inserts the whole audio mix into Ram has been reserved for hardware users only! This is the company that said they were not going to go 64bit because they could see no significant advantages just a few years ago, now that virtually everyone else has, are advertising what a big deal it is that they are finally making the switch. JOKERS!
As for Reaper, I’m still in the learning phase, but I’ve already bought a copy and it looks like it will replace PT as my main DAW. It’s an absolutely great app, especially in the area of getting things done the way you want them to be done, verses the way that DAW companies think it should be. I think the bottom line is that Avid, as many have expressed before, are really focusing on the big buck pro industry users, while Cockos will leave no stone unturned in the effort to give everything it can to please it’s customer base. For me, it’s not difficult to see where my best interests lie, and which company have it at heart. Go Reaper! I wish I had discovered it earlier.