The biggest problem I have with reaper is that it spoiled me towards other apps. It just works. You have solution to almost every idea/problem you may have. You can mod it to hell and back with ease. Creators are THE BEST people there are, they treat their users with respect and this is the only software that I literally cant wait to pay for another upgrade (and that is the best part - I'm using it for _more_ than a decade and paid 120$ for all of the updates, upgrades, support). Another thing is: I can be wherever in the world, with the shittiest internet there is - and I can still download it quickly and start doing emergency stuff in a matter of minutes (which happened couple of times - the best part was when I was able to use reaper as a live mixer with built in plugins when we were stuck in the woods after a storm with the band and decided to do a gig on whatever we had - and I did it on some random laptop with freshly downloaded reaper). Right now, besides recording/mixing/mastering I'm using it with thunderbolt interface as an insert effect rack when mixing big live shows - getting less than 2ms stable system (with zero-latency plugins like PSP Infinistrip). Reaper is one of the best things that happened to digital audio world.
The real value I find is that you can use the full version as a "trial" for however long you want, you can spend so much time actually deciding if you like the daw or not, then when ready purchase
I use Ableton because it's so integrated with Max, but I truly think everyone needs to have an install and learn Reaper.. I think it will be the future as more and more music is made outside of professional studios. It's an amazing piece of software made by a company that CARES about it's user base (looking at you Avid) & with a great community
Just started using Reaper after years of using Pro Tools. I believe yer right. With all that Reaper can do and it's extremely small footprint. I'd put money on the bet that the next "industry standard" DAW will be Reaper.
It’s already becoming the standard for sound design in game audio as well, especially because how powerful it is when it comes to batch processing things 👾
I've made the switch to Reaper from Pro Tools, and folks like Myk, Kenny Gioia, and Adam Steel have helped tremendously with the transition. Reaper packs in so many features and functions (especially for the price) and with all of the amazing tutorials out there, it really could be anyone's first and last DAW.
I love Reaper so much. It makes life so much easier. I started with cubase sx, which was good at that time. After cubase 5 i switched to pro tools 9 because someone said if i want to become professional in recording i have to use pro tools. I struggled a lot with it, and after countless crashes, problems and high bills with usb dongle repairs i just didn't want to pay for i used a cracked version of pro tools 10. No problems with dongle anymore but same amount of crashes with the software. After it really stressed me completely out within an more advanced album production, i finally switched to Reaper. And never looked back.
One of the things I most love in Reaper is the community. Reaper does not have only simple users, Reaper has passionate fans teaching and learning together online. 🤟🏼
Can't recommend it enough. Using it for 8-9 years and never let me down. Let's face it, people use Logic and Pro Tools (Great DAWS BTW) because that's what the industry uses. Not because they're better. Don't let the price fool you. Oh, and when you buy it, you own it (Pro Tools- What's up with that?)
Reaper is great once you get it set up the way that feels natural for yourself. I still personally prefer something like Studio One for creating music, because it just feels and always has felt like a natural extension and super intuitive out of the box. Also other point I'd say for a beginner it is almost always smart to pick a "industry standard" (not only in music), because it has way more resources available online. I remember starting with Reaper, and there was only handful of youtube channels etc. to learn from and it was quite frustrating to learn from documentation and the forums solely. It's not the case anymore though.
I've been using REAPER for a couple of years now. I'm an ex-gigging musician - now recording hobbyist. When I started, I bought Adam's REAPER course. It gave me a huge leg up. He doesn't bog you down with the intricacies - breaks things down into short, no fluff, easy-to-follow chapters. I still refer back to it from time-to-time when I get stuck.
I've switched from ProTools to Reaper because it is truly the Swiss army knife of DAW's. Since I have switched I have tripled my mixing speed. I use OSC on my android tablet that has every plugin I own on it. All my short cuts are at my finger tips always. My first DAW was Sonic Solutions which was at the time light years ahead of ProTools, sound wise it was 24 bit at the time that ProTools was still 16 bit. Plus it was elegant to use at the time that I was doing film sound design. I love Reaper because it reminds me of the way I use to use Sonic. One thing that Myk didn't mention is that every track is what ever it needs to be. Midi, stereo, mono, or ever video. You don't have to load a midi track just add midi to the track you open. The speed in which I work is improving all the time. Short cuts on Reaper are so far ahead of the other DAW's. My templates are also all on my Tablet. If you haven't tried Reaper you should. The other big thing about reaper is the lack of crashes. If it crashes on me now it is because of a plugin not reaper.
I grew up with Cubase on Atari St and then did the whole Pro Tools thing but now I’m a fully committed Reaper convert. It’s just so flexible, stable and extremely competitively priced. Well worth checking out.
I'll swear by Reaper. No silly proprietary functionality or gimmicks, just a DAW that lets you mix and edit and build signal chains with no extra BS. Great online community that is constantly solving (or fixing) issues. Useful options instead of pointless menu-dives oriented around video or beat production.
@@heavymetalmixer91 that's probably fair, but if you know enough about it you can make it closer too FL /Ableton, I would say less accessible though as FL and Ableton for EDM/Electronic styles. Reaper seems too have quite a guitar/live instrument user group, so its probably slightly skewed in that area in terms of ease of use.
@@heavymetalmixer91 I would agree. The MIDI interfacing is not great. I wouldn't call it "music production" software by any stretch. However, I have yet to find anything more mixing-friendly in terms of the simplicity of routing and flexibility. It makes ProTools look silly. Printing stems is a breeze. Editing takes literal seconds, with no stupid magic tricks needed. It does what you need without a bunch of extra flashy-sparkly.
@@phillipemery572 I like the midi interface, I haven't had a single issue with producing and composing on reaper. What's different about it that makes FL or Ableton better for production? Not being sassy or combative just genuinely curious. Is it a layout thing? I cant think of a single thing that either of those can do that reaper cant.
@@rdwilln FL is notoriously good for hiphop and trap. Making 808 slides in FL is a breeze and I never made reaper do it as good. Between Ableton and Reaper there is no big difference. I only use reaper now tho, everything else outpreforms them both, you can even set up a session view like in Ableton. That being said, it comes barebones and it can take a lot of time to set everything up so it works fast for production. The latter point is still where Ableton shines the most. Reaper isn't nearly as "plug and play" as Ableton is.
Got Reaper v2.5 back in 2008 to use an external sound card with an ASUS eee-PC 701 (the first of its kind netbook)! With only 700mhz CPU and 4GB SSD drive, I could actually get some basic mixes done! My two last albums have been created in reaper as well and the DAW of my choice for my current one is obvious: REAPER Great tool for beginners and professionals alike!
I had the 10" version 1Ghz CPU... great bit of kit, that. Wish I'd kept hold of it now, would be much easier to nip out to my electronic kit in the garden shed with it! But a great example of Reaper's performance being able to run on that low a spec PC
Reaper all the way here. It's cheap, very flexible and can do whatever you want it to do. It can seem a little intimidating at first but once you have used it for a few days you start getting the hang of it. Best of all the Reaper community is like no other and everyone wants to help. Plus it has thousands of free plugins via the Reaper stash and as long as you don't care about graphics the plugins are great. Just recently a new set of plugins came to us called Tukan and are a little more like commercial ones in looks. I love Reaper, been using it for a good few years now and have not looked back!
John Matthews (Tukan Studios) is absolutely amazing, and a great guy to boot. He literally just started using REAPER in September of 2021, and started writing those JSFX plugins in October with no previous coding/scripting experience 😳
@@LetsTalkAboutReaper Agreed, John Matthews seems like a very genuine guy and a bit of a genius to be honest! Tukan Studios Plugins are just fantastic. What a Marvellous community Reaper is. We are very lucky. Keep up the great work Myk!
What a *fantastic* video describing some of the most attractive features of Reaper, along with rea-listic :) use cases! And this just scratches the surface! Also, I've found that, if DAW computer resource management is a priority (without in any way compromising audio quality), using Reaper with Melda Production's effects allows for hands-down the most incredible professional tool set for audio recording. It takes a little more time upfront to learn, but is well worth the return in robust functionality, including unlimited DAW customization to match any user workflow. Bravo Myk! 👍
Setting up a monitor control so easyily was a pure joy to watch! I did this all the time by hand, not knowing it can be achieved so quickly - what a time saver!!! I can't count how often I recently congratulated myself for switching over to Reaper! It's like diving into an ocean of excitement and tons of stuff to discover, each time you come back to it. Thanks for those great vids, man!
My man preaching the good word! I've used Reaper as my DAW of choice since at least 2008. Everything Myk said highlighted some of the most killer features of Reaper but barely even scratched the surface. I actually learned a few things I had no idea about. I think Myk left out 2 of the most important facts about Reaper, which are a) a full license costs about $60 bucks, and b) that license gets you access to, I believe, 2 major version upgrades. Reaper community 4 lyfe!
Bro after months of dealing with audio drop outs from cubase, I seen your video and gave reaper a shot and it’s completely life changing, thank you my bro
Switched to reaper a couple of years ago after using other DAWs and sequencers for 25 years and finally I think I have the perfect tool. I have found zero drawbacks so far and a million positives!
I'm with you... I absolutely love Reaper. I recently switched from Ableton because of the cost and I've spent the time to learn the DAW, I love it. Very intuitive, affordable ($60 for non-commercial license), robust, light on resources, customizable, good learning resources on TH-cam and a great community.
As religious monks in the jungle we all tend to proselytize people when it comes to guitars, amps, microphones and especially, DAWs. But this incorporated into the equation I have to admit, Reaper became in case of quality (jitter, phase coherence, stability) and versatility the number one on the market. In some characteristics together with other products, but never together with one, the same competitor. Although I use the pro tools skin (you wouldn’t guess I’ve opened reaper) I excessively use a lot of the properties reaper provides. Not from the beginning, but step by step I tended to. Moving away from this DAW? Only if I’d get paid a lot of money and even then… not without a lot of pain. I think, although it’s not as popular here in Germany as in the Anglo Saxon area, it’s the future of DAWs. This DAW meanwhile is miles ahead in comparison to competitors. I gave it a try once, and we married soon later. Divorce excluded. I tried to avoid religious terms to make it sound more objective. ;) Beste Gruesse aus Berlin.
Reaper can be customized more than any other DAW on the market. It also comes with insufficient outboard gear and no virtual instruments or samples, unless things have changed since the last time I messed with it. If you only want to record audio and you love to play with your software, I think Reaper is a better DAW than Pro Tools. But let me know when it comes with a great collection of synths and drum machines like Logic Pro does. I'd love to see Logic Pro featured on this channel sometime. You can put down a synth bass line, choose a virtual drummer, and he or she will create a drum track that follows your bass line. Out of the box. You can't tweak the menus and interface, but it's a whole lot more capable out of the box. Want a Linn Drum Machine, 808, Mellotron, MiniMoog clone, Sampler, Alchemy synth, 10 different drum sets, lots of included outboard gear? How about a virtual drummer included where you can mix in the top and bottom snare mics as well as two different room mics and individual drum mics? I'll stop. If you do electronic music, Reaper comes with nothing. TIP - If you're on a Mac, you can buy all the Logic Pro synths for a mere $30 (MainStage 3.). Then Reaper will have most of what Logic Pro has, for only 30 bucks! Mac only, though.
@@matthijshebly I have a lot of free keyboard plugins. Trust me, they don't stack up. Reaper is great for people who don't need lots of plugins and keyboards.
With the amount of money saved, you can look into buying better plug-ins than what tend to come with DAWs. I would still agree that it isn't great for electronic music though, but it is superior for mixing and mastering.
@@abdulmakba9112 Especially for electronic music it's actually *very* well suited, because the amount of free synths, including ones that rival/surpass paid ones in quality, is staggering.
What I love about Reaper is that, even though I've been using it for years and I'm now beyond comfortable with it and I regularly use all the advanced features in the program, I can always go back to videos like this and discover something helpful that will just continue to make my life easier and easier. Everything else feels beyond slow to me now. Reaper is a professional bit of kit!
totally! everytime i see a kenny gioia tutorial video and i think "wait, i already know how to do that!", i still click on it and watch it because there's always something new or useful in there that i didnt know.
It's so useful. When I'm trying to record drums (I'm a terrible drummer!) there's an abort button which saves me getting up and going over to my PC and telling it not to save all the rubbish tracks I just recorded. Invaluable! 😀
Hey Myk -- welcome to the PLAP family and Pro Mix Academy! Great to see you branching out since your videos are always very clear and straightforward. But I'm still going to stay subscribed to your channel. - I think I owe you another cup of coffee. :-)
Having used Reaper for large scale video game projects I can say the flexibility is great! A lot of this people don't seem to touch on is how DAWs are essentially instruments, The Imagination Machine. They work on the same principle if you think about it. Each one has a different set of workflow (feel) has a way that the human user input gets results, Like a guitar, Has strings, you play it, makes a sound, Sounds like a Guitar. Reaper is pretty much set it up how you want to work, You are not locked to any one way of doing things but at the core of all of this is the goal or the result, getting sound coming out of speakers or headphones at a personal level of quality and other people agreeing with you or not that they enjoy it. It's really the management of external plugins, (let's call those toolboxes or paintbrushes) becoming fluid enough to get an idea and interact with it in situ with what you are creating if that's just random or planned. A canvas with every paint and brush right there. It's well designed and coded, can be modified to suit the musical OCD interaction. It has a huge feature set, expandable with scripts and JS plugins (great resource there alone) not to mention anything to anywhere and back again via the routing and the company doesn't really get in your face about being good enough to use their amazing software for only insert unrealistic price.
Great tips! One thing I love is having multiple tabs open to access various projects. Not sure if other DAWs have this feature, but its pretty handy. Another feature I use a lot is rendering an entire mix or selected regions into the current project. For a long time I didn't know I could apply effects to items on the same track and until Dan Worall mentioned using the built in wet/dry knob on the effects window, I never used it but I am now for another level of tweeking
Been with Reaper since 2016. There are times when I nostalgically miss Pro Tools, but not for any other reason then nostalgia since it was my college life and first real DAW. Reaper just makes sense.
man he is good at explaining stuff bravo!! :) - I have reaper and have concluded that it just a) sounds better b) performs better than other daws c) it does look a bit boring but the recent version looks loads better. d) it is deep! e) the export options are amazing! f) the only thing that puts me off is the side chain thing, where you route to a side chain buss, thats a bit fiddly and I prefer the ability to just do side chain compression and dynamic eq in the plugin like in cubase... but Im a beginner with that so might be wrong. Reaper is not part of the mainstream and thats also why I like it; And also, I dont know why but plugins respond better in reaper try it for yourself! :)
I start using reaper 10 years ago, but every year I try new DAW's, like Cubase, Ableton, Bitwig, Studio One, FL Studio and Reason, but I always came back to Reaper because it's an amazing piece of software! Fast and efficient.
Great video man! On the performance side Reaper Is the king of CPU usage! I switched to reaper after using PT for more than 15 years, because I realized that PT has an awful use of CPU multicore, it peaks 100% in it's meter and using few cores, while the task manager of win showed 45-50%. So we invest buying an expensive CPU, an i9 in my case, so that the daw don't use it at it's full capacity? And nobody talks about it? So I tested all mayor daws with CPU intensive plugins and reaper won the crown, 100% CPU usage in the task manager analyser. It has a learning curve but it's worth it.
Reaper, cost, and low performance laptop, means it is the only one I could use, but I love it and doubt I would bother switching to another DAW. I have not even begun to scratch the surface of it. I have a pretty caveman work flow currently. Refining work flow becomes an ever increasing importance
I came over to reaper two years ago, coming from being ableton user for 8 or more years. no regrets. my computer is fast. reaper IS AlSO fast, the only thing slowing it is bigboy plugins like ni kontakt and anything spectrasonics. and yes the community is great; constant & consistent support. to your point(s) about navigation/screensets: I spoke to a man recently who needed help and with a quick fix to his problem I asked why and when it started and he said he didn't know and couldn't see the screen because he was blind! He was hearing me through a voice synthesizer the whole time as i typed. And he was still recording easily in reaper. I was surprised. But with voice commands and a community knowledgebase he had made it happen.
That remote control feature is insane, absolutely brilliant. I could then control recording from my midi drum kit and even setup an ipad or phone in another room for a singer to control their own mix. Thats very cool.
Great video. Agreed with all of your pints and learned a few things. Thanks for sharing. Reaper is my favorite DAW because it is so flexible. I use it for all of my audio work. For live performance and backing tracks, I chose it over MainStage and Ableton Live. For stereo track editing and DJ’ing tracks for choreography or song order, I chose it over GarageBand or Adobe Audition. For tracking and songwriting, it’s worked very well. Most I’ve trained to use reaper are up and recording in 15 minutes. I’ve used reaper on Mac for years! Very little issues and even then, it’s usually 3rd party plugins, especially if they have a subscription licensing (Roland, waves, NI).
@@LetsTalkAboutReaper I found ableton early 2012 if my mind serves me correctly, I loved it!!! I enjoyed the many built in sounds and effects that allowed me to get up and running quickly. It was a huge leap from FL studio and sony acid for me, after many years of using it I found it to crash very often, especially during tracking. I was introduced to reaper sometime in 2019 during band practice at a friend's studio, he swore by it but I was a stubborn artist hellbent on defending a DAW I could barely keep stable. After sometime, I decided on giving reaper a try around 2020 , I struggled with a few things at first ; like refreshing midi information too verify an instrument was active, latency & common actions. After about a few hours I was able to get everything up and running and realized how insanely customizable of a DAW it really is. It has only locked up once during a session while I was tracking and opening an active vst ( it really didn't like that 😆). It opens insanely fast, cockos updates diligently & theirs a plethora of Tutorials for it online. Not to mention it was free to try , overall I don't think I've worked with a DAW that I have enjoyed this much.
I use Reaper, Studio One and Cubase. But, Reaper makes my worklow a lot easier. We can customize everything the way we like. Trust me... You won't regret having Reaper as your main DAW.
Over decades I have spent thousands of dollars on Vision, Studio Vision, Deck, Cubase, Logic (when it was still owned by eMagic), Reason and probably more. Enter 2021, when I noticed Reaper had all the flexibility and extensive downloadable plugins for a mere 60 dollars for a few years. I mean, what is not to like?
Love watching a good demo for a Daw, with real world info. I'm stuck in Ableton, because i love the fast song creating process. But, very cool to see how Reaper works. Good price, and an exceptional community of users who seem very helpful. That's kinda rare with some other Daws, however good they may be. Not naming any names, though!
Nothing beats Ableton and Bitwig for the fast song writing workflow. Mixing, that’s a different story. Reaper, Cubase, Protools, S1. All great in their own respects.
@@MaximusWhyman What's different though? what makes those better for that purpose? I'm not asking from a combative place, im asking so i can (if it is a better workflow) change reaper to work that way.
@@rdwilln mainly the clip launching features on both. Also, having all the devices easily accessible to tweak without having to open and close plug-in windows. Being able to use macros of rack effects in real-time while you’re launching clips to record a full song idea into the arranger.
Thank you so much for this video. My production path has gone through Cubase on an Atari, Cubase and Reason on PC, Logic on Mac since 2006 until now. I'm about to download Reaper. The workflow looks next level and I have no doubt you only scratched the surface of what it can do. Thanks again. Peace
I'm a longtime user of Reaper, but I've recently switched to Bitwig Studio. I love Reaper's flexibility and low cpu usage, but I ran into issues with latency compensation for both plugin usage and recording. I also ran into some plugin crashes and incompatibility. While Bitwig Studio isn't perfect (no DAW is), its automatic delay compensation gives me better timing and delay adjustment than Reaper. Bitwig also handles all of the plugins I use with very high compatibility. If Reaper were able to properly adjust for latency automatically and have a little better plugin compatibility, it would still be my main DAW. Hopefully the folks at Cockos can improve upon those issues in the future!
I recall being very excited about Bitwig when it was first announced, mainly because of the cross platform compatibility, since I am a heavy Linux user as well. For whatever reason, I never got back to it after beta testing Linux. What's some more things you love about Bitwig?
Bitwig's UI is more accessible when it comes to its integrated plugins and effects chains. FX window pop-ups only happen when you want them to. It's very cpu-friendy and is nearly as customizable as reaper in a lot of ways. It could benefit from some things that Reaper has, like tempo detecting and cropping files to a loop. The two DAW's are pretty neck- and neck to me, with Bitwig having the slight edge for my needs.
I started flirting with REAPER around 2009 and have been exclusive since 2011, when I broke up with Cubendo / PT. Never looked back. REAPER has its quirks and annoyances, to be sure, but they are dwarfed by its myriad virtues.
@@LetsTalkAboutReaper You’re absolutely welcome. Might a introduce you a singer from your homeland to get some guidances in reaper usage? She is a little shy in this case and you are a great person and teacher. She is from nyc and PA
@@MrAxel1892 I'd be glad to help in any way I can, and if I can't, I have a small army of educators and friends on my discord server. You can find the link on any of the recent videos on my channel.
I was a pro tools guy until ine day i was olaying around on a fridnds setup and he used reaper. I am fully committed to reaper now. Its just the perfect daw for me! Even my basic workflow from the get go really sped up for me on reaper. For some reason it just made sense! Great video and yes i am subscribed to letstalkaboutreaper! Lol
Awesome video, thanks! That remote control option is amazing! I had no idea it existed! I have used Reaper on my MacBook Pro for a few years now, and I love it! It can certainly do WAY more than I currently take advantage of. I honestly cannot recall if it has EVER crashed/hung. That is AMAZING!!!
And on top of all that, REAPER costs a _fraction_ of what you need to fork over for any other DAW. About $60 (for private up to small business use) for a full fledged recording studio that outperforms Pro Tools in _several_ categories is downright ridiculously cheap.
Dang straight! They offer some SERIOUS competition to some more well known amp sims at an affordable price, and they have really stepped it up the past couple of years!
I will recommend REAPER to anyone. sure while you get lots more with logic, and stuff out of the box, people almost always use third party plugins more than stock plugins. Protools, logic, nuendo, sonar, bandlab, studio 1, crashes way more than reaper. If reaper crasheds twice for me in the last year or so, then that is plenty. and also, get this. Usually, if a plugin crashes in your daw, it frezes the daw and crashes as well. but with reaper, you can have reaper still working and functioning even if the plugin crashes. just reload it and boom. instunt recovery lol. I love reaper. My girlfriend might jealous cuz maybe I spend more time in reaper than I do with her lol...
Reaper loads like Reason used too. I have so much Buyers remorse. Nice vid! Can you do a 3 monitor work with Reaper, separating mixer, plugs, sequencer like in Reason? Damn, I wish Reason had that customization.
I've never used a 3 monitor setup but there are definitely those who use three or more. You can undock things and move them to whatever monitor you want!
@@LetsTalkAboutReaper good to know, I use Reason in a 3 monitor setup and it speeds up workflow so much. With the downhill direction Reason has gone since ver 10 I'm a bit fed up with corporate subscription nonsense and slow adaption to modern features. This vid was a great reminder just how Reapoer just continues to improve over the years. I remember using it way back and was impressed. Did a few vocal projects with it.
Long time Cubase user here who has now started to use REAPER, Loving my new work flow. Still give Cubase the thumbs up but REAPER just works for my creative flow. Although, instruments and plugins, while usable, are not its strong point. you will likely want to add third party and fish around for the good free stuff out there. That said, the massive JS library which you can access does offer allot of of decent effects and tools.. so perhaps that makes up for it.
I've only been learning to mix my own music for about 3 months. I haven't completed a project yet. I chose Reaper because of it's reputation and the price of the license seemed very reasonable. But can I ask a question please. If I send my tracks to be mastered to a pro studio and they don't use reaper (almost certainly Pro Tools) how does that work or can they still open the files? Stupid question probably, sorry.
Not a stupid question at all. The short version is you would export multitracks to send to the remote mixing party. They would revive .wav files and some notes from you regarding project tempo and whatever else might be relevant, then they can mix in the DAW of their choice.
My apologies, you said to be mastered, not mixed.. if you're sending something to be mastered, you'd be sending a .wav of your completed mix. The same concept, it's just they would be getting the final mix instead of WAV files for each track in a project
I have been using Reaper since 2011 and it was love at first sight. Before that I used Cubase and before that Adobe Audition and long before that I used cool edit... does anyone remember that one? With all of them I always had problems but Reaper came to make my life easier
If you want an example of a pop/electronic album produced entirely in Reaper, check out WLUWD by Tristam. It's extremely high quality and shows that Reaper is just as/more capable as any other
After many years of using an old version of Logic (the last one before it became Mac-only) I'm thinking about getting a new DAW. Ideally I'd like it to be the one involving the smallest learning curve. Recording guitars seems to be a lesser priority with the likes of Ableton and FL Studio from what I can tell. Any advice gratefully received...
Download it and try it , all you have to do is watch a beginners tutorial on how to move around Reaper, once you understand the basics it will be very easy and intuitive.
Reaper is like.... older Android I guess is a good comparison. Doesn't come with much, but is very customizable, there are extensions and you can do almost anything with it. But you basically need to have a whole collection of 3rd party plugins and if you do not like to tinker all of the time, dig trough settings to make it act as you like and much rather have something that just works as it is, maybe it's not the tool for you. You can of course download and try it, but otherwise, maybe also give Cubase or Studio One a go. I went from FL Studio ages ago to Logic, wanted to switch due to some annoying limitations I could not get over, tried Reaper but I did not like it at all, so I switched to Studio One. It's great overall, but it also had some annoying things based on my workflow (and some annoying performance issues when using a larger number of CPU-intensive VST synths). Now I finally switched to Cubase, motivated by the release of v12 and it's freaking awesome. The only thing it is missing is the nesting of channels in the mixer (it does have it in the arranger) but while nice to have, it is not a deal breaker for me. I'm sure it will also be implemented at some point.
@@AlexLapugeanI came from Cubase to reaper. I like the fact that reaper changes to my work flow (custom menus) as apposed to me changing my workflow to fit my daw.
@@rdwilln Sure, I understand. I tried reaper as well but it was not to my liking. Too much customization for me. I felt like I was spending my time setting up the sortware instead of actually making music. I also could not get pass that intefrace that looks like a basic windows program. I know you can mod the appearance, but that does not change everything and you are always dependend on the quality of the work of different people. The plugins that come with Reaper are also abismal, you basically need 3rd party plugins. There are some things you can do in reaper that you cannot do in any other software, however, I did not find myself limited by not being able to do them, I much prefer having a nicely designed DAW with a good/logical workflow that I can learn, get accustomed to and basically set it to "autopilot". Together with the amazing midi mapping support, that is basically Cubase for me.
Very interesting and to be honest I'm in rather dire need of a DAW with a small CPU footprint. I'm just not sure how I'd manage without Ableton's Scene function and fantastic drag n drop features.
I’ve been an Ableton Live user for 15 years (currently Live 11) This is the first I’ve heard of Reaper. Can you stretch audio like in Live? Also one of my favorite new features is Take Lanes. When recording a track you can record another take right over the top in the same track however many times you like. You then can unfold them and using a brush tool highlight the best parts in whichever track which seamlessly stitched them together. It’s super fast and yields amazing results! I wonder if you could set up Reaper with that functionality? It definitely looks like a great DAW.
I've not used Ableton, so I don't necessarily have a direct one to one comparison to answer you question, but you can stretch audio in REAPER. REAPER also has "take lanes" and you can split audio and select which take you want to be active for each section that you've created with splits. ONce you have your comp completed, you can "lock" that comp or save multiple comps for easy recall, then collapse the take lanes so it shows as one lane. hope that helps!
Reaper is so stable you can even change the entire look of reaper with hundreds of available themes online while on all out playback without flinching or any stutter to the playback..
Do it. I know a guy. Matter of fact, i know an army of well qualified folks to help anyone who would like some assistance learning to bend REAPER to their will.
I've used a handful of other DAWs, and I seriously don't understand how the rest of the world functions on them. Reaper cuts out so much of the BS of DAW architecture. It's fantastic.
I am a loyal REAPER user, but there are a few things that I don't agree with in this video. First, praising REAPER for its small download size really makes no sense. REAPER doesn't come with any samples or software instruments (technically there's like one synth included). If you are using real plugins, you will need space to store them and the startup time will go down. It's a bit hard to know about the example of resource usage, but it seems cherry-picked (just using built-in plugins perhaps). One of the big advantages of REAPER is indeed that it is flexible, but what often goes unmentioned is how much time it takes to set things up correctly. Many of the default settings are nonsense (like the scrolling settings). This is the opposite of a DAW like Logic that is much easier to learn and never really has to be customized. Do you want to spend time making music or customizing your DAW? Finally, on the community front while there are many creators making videos about REAPER, you can find the same thing for every other DAW. I have had mixed experiences with the REAPER community. Some corners are welcoming but others are elitist. While there are many user driven REAPER extensions, REAPER itself is not open source, which is a shame. Also, if you're planning to use REAPER with Linux, don't expect it to be great. REAPER is a great DAW for power users, but it is not without drawbacks, and for most people it is not better than Logic.
I mention other plugins increasing load time on some projects, and of course the performance meter is somewhat cherry picked, because the intention was to show how lightweight REAPER itself is. There are other DAWs that can hit double digit CPU usage on a blank project, and that is my point, the DAW itself is light on resources. REAPER cannot be responsible for resource usage of plugins that are not a part of it. Apart from that, I feel you make some good points, and you have no argument with me :) REAPER can be tough to get along with out of the box without a little assistance or at the very least checking the manual or watching Kenny Gioa's video guides that were commissioned by COCKOS/REAPER. While I like the idea of being able to easily hit the ground running, i also am put off by the idea that people seriously expect everything to be dead simple without the need to consult the guide. I would seriously struggle with Pro Tools or any other DAW if i did not spend the time to learn it.
What DAW are you using and why? Share below
Make sure you check out Myk's Drum Editing Course: ➡➡ bit.ly/3tBtJV4
Pro Tools - like a pro
I'm a little bit biased, but....
I've been using Ableton Live for most of my life but have gone towards Logic Pro and StudioOne in the last years.
Reaper all day
pro tools 12. 2022
The biggest problem I have with reaper is that it spoiled me towards other apps. It just works. You have solution to almost every idea/problem you may have. You can mod it to hell and back with ease. Creators are THE BEST people there are, they treat their users with respect and this is the only software that I literally cant wait to pay for another upgrade (and that is the best part - I'm using it for _more_ than a decade and paid 120$ for all of the updates, upgrades, support). Another thing is: I can be wherever in the world, with the shittiest internet there is - and I can still download it quickly and start doing emergency stuff in a matter of minutes (which happened couple of times - the best part was when I was able to use reaper as a live mixer with built in plugins when we were stuck in the woods after a storm with the band and decided to do a gig on whatever we had - and I did it on some random laptop with freshly downloaded reaper). Right now, besides recording/mixing/mastering I'm using it with thunderbolt interface as an insert effect rack when mixing big live shows - getting less than 2ms stable system (with zero-latency plugins like PSP Infinistrip). Reaper is one of the best things that happened to digital audio world.
Reaper is such a good bang for your buck, its crazy the power you get for just $60!
The real value I find is that you can use the full version as a "trial" for however long you want, you can spend so much time actually deciding if you like the daw or not, then when ready purchase
I use Ableton because it's so integrated with Max, but I truly think everyone needs to have an install and learn Reaper.. I think it will be the future as more and more music is made outside of professional studios. It's an amazing piece of software made by a company that CARES about it's user base (looking at you Avid) & with a great community
Just started using Reaper after years of using Pro Tools. I believe yer right. With all that Reaper can do and it's extremely small footprint. I'd put money on the bet that the next "industry standard" DAW will be Reaper.
@@nathanmarshallmusic I just had my 2yr anniversary with REAPER after 15years with PT. I still like PT, but I like REAPER so much more.
It’s already becoming the standard for sound design in game audio as well, especially because how powerful it is when it comes to batch processing things 👾
You can have something like Max in Reaper with ReaSpagetti. There are also gui prototypes with ReaImGui.
@@rano12321yes but with reaspaghetti can you create a little sound plugin? Something like a custom delay like you can do with max msp
I've made the switch to Reaper from Pro Tools, and folks like Myk, Kenny Gioia, and Adam Steel have helped tremendously with the transition. Reaper packs in so many features and functions (especially for the price) and with all of the amazing tutorials out there, it really could be anyone's first and last DAW.
I love Reaper so much. It makes life so much easier.
I started with cubase sx, which was good at that time. After cubase 5 i switched to pro tools 9 because someone said if i want to become professional in recording i have to use pro tools. I struggled a lot with it, and after countless crashes, problems and high bills with usb dongle repairs i just didn't want to pay for i used a cracked version of pro tools 10. No problems with dongle anymore but same amount of crashes with the software.
After it really stressed me completely out within an more advanced album production, i finally switched to Reaper.
And never looked back.
One of the things I most love in Reaper is the community. Reaper does not have only simple users, Reaper has passionate fans teaching and learning together online. 🤟🏼
Can't recommend it enough. Using it for 8-9 years and never let me down. Let's face it, people use Logic and Pro Tools (Great DAWS BTW) because that's what the industry uses. Not because they're better. Don't let the price fool you. Oh, and when you buy it, you own it (Pro Tools- What's up with that?)
Reaper is great once you get it set up the way that feels natural for yourself. I still personally prefer something like Studio One for creating music, because it just feels and always has felt like a natural extension and super intuitive out of the box.
Also other point I'd say for a beginner it is almost always smart to pick a "industry standard" (not only in music), because it has way more resources available online. I remember starting with Reaper, and there was only handful of youtube channels etc. to learn from and it was quite frustrating to learn from documentation and the forums solely. It's not the case anymore though.
I'm loving the positivity here and how a lot of people are willing to embrace change. Good work Myk and Warren!
Thank you for all you do! Wouldn't be here without you!
You Rock Adam!! Thanks for the great comment!
@@LetsTalkAboutReaper Adam is the man!!
Oh look who arrived, Reaper Jesus!!!!
I've been using REAPER for a couple of years now. I'm an ex-gigging musician - now recording hobbyist. When I started, I bought Adam's REAPER course. It gave me a huge leg up. He doesn't bog you down with the intricacies - breaks things down into short, no fluff, easy-to-follow chapters. I still refer back to it from time-to-time when I get stuck.
Thanks for having Myk on. I already watch his normal channel and am happy to see him getting love in a larger sense.
I've switched from ProTools to Reaper because it is truly the Swiss army knife of DAW's. Since I have switched I have tripled my mixing speed. I use OSC on my android tablet that has every plugin I own on it. All my short cuts are at my finger tips always. My first DAW was Sonic Solutions which was at the time light years ahead of ProTools, sound wise it was 24 bit at the time that ProTools was still 16 bit. Plus it was elegant to use at the time that I was doing film sound design. I love Reaper because it reminds me of the way I use to use Sonic. One thing that Myk didn't mention is that every track is what ever it needs to be. Midi, stereo, mono, or ever video. You don't have to load a midi track just add midi to the track you open. The speed in which I work is improving all the time. Short cuts on Reaper are so far ahead of the other DAW's. My templates are also all on my Tablet. If you haven't tried Reaper you should. The other big thing about reaper is the lack of crashes. If it crashes on me now it is because of a plugin not reaper.
The "Track is a Track" is my first pick! Actually covered that on my channel today 😁
th-cam.com/video/yF2q1Q6NOzI/w-d-xo.html
I grew up with Cubase on Atari St and then did the whole Pro Tools thing but now I’m a fully committed Reaper convert. It’s just so flexible, stable and extremely competitively priced. Well worth checking out.
Thanks ever so much for sharing!
I'll swear by Reaper. No silly proprietary functionality or gimmicks, just a DAW that lets you mix and edit and build signal chains with no extra BS. Great online community that is constantly solving (or fixing) issues. Useful options instead of pointless menu-dives oriented around video or beat production.
Reaper is great for many music production needs, though it's not as good as FL or Ableton for making beats or EDM.
@@heavymetalmixer91 that's probably fair, but if you know enough about it you can make it closer too FL /Ableton, I would say less accessible though as FL and Ableton for EDM/Electronic styles.
Reaper seems too have quite a guitar/live instrument user group, so its probably slightly skewed in that area in terms of ease of use.
@@heavymetalmixer91 I would agree. The MIDI interfacing is not great. I wouldn't call it "music production" software by any stretch. However, I have yet to find anything more mixing-friendly in terms of the simplicity of routing and flexibility. It makes ProTools look silly. Printing stems is a breeze. Editing takes literal seconds, with no stupid magic tricks needed. It does what you need without a bunch of extra flashy-sparkly.
@@phillipemery572 I like the midi interface, I haven't had a single issue with producing and composing on reaper. What's different about it that makes FL or Ableton better for production? Not being sassy or combative just genuinely curious. Is it a layout thing? I cant think of a single thing that either of those can do that reaper cant.
@@rdwilln FL is notoriously good for hiphop and trap. Making 808 slides in FL is a breeze and I never made reaper do it as good. Between Ableton and Reaper there is no big difference. I only use reaper now tho, everything else outpreforms them both, you can even set up a session view like in Ableton. That being said, it comes barebones and it can take a lot of time to set everything up so it works fast for production. The latter point is still where Ableton shines the most. Reaper isn't nearly as "plug and play" as Ableton is.
Got Reaper v2.5 back in 2008 to use an external sound card with an ASUS eee-PC 701 (the first of its kind netbook)!
With only 700mhz CPU and 4GB SSD drive, I could actually get some basic mixes done!
My two last albums have been created in reaper as well and the DAW of my choice for my current one is obvious: REAPER
Great tool for beginners and professionals alike!
Thanks ever so much for sharing!
I had the 10" version 1Ghz CPU... great bit of kit, that. Wish I'd kept hold of it now, would be much easier to nip out to my electronic kit in the garden shed with it! But a great example of Reaper's performance being able to run on that low a spec PC
Wow, outpouring of support on this video is outstanding! You folks sure know how to make a guy feel welcome 🤗
You Rock Myk!!
Reaper all the way here. It's cheap, very flexible and can do whatever you want it to do. It can seem a little intimidating at first but once you have used it for a few days you start getting the hang of it. Best of all the Reaper community is like no other and everyone wants to help. Plus it has thousands of free plugins via the Reaper stash and as long as you don't care about graphics the plugins are great. Just recently a new set of plugins came to us called Tukan and are a little more like commercial ones in looks. I love Reaper, been using it for a good few years now and have not looked back!
John Matthews (Tukan Studios) is absolutely amazing, and a great guy to boot. He literally just started using REAPER in September of 2021, and started writing those JSFX plugins in October with no previous coding/scripting experience 😳
@@LetsTalkAboutReaper Agreed, John Matthews seems like a very genuine guy and a bit of a genius to be honest! Tukan Studios Plugins are just fantastic. What a Marvellous community Reaper is. We are very lucky. Keep up the great work Myk!
What a *fantastic* video describing some of the most attractive features of Reaper, along with rea-listic :) use cases! And this just scratches the surface! Also, I've found that, if DAW computer resource management is a priority (without in any way compromising audio quality), using Reaper with Melda Production's effects allows for hands-down the most incredible professional tool set for audio recording. It takes a little more time upfront to learn, but is well worth the return in robust functionality, including unlimited DAW customization to match any user workflow. Bravo Myk! 👍
Setting up a monitor control so easyily was a pure joy to watch! I did this all the time by hand, not knowing it can be achieved so quickly - what a time saver!!! I can't count how often I recently congratulated myself for switching over to Reaper! It's like diving into an ocean of excitement and tons of stuff to discover, each time you come back to it. Thanks for those great vids, man!
My man preaching the good word! I've used Reaper as my DAW of choice since at least 2008. Everything Myk said highlighted some of the most killer features of Reaper but barely even scratched the surface. I actually learned a few things I had no idea about. I think Myk left out 2 of the most important facts about Reaper, which are a) a full license costs about $60 bucks, and b) that license gets you access to, I believe, 2 major version upgrades. Reaper community 4 lyfe!
I've been using Reaper since 09. It does everything I need with no fuss
Bro after months of dealing with audio drop outs from cubase, I seen your video and gave reaper a shot and it’s completely life changing, thank you my bro
Switched to reaper a couple of years ago after using other DAWs and sequencers for 25 years and finally I think I have the perfect tool. I have found zero drawbacks so far and a million positives!
Using reaper.. from the day I started, No complains ..what so ever..plus REAPERMANIA youtube channel and the community is just amazing.👏
I'm with you... I absolutely love Reaper. I recently switched from Ableton because of the cost and I've spent the time to learn the DAW, I love it.
Very intuitive, affordable ($60 for non-commercial license), robust, light on resources, customizable, good learning resources on TH-cam and a great community.
As religious monks in the jungle we all tend to proselytize people when it comes to guitars, amps, microphones and especially, DAWs.
But this incorporated into the equation I have to admit, Reaper became in case of quality (jitter, phase coherence, stability) and versatility the number one on the market. In some characteristics together with other products, but never together with one, the same competitor.
Although I use the pro tools skin (you wouldn’t guess I’ve opened reaper) I excessively use a lot of the properties reaper provides. Not from the beginning, but step by step I tended to.
Moving away from this DAW? Only if I’d get paid a lot of money and even then… not without a lot of pain. I think, although it’s not as popular here in Germany as in the Anglo Saxon area, it’s the future of DAWs. This DAW meanwhile is miles ahead in comparison to competitors. I gave it a try once, and we married soon later. Divorce excluded.
I tried to avoid religious terms to make it sound more objective. ;) Beste Gruesse aus Berlin.
Holy crap. So much useful information!! I'm particularly excited about the monitor mixes.
I use Reaper. It just works and is so easy to use...or is as complex as you require it to be. love it.
Reaper can be customized more than any other DAW on the market. It also comes with insufficient outboard gear and no virtual instruments or samples, unless things have changed since the last time I messed with it. If you only want to record audio and you love to play with your software, I think Reaper is a better DAW than Pro Tools. But let me know when it comes with a great collection of synths and drum machines like Logic Pro does. I'd love to see Logic Pro featured on this channel sometime. You can put down a synth bass line, choose a virtual drummer, and he or she will create a drum track that follows your bass line. Out of the box. You can't tweak the menus and interface, but it's a whole lot more capable out of the box. Want a Linn Drum Machine, 808, Mellotron, MiniMoog clone, Sampler, Alchemy synth, 10 different drum sets, lots of included outboard gear? How about a virtual drummer included where you can mix in the top and bottom snare mics as well as two different room mics and individual drum mics? I'll stop. If you do electronic music, Reaper comes with nothing. TIP - If you're on a Mac, you can buy all the Logic Pro synths for a mere $30 (MainStage 3.). Then Reaper will have most of what Logic Pro has, for only 30 bucks! Mac only, though.
I hope they'll never include any of that. There's loads and loads of free instruments available. There's no need to burden Reaper itself with that.
@@matthijshebly I have a lot of free keyboard plugins. Trust me, they don't stack up. Reaper is great for people who don't need lots of plugins and keyboards.
With the amount of money saved, you can look into buying better plug-ins than what tend to come with DAWs. I would still agree that it isn't great for electronic music though, but it is superior for mixing and mastering.
@@abdulmakba9112 Especially for electronic music it's actually *very* well suited, because the amount of free synths, including ones that rival/surpass paid ones in quality, is staggering.
What I love about Reaper is that, even though I've been using it for years and I'm now beyond comfortable with it and I regularly use all the advanced features in the program, I can always go back to videos like this and discover something helpful that will just continue to make my life easier and easier.
Everything else feels beyond slow to me now. Reaper is a professional bit of kit!
totally! everytime i see a kenny gioia tutorial video and i think "wait, i already know how to do that!", i still click on it and watch it because there's always something new or useful in there that i didnt know.
That remote control is mind blowing
It's so useful. When I'm trying to record drums (I'm a terrible drummer!) there's an abort button which saves me getting up and going over to my PC and telling it not to save all the rubbish tracks I just recorded. Invaluable! 😀
I love Reaper. I abuse Neural and Fabfilter plugins and it's still awesome.
Yeah get it Myk!!
Thanks ever so much! Myk Rules!
I love that Daw, simple and tweekable
Hey Myk -- welcome to the PLAP family and Pro Mix Academy! Great to see you branching out since your videos are always very clear and straightforward. But I'm still going to stay subscribed to your channel. - I think I owe you another cup of coffee. :-)
Having used Reaper for large scale video game projects I can say the flexibility is great! A lot of this people don't seem to touch on is how DAWs are essentially instruments, The Imagination Machine. They work on the same principle if you think about it. Each one has a different set of workflow (feel) has a way that the human user input gets results, Like a guitar, Has strings, you play it, makes a sound, Sounds like a Guitar. Reaper is pretty much set it up how you want to work, You are not locked to any one way of doing things but at the core of all of this is the goal or the result, getting sound coming out of speakers or headphones at a personal level of quality and other people agreeing with you or not that they enjoy it. It's really the management of external plugins, (let's call those toolboxes or paintbrushes) becoming fluid enough to get an idea and interact with it in situ with what you are creating if that's just random or planned. A canvas with every paint and brush right there. It's well designed and coded, can be modified to suit the musical OCD interaction. It has a huge feature set, expandable with scripts and JS plugins (great resource there alone) not to mention anything to anywhere and back again via the routing and the company doesn't really get in your face about being good enough to use their amazing software for only insert unrealistic price.
Great tips! One thing I love is having multiple tabs open to access various projects. Not sure if other DAWs have this feature, but its pretty handy. Another feature I use a lot is rendering an entire mix or selected regions into the current project.
For a long time I didn't know I could apply effects to items on the same track and until Dan Worall mentioned using the built in wet/dry knob on the effects window, I never used it but I am now for another level of tweeking
Been with Reaper since 2016. There are times when I nostalgically miss Pro Tools, but not for any other reason then nostalgia since it was my college life and first real DAW. Reaper just makes sense.
man he is good at explaining stuff bravo!! :) - I have reaper and have concluded that it just a) sounds better b) performs better than other daws c) it does look a bit boring but the recent version looks loads better. d) it is deep! e) the export options are amazing! f) the only thing that puts me off is the side chain thing, where you route to a side chain buss, thats a bit fiddly and I prefer the ability to just do side chain compression and dynamic eq in the plugin like in cubase... but Im a beginner with that so might be wrong. Reaper is not part of the mainstream and thats also why I like it; And also, I dont know why but plugins respond better in reaper try it for yourself! :)
REAPER. Yeah, I love it! The only DAW I ever really loved.
I start using reaper 10 years ago, but every year I try new DAW's, like Cubase, Ableton, Bitwig, Studio One, FL Studio and Reason, but I always came back to Reaper because it's an amazing piece of software! Fast and efficient.
Great video man! On the performance side Reaper Is the king of CPU usage! I switched to reaper after using PT for more than 15 years, because I realized that PT has an awful use of CPU multicore, it peaks 100% in it's meter and using few cores, while the task manager of win showed 45-50%. So we invest buying an expensive CPU, an i9 in my case, so that the daw don't use it at it's full capacity? And nobody talks about it? So I tested all mayor daws with CPU intensive plugins and reaper won the crown, 100% CPU usage in the task manager analyser. It has a learning curve but it's worth it.
Reaper listed in Top 10 Mastering DAW's available at any price. Myk is a great teacher : )
Thank you! 🥰
Reaper, cost, and low performance laptop, means it is the only one I could use, but I love it and doubt I would bother switching to another DAW. I have not even begun to scratch the surface of it. I have a pretty caveman work flow currently. Refining work flow becomes an ever increasing importance
Excellent. Reaper forever. Myk is a great teacher. Thanks Myk.
thank YOU! Wouldn't be here without you guys and girls! 🥰
Excellent presentation!
Thanks ever so much
I came over to reaper two years ago, coming from being ableton user for 8 or more years. no regrets. my computer is fast. reaper IS AlSO fast, the only thing slowing it is bigboy plugins like ni kontakt and anything spectrasonics. and yes the community is great; constant & consistent support.
to your point(s) about navigation/screensets: I spoke to a man recently who needed help and with a quick fix to his problem I asked why and when it started and he said he didn't know and couldn't see the screen because he was blind! He was hearing me through a voice synthesizer the whole time as i typed. And he was still recording easily in reaper. I was surprised. But with voice commands and a community knowledgebase he had made it happen.
Reaper, never had an issue opening an old project
I've been using REAPER for 5 or 6yrs now, and honestly, I don't think I will ever use anything else.
I’ve been using Reaper for years and almost everything in here was a revelation! It’s so versatile.
That remote control feature is insane, absolutely brilliant. I could then control recording from my midi drum kit and even setup an ipad or phone in another room for a singer to control their own mix. Thats very cool.
Yes, very cool indeed!
I have been using reaper since 2012 and love it. Wasted so many years on cubase since atari which always felt like a beta most of the time once on PC
I've been loving and using Reaper for a while, but the auto track color and multiple screensets BLEW MY MIND. Thank you!
There's so much buried under the hood to discover!
RT CY vi Jo pointpooool
Great video. Agreed with all of your pints and learned a few things. Thanks for sharing.
Reaper is my favorite DAW because it is so flexible. I use it for all of my audio work.
For live performance and backing tracks, I chose it over MainStage and Ableton Live.
For stereo track editing and DJ’ing tracks for choreography or song order, I chose it over GarageBand or Adobe Audition.
For tracking and songwriting, it’s worked very well. Most I’ve trained to use reaper are up and recording in 15 minutes.
I’ve used reaper on Mac for years! Very little issues and even then, it’s usually 3rd party plugins, especially if they have a subscription licensing (Roland, waves, NI).
After 10 years of abelton , reaper has changed my workflow dramatically. 1 year of consistant use ; I won't go back.
you have me curious about the conversion story, if you don't mind 🤔
@@LetsTalkAboutReaper I found ableton early 2012 if my mind serves me correctly, I loved it!!! I enjoyed the many built in sounds and effects that allowed me to get up and running quickly. It was a huge leap from FL studio and sony acid for me, after many years of using it I found it to crash very often, especially during tracking. I was introduced to reaper sometime in 2019 during band practice at a friend's studio, he swore by it but I was a stubborn artist hellbent on defending a DAW I could barely keep stable. After sometime, I decided on giving reaper a try around 2020 , I struggled with a few things at first ; like refreshing midi information too verify an instrument was active, latency & common actions. After about a few hours I was able to get everything up and running and realized how insanely customizable of a DAW it really is. It has only locked up once during a session while I was tracking and opening an active vst ( it really didn't like that 😆). It opens insanely fast, cockos updates diligently & theirs a plethora of Tutorials for it online. Not to mention it was free to try , overall I don't think I've worked with a DAW that I have enjoyed this much.
I use Reaper, Studio One and Cubase. But, Reaper makes my worklow a lot easier. We can customize everything the way we like. Trust me... You won't regret having Reaper as your main DAW.
Over decades I have spent thousands of dollars on Vision, Studio Vision, Deck, Cubase, Logic (when it was still owned by eMagic), Reason and probably more.
Enter 2021, when I noticed Reaper had all the flexibility and extensive downloadable plugins for a mere 60 dollars for a few years. I mean, what is not to like?
Love watching a good demo for a Daw, with real world info. I'm stuck in Ableton, because i love the fast song creating process. But, very cool to see how Reaper works. Good price, and an exceptional community of users who seem very helpful. That's kinda rare with some other Daws, however good they may be. Not naming any names, though!
Nothing beats Ableton and Bitwig for the fast song writing workflow. Mixing, that’s a different story. Reaper, Cubase, Protools, S1. All great in their own respects.
@@MaximusWhyman What's different though? what makes those better for that purpose? I'm not asking from a combative place, im asking so i can (if it is a better workflow) change reaper to work that way.
@@rdwilln mainly the clip launching features on both. Also, having all the devices easily accessible to tweak without having to open and close plug-in windows. Being able to use macros of rack effects in real-time while you’re launching clips to record a full song idea into the arranger.
Thank you so much for this video. My production path has gone through Cubase on an Atari, Cubase and Reason on PC, Logic on Mac since 2006 until now. I'm about to download Reaper. The workflow looks next level and I have no doubt you only scratched the surface of what it can do. Thanks again. Peace
I'm a longtime user of Reaper, but I've recently switched to Bitwig Studio. I love Reaper's flexibility and low cpu usage, but I ran into issues with latency compensation for both plugin usage and recording. I also ran into some plugin crashes and incompatibility. While Bitwig Studio isn't perfect (no DAW is), its automatic delay compensation gives me better timing and delay adjustment than Reaper. Bitwig also handles all of the plugins I use with very high compatibility. If Reaper were able to properly adjust for latency automatically and have a little better plugin compatibility, it would still be my main DAW. Hopefully the folks at Cockos can improve upon those issues in the future!
I recall being very excited about Bitwig when it was first announced, mainly because of the cross platform compatibility, since I am a heavy Linux user as well. For whatever reason, I never got back to it after beta testing Linux.
What's some more things you love about Bitwig?
Bitwig's UI is more accessible when it comes to its integrated plugins and effects chains. FX window pop-ups only happen when you want them to. It's very cpu-friendy and is nearly as customizable as reaper in a lot of ways. It could benefit from some things that Reaper has, like tempo detecting and cropping files to a loop. The two DAW's are pretty neck- and neck to me, with Bitwig having the slight edge for my needs.
I started flirting with REAPER around 2009 and have been exclusive since 2011, when I broke up with Cubendo / PT. Never looked back. REAPER has its quirks and annoyances, to be sure, but they are dwarfed by its myriad virtues.
Myk, you're a tremendous ambassador.
Dang dyslexia, I originally read this as tremendous disaster 🤣
Thank you 🥰
@@LetsTalkAboutReaper I was originally going to insert a roast but you did a better job of it than I would have. 😂
@@Hermiel self-deprecating humor is always in fashion with me 🤡
Agreed! Thanks ever so much! Myk Rules!
It works with anything I have thrown at it. Very decent price. I hope they keep it that way.
I’ve forgotten to thank for this amazing introduction/overview. You rock, Myk. Peace and love, brother.
Thank you! 🥰
@@LetsTalkAboutReaper
You’re absolutely welcome. Might a introduce you a singer from your homeland to get some guidances in reaper usage?
She is a little shy in this case and you are a great person and teacher. She is from nyc and PA
@@MrAxel1892 I'd be glad to help in any way I can, and if I can't, I have a small army of educators and friends on my discord server. You can find the link on any of the recent videos on my channel.
I was a pro tools guy until ine day i was olaying around on a fridnds setup and he used reaper. I am fully committed to reaper now. Its just the perfect daw for me! Even my basic workflow from the get go really sped up for me on reaper. For some reason it just made sense! Great video and yes i am subscribed to letstalkaboutreaper! Lol
Most excellent overview.
Awesome video, thanks! That remote control option is amazing! I had no idea it existed! I have used Reaper on my MacBook Pro for a few years now, and I love it! It can certainly do WAY more than I currently take advantage of. I honestly cannot recall if it has EVER crashed/hung. That is AMAZING!!!
Reaper completes me!
Wow Reaper is pretty cool!
And on top of all that, REAPER costs a _fraction_ of what you need to fork over for any other DAW. About $60 (for private up to small business use) for a full fledged recording studio that outperforms Pro Tools in _several_ categories is downright ridiculously cheap.
The fact that Justin Frankel doesn't need our money and makes REAPER just because he WANTS to is a big win for us all.
Thanks ever so much for the great comment!
You Rock Myk!
What an amazing run down… thank you!
Audio Assault FTW! 🤘
Dang straight! They offer some SERIOUS competition to some more well known amp sims at an affordable price, and they have really stepped it up the past couple of years!
I will recommend REAPER to anyone. sure while you get lots more with logic, and stuff out of the box, people almost always use third party plugins more than stock plugins. Protools, logic, nuendo, sonar, bandlab, studio 1, crashes way more than reaper. If reaper crasheds twice for me in the last year or so, then that is plenty. and also, get this. Usually, if a plugin crashes in your daw, it frezes the daw and crashes as well. but with reaper, you can have reaper still working and functioning even if the plugin crashes. just reload it and boom. instunt recovery lol. I love reaper. My girlfriend might jealous cuz maybe I spend more time in reaper than I do with her lol...
Wow, I never knew about some of these features. The cue mixes and servers are things I can't believe I didn't know about before.
Myk rules!!
Myk is the best!
The best!
Reaper loads like Reason used too. I have so much Buyers remorse. Nice vid!
Can you do a 3 monitor work with Reaper, separating mixer, plugs, sequencer like in Reason? Damn, I wish Reason had that customization.
I've never used a 3 monitor setup but there are definitely those who use three or more. You can undock things and move them to whatever monitor you want!
@@LetsTalkAboutReaper good to know, I use Reason in a 3 monitor setup and it speeds up workflow so much. With the downhill direction Reason has gone since ver 10 I'm a bit fed up with corporate subscription nonsense and slow adaption to modern features. This vid was a great reminder just how Reapoer just continues to improve over the years. I remember using it way back and was impressed. Did a few vocal projects with it.
Warren, your output on TH-cam is incredible!!! You definitely deserve to reaper the rewards ;)
Haha I see what you did there!
Myk completes me!
Long time Cubase user here who has now started to use REAPER, Loving my new work flow. Still give Cubase the thumbs up but REAPER just works for my creative flow. Although, instruments and plugins, while usable, are not its strong point. you will likely want to add third party and fish around for the good free stuff out there. That said, the massive JS library which you can access does offer allot of of decent effects and tools.. so perhaps that makes up for it.
Amazing. I didn't know about a few of these shortcuts. I generally find Reaper intuitive to discover.
I've only been learning to mix my own music for about 3 months. I haven't completed a project yet. I chose Reaper because of it's reputation and the price of the license seemed very reasonable.
But can I ask a question please. If I send my tracks to be mastered to a pro studio and they don't use reaper (almost certainly Pro Tools) how does that work or can they still open the files?
Stupid question probably, sorry.
Not a stupid question at all. The short version is you would export multitracks to send to the remote mixing party. They would revive .wav files and some notes from you regarding project tempo and whatever else might be relevant, then they can mix in the DAW of their choice.
My apologies, you said to be mastered, not mixed.. if you're sending something to be mastered, you'd be sending a .wav of your completed mix. The same concept, it's just they would be getting the final mix instead of WAV files for each track in a project
@@LetsTalkAboutReaper Ah thank you. I get it now thanks.
Always learn something useful from Myk. Great stuff!
Thanks ever so much
I have been using Reaper since 2011 and it was love at first sight.
Before that I used Cubase and before that Adobe Audition and long before that I used cool edit... does anyone remember that one?
With all of them I always had problems but Reaper came to make my life easier
If you want an example of a pop/electronic album produced entirely in Reaper, check out WLUWD by Tristam. It's extremely high quality and shows that Reaper is just as/more capable as any other
After many years of using an old version of Logic (the last one before it became Mac-only) I'm thinking about getting a new DAW. Ideally I'd like it to be the one involving the smallest learning curve. Recording guitars seems to be a lesser priority with the likes of Ableton and FL Studio from what I can tell. Any advice gratefully received...
Download it and try it , all you have to do is watch a beginners tutorial on how to move around Reaper, once you understand the basics it will be very easy and intuitive.
Reaper is like.... older Android I guess is a good comparison. Doesn't come with much, but is very customizable, there are extensions and you can do almost anything with it. But you basically need to have a whole collection of 3rd party plugins and if you do not like to tinker all of the time, dig trough settings to make it act as you like and much rather have something that just works as it is, maybe it's not the tool for you. You can of course download and try it, but otherwise, maybe also give Cubase or Studio One a go.
I went from FL Studio ages ago to Logic, wanted to switch due to some annoying limitations I could not get over, tried Reaper but I did not like it at all, so I switched to Studio One. It's great overall, but it also had some annoying things based on my workflow (and some annoying performance issues when using a larger number of CPU-intensive VST synths). Now I finally switched to Cubase, motivated by the release of v12 and it's freaking awesome. The only thing it is missing is the nesting of channels in the mixer (it does have it in the arranger) but while nice to have, it is not a deal breaker for me. I'm sure it will also be implemented at some point.
@@AlexLapugeanI came from Cubase to reaper. I like the fact that reaper changes to my work flow (custom menus) as apposed to me changing my workflow to fit my daw.
@@rdwilln Sure, I understand. I tried reaper as well but it was not to my liking. Too much customization for me. I felt like I was spending my time setting up the sortware instead of actually making music. I also could not get pass that intefrace that looks like a basic windows program. I know you can mod the appearance, but that does not change everything and you are always dependend on the quality of the work of different people. The plugins that come with Reaper are also abismal, you basically need 3rd party plugins.
There are some things you can do in reaper that you cannot do in any other software, however, I did not find myself limited by not being able to do them, I much prefer having a nicely designed DAW with a good/logical workflow that I can learn, get accustomed to and basically set it to "autopilot". Together with the amazing midi mapping support, that is basically Cubase for me.
Very interesting and to be honest I'm in rather dire need of a DAW with a small CPU footprint. I'm just not sure how I'd manage without Ableton's Scene function and fantastic drag n drop features.
I’ve been an Ableton Live user for 15 years (currently Live 11) This is the first I’ve heard of Reaper. Can you stretch audio like in Live?
Also one of my favorite new features is Take Lanes. When recording a track you can record another take right over the top in the same track however many times you like. You then can unfold them and using a brush tool highlight the best parts in whichever track which seamlessly stitched them together. It’s super fast and yields amazing results! I wonder if you could set up Reaper with that functionality? It definitely looks like a great DAW.
I've not used Ableton, so I don't necessarily have a direct one to one comparison to answer you question, but you can stretch audio in REAPER. REAPER also has "take lanes" and you can split audio and select which take you want to be active for each section that you've created with splits. ONce you have your comp completed, you can "lock" that comp or save multiple comps for easy recall, then collapse the take lanes so it shows as one lane.
hope that helps!
Reaper is so stable you can even change the entire look of reaper with hundreds of available themes online while on all out playback without flinching or any stutter to the playback..
Reaper is on a 100% level of possibilities and I'm only on the 1% level 😂😂
I see so much talk about REAPER. I might need to give it a spin over the weekend
You will not regret it.
Reaper is a beast❤
Do it. I know a guy. Matter of fact, i know an army of well qualified folks to help anyone who would like some assistance learning to bend REAPER to their will.
I've used a handful of other DAWs, and I seriously don't understand how the rest of the world functions on them. Reaper cuts out so much of the BS of DAW architecture. It's fantastic.
The personal monitoring over URL is enough to win over any other daw if you work with other people.
Love that feature. So long as you have the hardware outputs separate from the main, it's easy to setup
Nice job Myk!
Thank you! I'm a little excited at the moment, if I'm honest.
Great video. Thanks.
Thanks for watching!
Mammoth theme looks amazing with colours little better then stock.
The remote access via mobile device is something I wish I'd known about, thanks for that!
Lotta awesome knowledge here! Love saving time!
Thanks ever so much! Myk Rules!
Thank you man :) I share your opinion 100% 😊
I am a loyal REAPER user, but there are a few things that I don't agree with in this video. First, praising REAPER for its small download size really makes no sense. REAPER doesn't come with any samples or software instruments (technically there's like one synth included). If you are using real plugins, you will need space to store them and the startup time will go down. It's a bit hard to know about the example of resource usage, but it seems cherry-picked (just using built-in plugins perhaps). One of the big advantages of REAPER is indeed that it is flexible, but what often goes unmentioned is how much time it takes to set things up correctly. Many of the default settings are nonsense (like the scrolling settings). This is the opposite of a DAW like Logic that is much easier to learn and never really has to be customized. Do you want to spend time making music or customizing your DAW? Finally, on the community front while there are many creators making videos about REAPER, you can find the same thing for every other DAW. I have had mixed experiences with the REAPER community. Some corners are welcoming but others are elitist. While there are many user driven REAPER extensions, REAPER itself is not open source, which is a shame. Also, if you're planning to use REAPER with Linux, don't expect it to be great. REAPER is a great DAW for power users, but it is not without drawbacks, and for most people it is not better than Logic.
I mention other plugins increasing load time on some projects, and of course the performance meter is somewhat cherry picked, because the intention was to show how lightweight REAPER itself is. There are other DAWs that can hit double digit CPU usage on a blank project, and that is my point, the DAW itself is light on resources. REAPER cannot be responsible for resource usage of plugins that are not a part of it.
Apart from that, I feel you make some good points, and you have no argument with me :) REAPER can be tough to get along with out of the box without a little assistance or at the very least checking the manual or watching Kenny Gioa's video guides that were commissioned by COCKOS/REAPER. While I like the idea of being able to easily hit the ground running, i also am put off by the idea that people seriously expect everything to be dead simple without the need to consult the guide. I would seriously struggle with Pro Tools or any other DAW if i did not spend the time to learn it.
Awsome, thank you. There are some very usefult tips in there, video bookmarked.
Thanks Myk! :)
Hey, thank YOU 🥰
You Rock Audrey!
@@LetsTalkAboutReaper You Rock!
Great info! One of the best Reaper tutorials I have viewed 👍
BTW...I use Reaper exclusively.
Thanks ever so much
Thanks ever so much for sharing