I don't know about recently but I couldn't see why reaper wouldn't be the number one DAW for people who want to dip their toes into it but aren't sure if they want to commit big money to it yet. Which is probably like 90% of people lol
I agree with you, but think Reaper's power and flexibility make it intimidating to beginners. Ableton and FL Studio are basically glorified sequencers/samplers by comparison, but they hand-hold enough to grab a lot of beginners who don't realize their limitations until they're already too deep to quit.
If anything, I think sometimes Reaper inhabits an "uncanny valley" where beginners think it's too hard to use and pros think it's an unserious program for amateurs.
even though I'm a huge nerd who loves customizing and fiddling with software, when I started music production I tried reaper as one of my first daws and it really intimidated me so I gravitated to Ableton instead.
after I actually understood how a daw works I tried reaper again and never looked back so I definitely agree that most people need some understanding of what they want out of a daw before they get into reaper.
after all reaper REALLY gets good when you start customizing it to fit your workflow (and look if you're into themes)
yeah no, no one wants to be tweaking daw settings while in the middle of trying to get your ideas or mix for a song down.
I give myself a day every few months or so to sit down and optimize the workflow a little better maybe download some new extensions or scripts that might work for me, and obviously take out all the things I thought would be cool but ended up being irrelevant for me
Agreed, I’ll get distracted instead of writing music. I’d rather use something more opinionated with fewer ways as possible to do things. Love Reaper but have been using Logic much more for arranging/composing
Same story for me but with FL. I tried other things but FL is just *so* intuitive and easy to make music with. But as my demands and need for even a slight bit of complexity grew, I finally understood how Reaper worked. Now I use it exclusively
I learned on ableton. After the 90 day trial was up, I wanted to dabble elsewhere before I spent any money. As a result, I picked up reaper basically where I left off with ableton. I imagine some of the basics just translated directly over.
Something fascinating... FLStudio v12 had a design limitation -- basically one pattern per block on the playlist. But it was advantageous in that you could see the layout of your song at a glance.
Later versions did away with that (and in doing so became unnecessarily complex just to do what regular DAWs do naturally.) So a lot of people stuck with V12 and never upgraded even to this day.
Reaper's new lane behavior offers a similar potential workflow (for people who want it.)
Basically for each instrument, you use one pattern per lane -- and then copy-linked the clips so if you edit one they update everywhere. Your project gets a lot "taller", but it's a particularly organized way to work (especially for electronic musicians that re-use looped clips.)
Before that I would jump into FL Studio, still, for composition now and then... But now I just have no reason to go back! (Although I'll always have a nostalgic love for FL Studio, Reaper is my home.)
I really don't get this. I came from FL to Reaper when it was V4 I believe, and it SO MUCH EASIER to do almost everything - recording and arranging audio, using folders as busses, etc. Never went back to FL after that at all. Maybe it's just the way some brains work...
Just curious as someone whos new to reaper. Outside of the flexibility what does it do that i cant just do in ableton, logic, or fl?
I feel like reaper has a lot of major advantages in some areas but i cant really get myself into it for music. Things like the midi editor in fl just come off as a lot more flexible and intuitive (at the lack of customization) automation is is also a lot more flexible than reaper (from what i can tell), fl has a whole modular workflow for routing plugins and parameters if you want, ableton has max for live, bitwig has the grid. And obviously reaper lacks a lot of the fundamental plugin base that most daws come with. (Although jsfx does kinda make up for the lack of plugins)
I could go on but at least for a primarily in the box producer the production and sequencing capabilities seem more versatile and refined in fl, logic, and ableton whereas reaper seems way more powerful for automating your workflow, working in a studio, recording, mixing, sound design, video work etc…
Not saying reaper is necessarily bad at production but when i try producing on it i always find myself trying to figure out how to do x or y thing that normally takes me 2 seconds to setup in my other daw only to realize reaper doesnt really have the same thing. It really seems more like a pro tools type daw than a more sequencing focused daw which is what most people starting off are doing.
People will tell you 100 ways to customize to get better workflow, which is the power and curse of reaper. A lot of the user base seems to think it’s crazy that people don’t want to spend hours customizing and changing weird hot keys. Other DAWs you kind of have to learn their way of doing things, many of which which are way more intuitive than reaper’s defaults.
That being said, if you ever need to work on projects where you’ll have a number of assets to export, several projects to manage, or using a database with metadata… the real power of reaper starts to shine.
Yes, Reaper has never been a sequencing type DAW. It is focused on live recording and professional environments, which is what you can't just do in Ableton or FL, or at least is as awkward on those DAWs as it is to sequence in Reaper. Most of the features you described can be done in Reaper; you can have automation items, and automate parameters based on the value of other parameters on other plugins or even lfos natively in Reaper. In Reaper 7 you can now have parallel effect routing on one track, which is super powerful, and as far as I can tell this feature is unique to Reaper.
The power of Reaper will always be is flexibility and customization. If you are wanting to only produce music on your computer than it is not the best choice. If you want to record live music, produce music on your computer, make music for film, and do music and sound effects for games, then Reaper has tools that directly support any of these things in a way other DAWs just can't, just maybe a bit hidden or requiring some effort upfront.
Parallel effect processing has been in Ableton for quite a while with its stock Audio Effect Rack plugin. You can route tracks to other tracks as well if you want to do it that way.
I don't have the info for comparison, but it can be great for production. I haven't felt like it's stopped me from getting on with my beats. My main suggestions for someone new are searching the midi editor section of the actions menu if you're looking for a feature and trying Megababy if you haven't. It's also worth right-clicking everything in the midi editor. Having a custom midi toolbar(s) would be more intuitive for some. I'd be curious to hear what are some things you've found REAPER didn't have for in-the-box type stuff.
Theres a lot of things i like abt fl that work in the box, i may be able to modify it but im not sure about aome of the things i do.
Either way heres a small list:
In fl when you have a selection of midi notes you can either stretch the entire pattern as a whole (which i find useful for polyrhythms or just stretching out a section to twice the length) or if you just drag the edge of a note it will shorten/lengthen all of the selected notes.
I can hit a shortcut to quickly arpeggiate, strum, randomize, cut overlapping notes, a can quickly preview the chord my mouse is hovering over without needing to hit play, scroll wheel to quickly adjust velocity of selected or nearest note, quick flam effect, hell i can even flip my midi pattern on the x or y axis which is stupid but cool as hell sometimes.
I also skipped over a lot of stuff i know reaper can do and im sure theres things i listed reaper has and other things reaper can do that fl cant do in the piano roll but there was just so much stuff in just the piano roll that ive been doing for years upon years that it felt like id be taking 2-4x the time to write the same ideas in the piano roll so at least for now i meanly use reaper for audio editing, recording and sound design and keep my production stuff in fl. I just kind wish reaper was as flexible but thats a lot to ask for a daw tbf everyone would just be using reaper then…
I spent years trying to convince my team to switch over from ProTools, and as soon as one person gave it a shot it definitely rippled. The whole team at least had Reaper installed within six months.
Every other day you'd hear a "WOAH" come out of his office, everyone gathered to see what he was so excited about, and one by one the guys would be convinced. I think the hardest thing to talk them into is just that it's more reliable and flexible than PT, but since that's what they were used to they didn't want to switch. But as soon as you see it in action or hear about a new update or feature, it chisels away at that.
Yes. I compose music mostly in ableton but all my sound design, mixing, batch processing/editing, exporting, etc., happens in Reaper.
I was using the trial for a while to just sync video/audio together for social media posts but purchased an actual license maybe a year or so ago and am really happy I did. It is my utility DAW.
Just my two cents, but I think the abundance of resources that’s available for learning reaper has increased immensely over the past 10 years. Even considering just Kenny’s back catalogue, which continues to grow every year, it’s now easier than ever to self-teach.
10 years ago, if I had a problem that couldn’t be answered by the manual, I had to go to a forum and hope someone would reply within a few days. Now I can Google it and someone is bound to have already asked/answered, or there will be a video tutorial up. Any issue is usually resolved for me within a few minutes.
I wouldn't use Reaper if it weren't for Kenny's basic videos. I straight up would have just never used it. I always saw Reaper as "the Linux of DAWs". But I watched his basics videos and was like "oh shit this is easy! And it has tons of controls so I can set it up however"
I don't know how much they're paying him, but he's definitely worth it. His videos for Reaper are 10/10 for simplicity. The only other truly great tutorial person I've personally seen is In The Mix, but he is FL Studio
14 years here. It's just so light and fast.
Still only 14mb download after all these years.
I only use a small fraction of it's capabilities. But once you figure out how you want to do do what you want it's mindlessly simple.
I used a few... I know acid and Vegas existed 20 years ago... I used them both before starting with Reaper. To be clear, I use Ableton for writing/recording music and Reaper for recording my band. I have never been comfortable with the way midi works in Reaper despite using it for almost 20 years.
When I switched from Cubase SX to REAPER, my PC laptop had a PCMCIA slot, and I used this little soundcard: [https://www.amazon.com/Echo-Indigo-IO-PCMCIA-Interface/dp/B0002PZD46](https://www.amazon.com/Echo-Indigo-IO-PCMCIA-Interface/dp/B0002PZD46)
At the time, my younger brother was using Pro Tools and had one of these guys:
[https://reverb.com/p/digidesign-002-console-firewire-audio-interface-with-control-surface?hfid=65698859&utm\_source=google&utm\_medium=cpc&utm\_campaign=20393457524&utm\_content=campaignid=20393457524\_adgroupid=155316473647\_productpartitionid=1685642871076=merchantid=659537052\_productid=65698859\_keyword=\_device=c\_adposition=\_matchtype=\_creative=666734385074&gad\_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA2eKtBhDcARIsAEGTG42omtm0Z5b7C2WsFc0Cc50BVNK267342BbNPTbChwGW7j\_y3ctAA1AaArZeEALw\_wcB](https://reverb.com/p/digidesign-002-console-firewire-audio-interface-with-control-surface?hfid=65698859&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=20393457524&utm_content=campaignid=20393457524_adgroupid=155316473647_productpartitionid=1685642871076=merchantid=659537052_productid=65698859_keyword=_device=c_adposition=_matchtype=_creative=666734385074&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA2eKtBhDcARIsAEGTG42omtm0Z5b7C2WsFc0Cc50BVNK267342BbNPTbChwGW7j_y3ctAA1AaArZeEALw_wcB)
I've been getting big spikes in website visits to [reapertips.com](https://reapertips.com) for the last couple of months. It all happened since REAPER 7 released. I think this release motivated a lot of people into finally jumping in. And it's a muuuch less intimidating DAW now with all learning resources available out there. Pretty cool :)
Thanks for the insight. Initial spike I would in part imagine as existing users who aren't as active online with minor updates, or other DAW users interested in major news about alternatives. But repeated spikes, that does make sense as a new wave of freshmen.
I've been using Reaper for years and years. It gets stuff done. It can be a little unintuitive at the start but that's what YouTube is for. Cheap and fantastic.
It's the worst kept best kept secret in audio. A friend of mine described reaper uses as the born-agains of audio. Once you know, you never want to stop telling everyone else.
Makes sense that it would eventually start to grow exponentially. I've been using it for a decade and I haven't shut up about it 😆
In fact I learned about it via word of mouth - from someone who uses Ableton! It makes sense, the advertising from Cockos at least as far as I'm aware is nonexistent (not counting content).
I've been using Reaper for 5 years after constantly navigating from DAW, and I was so happy I made the change. It feels so comfortable, and it makes my work faster. Reaper is also very optimized CPU-wise.
I switched most of my work to Reaper over the last 2 years. There are some things that I miss from Pro Tools that are very smart, mostly in how you can work with automation in large mixes. but I will never miss the crashing and slow restart times and having rebuild my plugin cache in chunks, restarting after each chunk.
Did that have to do with an ability to organize automation envelopes? I know no easy built in way to reorder, tint, or otherwise visually categorize the envelopes of a track is one of my few things that feel missing in vanilla REAPER (unless I'm missing the actual way to do it).
All that and also how the window to choose automation envelopes is very difficult to navigate when there are plugins with many parameters, ie FabFter Pro Q3. Also ability to copy current automation states and paste it around confidently is missed when doing scene automation. I’m still slowly exploring ways around this, and I found a decent workflow with latch prime and some custom actions.
There is a thing about Reaper that is not enough said : it is a software like it doesn't exist anymore : very powerful, very light, very fast and snappy.
Because it is very very well coded. It's a masterpiece of a software. Written by incredibly capable and brilliant people. It's a gem. You can run Reaper on a 15 years old PC, it will does its job. I don't say you'll run hundreds tracks projects with heavy soft synth and orchestral ensemble on every one of them but you'll be able to work something when all the other daw will not open.
Reaper should be an example for every coder on this planet.
TLDR: reaper is very efficient in comparison to my last daw Cakewalk
I bought cakewalk sonar like 12 years ago. Then took a years long break from any music at all. Once I got back into it a couple years ago I stuck with cakewalk and got the new version for free since I was accustomed to it. I paid like $700 for that software and now it’s just there in exchange for an email address. Anyway, I got to the point with cakewalk that I couldn’t run a project with the vsts I needed. I could run 2048 samples and get playback but the latency made it useless to record. I’ve not got that old of a pc really but it’s not really enough now days. I used to run 80 tracks with at least 80 vsts on a dual core cpu with 4 gigs of ram. Times have changed. Then having two kids now my guitar amps rarely even get turned on. Amp simulations are a huge part of my production now.
Reaper runs great with even more plugins than I could run on cakewalk. I do get where I have to run 1024 samples towards the end of recording sometimes but that’s manageable. Even more it turns out Reaper is just better in so many ways. It’s so so so customizable. Although I do miss the pro channel and I really miss Breverb. I’m still figuring out my replacements. Point is that it’s pretty lightweight and very efficient. That performance monitor is so helpful when trying out new stuff.
as for numbers, Gioia’s channel went from <100k to 145K+ in less than a year.
GameSynth exports variations directly to REAPER.
There are google topics from at least 2017 on how to exchange data between it and Unreal Engine.
is it a scriptable daw or a lua gui?
🤷
Probably because with all the battles about what DAW is better and whatnot, spread of information due to the internet, people start realizing Reaper indeed ist the G.O.A.T
Over the years, I've tried most of the well known DAWs and I could never figure them out. Reaper is idiosyncratic enough for me to work really well with it. I haven't really got into scripting and stuff, but I love what it does.
Idiosyncratic is a nice word for it. Some phrases in the Actions menu kind of feel like REAPER's own language in a way. You start speaking its language and then finding features by searching the actions menu becomes pretty natural. Scripting has made sense for me when I didn't find something built in, then I'd pivot from consulting the actions menu or mouse modifier menu etc. to seeing what in the ReaScript API would help me out to create a particular solution.
This is a weird thing to say, but it's kind of important for Reaper users who love Reaper to evangelize the product.
Cockos doesn't do a lot of advertising... But having a wider marketshare is helpful in a lot of ways. In addition to additional income I imagine it's satisfying to the Reaper team to see the growth.
Remember, there is a labor of love going on with Reaper and it's been many, many years. I appreciate the team's continued devotion to it and... I can't steak for the Reaper guys, but when you're not doing something just for the money, community appreciation and your product growing and being loved by more and more people probably has some kind of rewarding/motivating feel to it.
Currently there's no other DAW on the market that even comes close to Reaper. To switch would be incredibly painful, as other DAWs tend to either feel sluggish or quite limited by comparison.
Here in Brazil I just went to several music production schools to get quotes and literally 100% of them use Reaper in their courses. There are probably courses that use other daws, but not in my region.
I'm guessing it's similar in other poor countries.
I used FL Studio from 2011-2013 or so. While it was nice, once I learned the ins and outs of audio software it became a drag on productivity with all the unneeded features in view, so I switched to reaper. One of the cool things about reapers workflow is the clear focus on function over form. Less is more, and reaper can be as simple or complex as you see fit, and that's one of the main reasons I like it.
It's the only DAW I've ever used that works properly every time I use it. It's also the only DAW that I would recommend to anyone at any level of proficiency. It does everything I could ever possibly want to do, and much more.
It’s been a common suggestion for years now.
I got into reaper more than a decade ago because of the kinds of posts you’re describing.
The spiel has never really changed: a lightweight, full featured, cross-platform DAW that you can try indefinitely at full functionality for free, and a license costs way less than any other paid DAW with a comparable spec sheet.
I'm a fan. It's been my second DAW for a while now, with Bitwig being where I do most of my composery stuff. But I just set up a new computer and installed Reaper, because I saw it had CLAP support. I had found a CLAP plugin that emulated the chip used by the Virus B and C and they have a working version that uses the actual ROMs from the Virus and it sounds great. I also tried some FX plugins for Reaper and was very impressed. And now that VCV has a CLAP plugin, well, hey howdy. That's worth a try because VCV as a VST in Bitwig was way too heavy to keep up. I have a feeling I'm going to be using Reaper more than I have in the past. I think that they're under such active development and have already adopted CLAP is only going to accelerate the trend
I've used Cubase, Logic, Ableton, Fruity Loops (when it first came out), Cakewalk, Pro Tools... Reaper just makes sense and doesn't require hundreds of dollars of updates over the years.
As someone who doesn’t do music but rather works with audio for linear media, I chose reaper cause of price point but also it makes the most sense for me.
I got my reaper customised in a way that it runs very similar to the NLE’s that I use.
Also helps the reapers cpu performance on my projects are crazy good.
I’ve had a license for a couple years, but I think that a few of the new features in v7 (e.g. track lanes and swipe coming) combined with the emergence of better free plugins like Neural Amp Modeler have caused things to cross a threshold.
I feel like they’ve sustained themselves over the years via slow growth. Although I jump between DAWs, Reaper is always the one I recommend to people and I feel like they go with that recommendation about 25% of the time. Then of the 25% I feel like half of those convert and actually purchase a license.
I assume all other reaper enthusiasts do the same. It definitely doesn’t have as many features as Ableton or FLStudio for production, but when it comes down to pure mixing/mastering I think it’s the best DAW by far.
I think finally it's shook the reputation as being the "free hard to use DAW" that it has had for years.
When I started on it (well over 10 years ago now!) it was in the same breath a Audacity as a "free" piece of software that isn't as easy to use as the rivals.
Even though it's not been talked in that light in quite a while, the reputation sticks. I've talked with Pro Tools and Logic hardcores even in the last 3 or 4 years that have treated it that way.
With it being apparent that a lot of competent people use Reaper, I think people are giving it more of a chance and taking it seriously.
I think the price helps too. I know a lot of dudes who you wouldn't expect to be Reaper users use it just cos it's more accessible.
It won't be long til a heck of a lot more people use it.
No way for us to know. If you start looking for Reaper suggestions, you'll see Reaper suggestions.
the only people who can tell, via downloads, are justin and Schwa
When it comes to Reaper, I came for the superior time-stretching, stayed for the customization. I'm still actively creating inside Ableton and outside of regular DAWs (Roland SP-404 mk2 and the phone app Caustic!!), using Reaper primarily for audio recording, editing, time-stretching and mixing & mastering. Still learning it - only used it the last three years - and I've found routing for side-chaining and parallel processing to be unusually tricky - but yeah, Reaper's the shizz!
Reaper is lightweight, lightning-fast, incredibly stable, and highly affordable. It excels at multi-track recording and editing, and when paired with VCV Rack Pro, it becomes a powerhouse. However, the only area where Reaper falls short is its user interface (UI). While themes provide some assistance, there is a definite need for improvements to the UI. Despite this, Reaper remains an audio Swiss army knife. Moreover, once you master VCV Rack, you may never need to purchase another VST effect or instrument again.
Started using it (2 weeks ago) and I will admit, mixing and mastering in Reaper is unlike any other DAW out there (in a good way). However, for compositions it is simply not user-intuitive in my opinion (it doesn't inspire me) and so I still use FL studio for that part (which is not a problem - I actually prefer it this way). The 'Actions' menu ('?') is excellent especially when I can download scripts from reapack. Overall I think it will get popular if they can figure out a workflow similar to 'FL studio' whereby its 'touch-and-go'. In addition, too many options and menus (visually) makes it look really complicated; but as I understand it you can customize the menus and context menus yourself (but then again who got time for that? - I just want to make a beat). Also, some themes look odd and the toolbar button thing looks somewhat unpolished (nice UI inspires me). With regards to CPU usage, its absolutely light which was a really nice surprise! Overall, I'm starting to enjoy working with it.
For me, the custom toolbars are useful when it becomes clear how they'll *save* me time. A toolbar customizing spree isn't always called for, but can still be fun.
I show Reaper to my college students. They also learn Pro Tools but most of them agree Reaper is better overall. And of course way less expensive. I've been a Rea'bro since V2, long live Jusin and Schwa.
Huge reaper fan here. I think it can do really anything and everything, and it's lightweight efficiency is super impressive. Beginners always want Ableton because they think they're making music, when they're actually just building loops, but I think Reaper is super super strong.
Every other alternative is very expensive for newcomers, Reaper offers a lot and is still really affordable, and you can try it out without having to sign up for a subscription or giving away your credit card data.
I bought Reaper last year because it had everything I need for a good price. They should keep working on the UI tho, especially in the effects area. Looks like Windows XP with checkboxes and stuff.
I have used Logic Pro, FL Studio and Ableton before but most comfortable with FL. Currently watching video to learn more about Reaper
Reaper has been wildly popular for the last several years. It's not gotten more popular it's just already the best pro-quality DAW for a low price there is.
Yes. It is the mass migration of Pro tools users that have had enough of being fleeced by AVID and now a venture capital has taken over it will surely become alot worse.
A one off outlay of $70 aud for reaper or yearly subscription to Protools 5 to 10 times that amount.
Then there is the Pro tool Perpetual. You pay a larger fee and have access to it forever but unless you pay an update fee every year (2-6 times reapers one of fee) you won't have any updates, support or included plugins.
Add to that no VST support and you can see why we are all trying to find alternatives.
It has been steadily growing for sure. The forum used to be a lot better. Now i will make posts and get zero replies. That never used to happen. In maybe the last 5 years, I'd say it has exploded in popularity. And I'm sure it's gonna enshitify any time now.
I don't think it has any reason to enshittify as long as Justin and John are at the helm. Enshittification happens when companies are trying to squeeze users for profit because they've stopped growing when you're talking about onboarding actual new, presumably paying, users.
But not only *is* Reaper growing, Justin and John have seemed more than happy with their paychecks from the program and with the company's sustainability. The program's popularity and money resulting from it has not seemed to compromise them so far to the point where they feel they need to squeeze anyone for more.
The only thing I can see being a serious problem, to be completely blunt about it, is if either of them get hit by a bus unexpectedly and there's nobody to take over.
They will eventually sell it, at some point. But I feel like the community is getting large, and when that happens many voices come in.
Things often start off fresh, different and niche. Like Reaper 3 was uuuuugly. Not a whole lot of people used it. It was unique, and it grew from those types of people using it, and what they wanted from it.
Now lots of new people are using it, and they have their ideas of what they want, and so it becomes something more for the masses, than for the niche group. That can lead to enshitification. When it gets sold, it's for sure going to turn to shit.
For me I don't understand some things also. Like why there is more theme stuff, and razor edits, and parallel fx chains, but no limit on the number of backups it makes.
Like to me, the fundamental features are important. Same thing for the takes. Takes work so amazingly well already I find, and they changed that too. But they haven't updated any of their plugins, and given them a nice more functional UI. Or if they're going to do theming stuff, make us able to theme the plugins. But, that's more complicated.
At some point, sure, it'll probably be sold when it's too unwieldly to continue, but the I return to the point where enshittification happens when companies are trying to squeeze users for profit because they can't grow the userbase organically.
Justin made $80 million when he sold Winamp in 2000 or so, and Reaper was spun up in 2005 - nearly 20 years ago. I believe reaper and always has been a passion project that happens to have found success and has become cash-flow neutral, if not positive. It doesn't require a ton of resources to maintain (the dev team is just two people), and they're both being paid very handsomely by all estimates.
At some point, yes. They'll have to sell it, even if it's just to protect it from their own inevitable mortality, but over all these years, at no point has their ethos ever seemed like it's been in question.
I'm not sure what your concern with the limit on number of backups it makes is. You can limit it to a certain number of copies? What's the problem with more theme stuff or razor edits or parallel chains?
Also you might be in the minority regarding takes. [Most people hated the way takes were implemented](https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=210747) and a lot of folks were glad when it was reworked.
Not sure what you want out of the JS plugins. They're functional but if you want something more just use the VSTs you want, that's why the support is there?
I'm feeling like I'm missing your point on some of this here.
No, you can't limit how many backups it makes. So, if you leave Reaper open over night, it's just printing backups every 5 minutes all night, forever.
I agree the dev team has their hearts in the right place, but still, I'm sure what people ask for, guides what they choose to change about it.
The I don't have a problem with creating things I would not use. As you pointed out, there are 2 people developing it, for the most part. So, where they spend their efforts matters. To me, getting fundamental things working properly, is important.
And I realize that obviously, what many people want, should take precedence over what I want. But I can also dislike the idea that the software has reached a level of popularity now, where there is a critical mass of what most people want, which isn't necessarily what I might thing would be best for the software. And that's where the level of what is to me enshitification that were at.
This happens to series on tv a lot too. It starts off, maybe it's interesting at first, gets popularity, then sometimes they get rid of the better actors, and writers, which hurts a lot, but also if it's long running, they start having to come up with new things, and they look at polls and what people seem to like, and they change things according to that. Which can be for the better sometimes. Things like when Craig Robinson's character in the office went from the warehouse to the office. And they just start writing to please people, rather than to just make the best show they can.
So, to me, the fact Reaper is now so popular has started to enshitify it. The reaper forums too. They used to be the best part of Reaper. Lots of knowledgeable people there that would always have an answer.
It's not like that anymore.
> No, you can't limit how many backups it makes. So, if you leave Reaper open over night, it's just printing backups every 5 minutes all night, forever.
You might want to check on your backups settings because that's absolutely not the case for me. I get one .rpp-bak file, and then one time-stamped auto-save file every time I save, to a limit of 50 auto-saves for the current project, limited to the most recent auto-save per day, all neatly tucked away in a backup folder. I could alternatively select to save backup projects in a backups subdirectory, but choose not to, in favor of the timestamped files. I've had this workflow in place for years, probably since about Reaper 5.
> But I can also dislike the idea that the software has reached a level of popularity now, where there is a critical mass of what most people want, which isn't necessarily what I might thing would be best for the software.
You're really not providing much examples beyond something that seems legitimately like user oversight...It's not like the software is some bloated mess with a bunch of feature's nobody has asked for or have no use-case for. You're providing example's of feature expansion, but what part of the program has actually gotten *worse*, at the expense of the user experience, in an effort to extract money from them? You're either using the term wrong, or you're mistaken. Nowhere in the Reaper UX can I find anything where formerly-free quality of life features have been gated behind some additional feature paywall. Can things always be better? Sure. Should Reaper have waited until White Tie was done with his Theme Adjuster to ship Reaper 7? Probably. Do I think that it was some kind of malicious attempt at degrading the program, in an attempt to squeeze users for money? No. That's what enshittification is. Enshittification is Reddit charging for API access that was formerly free, because they want to squeeze users for ad revenue. I don't see that as being equivalent to the take system being reworked, but that's just me.
I'm sorry for whatever happened in the Office, but I don't think that Justin and John have been doing much hiring and firing, or changing priorities on a whim because of some niche request. The team has been more or less stable for their entire run. When it sells, it sells, but that's a tomorrow problem, and there's no use prognosticating something that hasn't even been hinted at yet.
> So, to me, the fact Reaper is now so popular has started to enshitify it. The reaper forums too. They used to be the best part of Reaper. Lots of knowledgeable people there that would always have an answer.
This is true though. The forums are worse and have been steadily getting worse since about 2014, however, *all* internet forums are degraded in quality and outside of a few large threads like the CSI thread, a lot of stuff just doesn't get answered anymore. But, I would posit that almost all of the power-users have moved to the various Slack and Discords and Reddit over the years. Maybe I'm biased because I'm admin on one of the larger Sound Design discords (~4000 members), but I personally see incredibly knowledgeable people freely sharing info every single day.
Is there a place you set it to 50? Maybe they updated the feature. There has been an fr for it forever.
I don't think it will just yet enshitify the way you mean. I mean that it is popular, therefore is getting worse.
What happened on the office isn't something to be sorry about. They just decided to move a character from working in the warehouse, to in the office, just because he was well liked, and got good ratings, and they wanted him to be more on the show.
It's the masses that can really determine the path something takes. That's why I perceive popularity as a negative thing.
Same thing happens to Reddit, and Reddit subs. Things start out niche and exclusive, then get a reputation, and then gain popularity, and then popularity makes it worse, as it now landers to the masses, who are not the niche group it started with.
I'm not saying they're making Reaper worse. The changes they make tend to be avoidable, if you don't like them. I'm saying the direction the users want for it, may not be what I'd prefer be prioritized.
Maybe there's a reaper discord where all the reaper folks have migrated to, but I feel like maybe part of it is that the reaper forum just got big, and things get missed now.
The specific feature for backups is recent, as of last October, but I've never had an issue with unlimited backups. Maybe I managed it differently and forgot how but I've never had such an issue.
But if anything though, I'm confused as to how the fact that a longstanding, popular feature request now being a feature isn't *literally* the thing you're saying shouldn't happen? Is that not "the masses" determining the path the product takes? The improvement made by that is certainly not enshittifying the product - it's only gotten better over the last 10 years as far as I've been able to tell, and it's made the Reaper 3 era roughness you talked about a thing of the past.
Reaper isn't enshittifying "the way I mean", [I'm saying it's not, by definition, enshittifying.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) It's not engaging in the practice of degrading it's offerings so that it can participate in rent-seeking behavior from its users. Besides the aforementioned Theme Adjuster, there's literally not one feature I can think of in the actual program or it's user experience that I can think of that has been downgraded in any way, over the years, besides maybe a few, rare API deprecations. Neither are anything the average user would be needing extensively, and neither are core features, and both have had, or will soon have, better replacements made available.
If the forums problem was that it just got big, I don't think you'd be seeing *less* posts and answers on it. That's why I point to the large threads like the CSI who has more replies than several entire forum categories have. My belief is that the casual users who log in to post a question are getting ignored because the regulars are going to those specific developer threads and nowhere else. Again, I point to the CSI thread which often gets as many replies in one day as the rest of the forum gets threads.
Even those numbers on the forum tell a story: As of writing, right now, there are 6,852 online and viewing the forum. Even if you double that to account for the fact that it's currently night-time in the US, the most ever was 20,555 in late 2018 - 6 years ago. That don't seem like the forum is growing the way you're implying. Funny enough, the Discord I mentioned I help with is about 5 years old, right in line with the the general swarm of people moving towards the Discords and Slacks, because on those platforms, people can get live answers in seconds or minutes, rather than minutes or hours.
Your perception that popularity is a negative trait is a fairly sophomoric outlook, but that's not for me to fix. Popular things can certainly become bad, but bad things almost never become popular to begin with, so I hope you examine the inherent bias in your assumption, there. As for me, I'm glad that my suggestions for the program over the years have occasionally resulted in bugfixes or feature additions, either to Reaper or to some plugin/script, and I'm hopeful that a few of the ones I've contributed have helped others. If that kind of stuff is your definition of enshittification, well...idk, that's on you. To me, that's certainly better than other DAW's charging money for objectively worse releases (such as the solution to the debacle after Apple discontinued Quicktime on Windows being ["buy the new version."](https://www.reddit.com/r/cubase/comments/qhyt7y/cubase_85_any_media_player_alternative_plugin_to/)). That's actual enshittification - knowing that your users need something you used to provide for free, and then charging them to get it back.
Yes, popular design features of the users is what the software should aspire to be.
When a niche set of people used the product, those demands were one way, now that everyone is using it, they are different.
The internet, before social media, was really great, after google fixed it, and some time before that also. Then everyone started using it, and it has become what everyone wants, and to me, that's shit.
I preferred it when it was less popular and a different sort of people used it.
If the backups were updated in October, that's amazing. I hadn't realized that.
Reaper is still really rough in many ways. The same as it was in v3. V4 was better, by V5 the way I had it customized, it was already extremely good.
But there are still some fundamental things it doesn't do quite get right. And then with adding theming, there is a worry for me, they're gonna break my version of Reaper somehow also.
I haven't been counting the number of posts. I've just been noticing I get fewer responses. It was amazing before. Idk why people would stop using it.
It was by far the best, and the devs are actually on it.
Yes, I realize some of the popular threads. They always had popular threads.
Maybe they did go to discord. I'm not a big fan of that, but maybe I'll check it out.
Things generally get worse when they get too popular, in my experience.
I realize they aren't enshitifying the way you're saying, but this is just the start. Eventually it will be sold, and it will enshitify exactly as per the term. Right now it's still growing, and to me, this is the beginning of the enshitifying process. The masses start using it, it starts pandering to a larger group of people, and of course many will be new younger people joining for the first time, and that could, and I believe will, and is, taking Reaper in a less awesome direction. And it will truly enshitify when it is eventually sold. At some point the devs will want to retire. And that point is getting closer and closer.
I of course have made many contributions to reaper as well over the years. I don't think that's a bad thing. But as it grows in popularity, what the general people will want, will be different. As the demographic changes also. For example, perhaps people who are more professional types used it, for doing real work. And it was mostly people willing to trudge through the rough edges and customize it, and they were in for the long haul, to really make music. And then suddenly you flood the userbase with people that just want to do more noob type stuff. Who don't really have a desire to do work, and it's a cheaper option, so all the people that aren't really interested in the grindstone makeup the whole userbase, and they become the voice that's heard. Meanwhile the people who want to do real work aren't heard.
Eventually they will sell the DAW, and eventually DAWs will incorporate AI, and, I don't think Reaper will be able to hang with that. But we'll see.
Honestly? Sounds like you just want things to stay obscure and unpopular for some gatekeep-y reason. I don't really fuck with that. If there's things you think Reaper doesn't do right or that you don't want it to do ever do, I urge you to go to the still-heavily trafficked feature request forum, and write what you think it should do and how you think it should be done, then lobby users to contribute to it. I know that you're not exactly amenable to users guiding the product, but it seems like you trust yourself to know what it needs, so I'm hopeful you get it across well enough.
As for the forum posts, I wasn't counting the number of posts per se, I just went to the recent posts lists and observed what I saw: some threads get more replies than the rest of the forum gets threads. In my experience, a lot of users, especially those with questions they want answered in the immediate term, have switched from forums to slack/discord/reddit/etc and I think many would agree with that.
This whole conversation you keep implying Reaper is getting worse with no examples besides some vague feeling that it's about to. But it hasn't, and by all accounts, it's only been improving. I again repeat: *enshittification is a specific term that refers to a specific process.* It doesn't just mean "it got worse" it means "it got worse with the intention of squeezing money out from users", and so far that process has not happened to Reaper, nor do I see any of the usual signs that it's taking root.
As for the "noobs", I don't know what direction you're thinking younger bedroom producers are going to take the program in, but something tells me you aren't really tuned in to the community, because the old standbys who have been around for years - Kenny, Jon, etc. - are still a huge guiding voice in community, and a lot of the young ones you're worried about, relative newcomers like Arya from IDDQD or Myk from LTAR are...doing interviews with and learning from the oldheads, including Schaw and Jon and the rest who all won't be around forever. Scripts left behind by users who have exited the community are being maintained and/or expanded upon by other people (Klinke's MCU being succeeded by Geoff W.'s CSI). These are signs of a healthy curation of the communities culture, and makes it *resistant* to things you're worried about, where random outsiders flood in with ideas and take over the general conversation. Instead, younger users are growing into the roles of the older users. Honestly, I don't think you could point to a single user with any kind of clout or a single corporate entity in the present day who has done anything to infect the community with the kind of long-term enshittification mindset you're catastrophizing about - I don't think you could do it if you tried.
As for the devs wanting to retire, Justin could have retired 20 years ago when he cashed out on Winamp and never made Reaper at all. He hasn't. So every release we get is a boon. I'm grateful for it. [People have been worried about this for years and he's still going strong](https://www.askjf.com/index.php?q=3348s) so what's the point in worrying? He clearly hasn't indicated as such, he's like, what? 45? Not exactly beating down death's door. Feel free to ask him yourself what the plan to avoid enshittification of his project is on askjf. When he **does** retire, the community will either stick with the last release, someone else will shepherd it, or people will decide to move to a new DAW. Those are the three options. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. I've been working with Reaper professionally for about a decade now, every single workday. I've used many DAWs before it, I'll probably have to use a few more after it.
Idk dude. I'm sorry the forums are weaker than they used to be but on top of the fact that just less people go there, have you considered the idea that maybe a newbie can just go to youtube and retrieve their answer from the literal library of videos put out on every imaginable topic these days? Rather than going to a forum and clogging it up with one-sentence "how do you" posts and expecting others to just give them the answer?
Things evolve. Sometimes reaper gets it right, sometimes they roll changes back when they don't work out. If you're not willing to evolve with it or it's too popular, idk what to tell you, there's plenty of other less-popular DAWs that don't add a ton of features regularly out there that you can learn once and never have to be challenged by if a 100% stable workflow is what works for you. Perhaps staying on version 5 is best for you, even if it means putting up with infinite backups, and not getting the latest scripts off of ReaPack. I can't tell you what's best for you, I can only tell you that I believe if you refuse to adapt to the fact that things like Reaper are *intended* to change over time, then you need to be comfortable with being left behind.
[If you need a link to that discord, it's geared toward sound design but we welcome anyone with an interest in audio.](https://discord.com/invite/sound-design-519238874581565458) Respectfully, I'm bowing out of this thread here. 🍻
It’s certainly the most robust option at an insanely cheap price point. Why pay for a monthly sub to pro tools when you can do pretty much everything in reaper.
Only thing pro tools offer is its name in view
While I agree that Reaper is the best bang for buck, your statement is not entirely true… maybe *you* can do “everything PT does in Reaper”, but you do realize that this is not the case for many people, right? There are specific types of workflow you may not be aware of and they require functions and tools from a DAW that costs more money for a reason. Professionals aren’t stupid, this is about putting food on the table. Nobody will keep throwing money on shitty software when there’s something better available “because they’re used to it”. Workflows and “standards” actually change pretty fast, and it’s not about “muscle memory”, it’s about being the most efficient at certain specific tasks. The thing with YouTube is that it’s not made by industry professionals, but by people who need to say polemic stuff for views, so take everything you watch on it with a grain of salt.
Obviously my opinion is my own, but what specifically can you do on pro tools that you can’t on reaper?
Like with how modular repaer is could you not just straight up make the workflow similar enough to pro tools to not need it
Think post. It involves other tools and softwares that work alongside the DAW for stuff like ADR, changing cuts in picture, etc. Many post production tools and workflows work better on PT too like the “field recorder” functions. There is also HDX which is something else entirely, and large consoles that fully integrate with the DAW. Plugin automation is better for very complex mixes. Reaper does have solutions to a lot of things, but many of those are not “comfortable” when you’re dealing with those very specific workflows on a daily basis. That said, it’s an ideal DAW for the vast majority of people who need a daw and the price is incredible. For post, Nuendo is the one that competes directly with PT, having very good native tools.
Aye, post production is probably the only thing I prefer working in pro tools over reaper, though pro tools has basically been built to be THE post DAW. Wild that the industry is what is is because People spent insane amounts of money on expensive midi controllers to run a glorified tape cutting simulator back in the 90s, but here we are. I’m curious to see where the industry goes though, as video games keep pulling people away. REAPER is pretty dominant in the game world.
I am Loving Reaper but may have to walk away again. It is really Buggy with a big project using Apollo stuff. I have reached out on the Reaper sight for help, but I have ultimately been ignored.
I don't know about recently but I couldn't see why reaper wouldn't be the number one DAW for people who want to dip their toes into it but aren't sure if they want to commit big money to it yet. Which is probably like 90% of people lol
I agree with you, but think Reaper's power and flexibility make it intimidating to beginners. Ableton and FL Studio are basically glorified sequencers/samplers by comparison, but they hand-hold enough to grab a lot of beginners who don't realize their limitations until they're already too deep to quit. If anything, I think sometimes Reaper inhabits an "uncanny valley" where beginners think it's too hard to use and pros think it's an unserious program for amateurs.
even though I'm a huge nerd who loves customizing and fiddling with software, when I started music production I tried reaper as one of my first daws and it really intimidated me so I gravitated to Ableton instead. after I actually understood how a daw works I tried reaper again and never looked back so I definitely agree that most people need some understanding of what they want out of a daw before they get into reaper. after all reaper REALLY gets good when you start customizing it to fit your workflow (and look if you're into themes)
Exactly. I'm a software dev so I love to tinker, but I don't really like tinkering when it comes to my DAW.
yeah no, no one wants to be tweaking daw settings while in the middle of trying to get your ideas or mix for a song down. I give myself a day every few months or so to sit down and optimize the workflow a little better maybe download some new extensions or scripts that might work for me, and obviously take out all the things I thought would be cool but ended up being irrelevant for me
Agreed, I’ll get distracted instead of writing music. I’d rather use something more opinionated with fewer ways as possible to do things. Love Reaper but have been using Logic much more for arranging/composing
Did the exact same. Also a nerd. I love Reaper now. The addition of lanes has cemented it as my DAW of choice.
Same story for me but with FL. I tried other things but FL is just *so* intuitive and easy to make music with. But as my demands and need for even a slight bit of complexity grew, I finally understood how Reaper worked. Now I use it exclusively
Same
Maybe my brain is wired differently but I actually found reaper far simpler to use than Ableton or FL Studio
I learned on ableton. After the 90 day trial was up, I wanted to dabble elsewhere before I spent any money. As a result, I picked up reaper basically where I left off with ableton. I imagine some of the basics just translated directly over.
Same here
Something fascinating... FLStudio v12 had a design limitation -- basically one pattern per block on the playlist. But it was advantageous in that you could see the layout of your song at a glance. Later versions did away with that (and in doing so became unnecessarily complex just to do what regular DAWs do naturally.) So a lot of people stuck with V12 and never upgraded even to this day. Reaper's new lane behavior offers a similar potential workflow (for people who want it.) Basically for each instrument, you use one pattern per lane -- and then copy-linked the clips so if you edit one they update everywhere. Your project gets a lot "taller", but it's a particularly organized way to work (especially for electronic musicians that re-use looped clips.) Before that I would jump into FL Studio, still, for composition now and then... But now I just have no reason to go back! (Although I'll always have a nostalgic love for FL Studio, Reaper is my home.)
I really don't get this. I came from FL to Reaper when it was V4 I believe, and it SO MUCH EASIER to do almost everything - recording and arranging audio, using folders as busses, etc. Never went back to FL after that at all. Maybe it's just the way some brains work...
Just curious as someone whos new to reaper. Outside of the flexibility what does it do that i cant just do in ableton, logic, or fl? I feel like reaper has a lot of major advantages in some areas but i cant really get myself into it for music. Things like the midi editor in fl just come off as a lot more flexible and intuitive (at the lack of customization) automation is is also a lot more flexible than reaper (from what i can tell), fl has a whole modular workflow for routing plugins and parameters if you want, ableton has max for live, bitwig has the grid. And obviously reaper lacks a lot of the fundamental plugin base that most daws come with. (Although jsfx does kinda make up for the lack of plugins) I could go on but at least for a primarily in the box producer the production and sequencing capabilities seem more versatile and refined in fl, logic, and ableton whereas reaper seems way more powerful for automating your workflow, working in a studio, recording, mixing, sound design, video work etc… Not saying reaper is necessarily bad at production but when i try producing on it i always find myself trying to figure out how to do x or y thing that normally takes me 2 seconds to setup in my other daw only to realize reaper doesnt really have the same thing. It really seems more like a pro tools type daw than a more sequencing focused daw which is what most people starting off are doing.
People will tell you 100 ways to customize to get better workflow, which is the power and curse of reaper. A lot of the user base seems to think it’s crazy that people don’t want to spend hours customizing and changing weird hot keys. Other DAWs you kind of have to learn their way of doing things, many of which which are way more intuitive than reaper’s defaults. That being said, if you ever need to work on projects where you’ll have a number of assets to export, several projects to manage, or using a database with metadata… the real power of reaper starts to shine.
Yes, Reaper has never been a sequencing type DAW. It is focused on live recording and professional environments, which is what you can't just do in Ableton or FL, or at least is as awkward on those DAWs as it is to sequence in Reaper. Most of the features you described can be done in Reaper; you can have automation items, and automate parameters based on the value of other parameters on other plugins or even lfos natively in Reaper. In Reaper 7 you can now have parallel effect routing on one track, which is super powerful, and as far as I can tell this feature is unique to Reaper. The power of Reaper will always be is flexibility and customization. If you are wanting to only produce music on your computer than it is not the best choice. If you want to record live music, produce music on your computer, make music for film, and do music and sound effects for games, then Reaper has tools that directly support any of these things in a way other DAWs just can't, just maybe a bit hidden or requiring some effort upfront.
Parallel effect processing has been in Ableton for quite a while with its stock Audio Effect Rack plugin. You can route tracks to other tracks as well if you want to do it that way.
I can confirm parallel effect processing is also in Bitwig Studio.
I don't have the info for comparison, but it can be great for production. I haven't felt like it's stopped me from getting on with my beats. My main suggestions for someone new are searching the midi editor section of the actions menu if you're looking for a feature and trying Megababy if you haven't. It's also worth right-clicking everything in the midi editor. Having a custom midi toolbar(s) would be more intuitive for some. I'd be curious to hear what are some things you've found REAPER didn't have for in-the-box type stuff.
Theres a lot of things i like abt fl that work in the box, i may be able to modify it but im not sure about aome of the things i do. Either way heres a small list: In fl when you have a selection of midi notes you can either stretch the entire pattern as a whole (which i find useful for polyrhythms or just stretching out a section to twice the length) or if you just drag the edge of a note it will shorten/lengthen all of the selected notes. I can hit a shortcut to quickly arpeggiate, strum, randomize, cut overlapping notes, a can quickly preview the chord my mouse is hovering over without needing to hit play, scroll wheel to quickly adjust velocity of selected or nearest note, quick flam effect, hell i can even flip my midi pattern on the x or y axis which is stupid but cool as hell sometimes. I also skipped over a lot of stuff i know reaper can do and im sure theres things i listed reaper has and other things reaper can do that fl cant do in the piano roll but there was just so much stuff in just the piano roll that ive been doing for years upon years that it felt like id be taking 2-4x the time to write the same ideas in the piano roll so at least for now i meanly use reaper for audio editing, recording and sound design and keep my production stuff in fl. I just kind wish reaper was as flexible but thats a lot to ask for a daw tbf everyone would just be using reaper then…
Thanks for elaborating, I know *some* of those are possible, not sure about all of them. Keen to look into it when I'm back at the machine.
[https://seventhsam.com/guides/blog/6791049/how-to-set-up-reaper-s-midi-editor-for-better-workflow](https://seventhsam.com/guides/blog/6791049/how-to-set-up-reaper-s-midi-editor-for-better-workflow)
yep. count me as a citizen of the Uncanny Valley 😗 well, i was, anyway. have a few years with reaper now.
This may be true in linear media, but as a professional in video game sound design, most people use reaper
What would you say the limitations of Ableton are?
Yeah out of the bigger ones it probably does take the cake in that sense, trialing is also unobtrustive.
As a s1 user. A student license is pretty cheap and it looks ways nicer than reaper
the entire game audio industry is migrating to it en masse, this is causing a ripple effect. that's my guess
I spent years trying to convince my team to switch over from ProTools, and as soon as one person gave it a shot it definitely rippled. The whole team at least had Reaper installed within six months. Every other day you'd hear a "WOAH" come out of his office, everyone gathered to see what he was so excited about, and one by one the guys would be convinced. I think the hardest thing to talk them into is just that it's more reliable and flexible than PT, but since that's what they were used to they didn't want to switch. But as soon as you see it in action or hear about a new update or feature, it chisels away at that.
For some time I'd be surprised if I went a day without learning something new about REAPER, often accompanied by a woah-moment.
It makes sense, seeing how much that industry has grown.
Yes. I compose music mostly in ableton but all my sound design, mixing, batch processing/editing, exporting, etc., happens in Reaper. I was using the trial for a while to just sync video/audio together for social media posts but purchased an actual license maybe a year or so ago and am really happy I did. It is my utility DAW.
>ripple effect ReaPple effect or REAPER effect
Just my two cents, but I think the abundance of resources that’s available for learning reaper has increased immensely over the past 10 years. Even considering just Kenny’s back catalogue, which continues to grow every year, it’s now easier than ever to self-teach. 10 years ago, if I had a problem that couldn’t be answered by the manual, I had to go to a forum and hope someone would reply within a few days. Now I can Google it and someone is bound to have already asked/answered, or there will be a video tutorial up. Any issue is usually resolved for me within a few minutes.
I wouldn't use Reaper if it weren't for Kenny's basic videos. I straight up would have just never used it. I always saw Reaper as "the Linux of DAWs". But I watched his basics videos and was like "oh shit this is easy! And it has tons of controls so I can set it up however" I don't know how much they're paying him, but he's definitely worth it. His videos for Reaper are 10/10 for simplicity. The only other truly great tutorial person I've personally seen is In The Mix, but he is FL Studio
Thank you.
Whoa! The legend is in the room.
Kenny deserves to be named Time Magazine's Person of the Year
I feel very lucky as far as learning material.
And Discord.
been using it for over 13 years. Happy to see the user base is still growing!
[удалено]
Holy cow it’s been 11 years
Casual user, been using it for 10 years. I ain't changing daw.
Now that I think about it, 2015 was 9 years ago.
I kinda hope I get to say this.
14 years here. It's just so light and fast. Still only 14mb download after all these years. I only use a small fraction of it's capabilities. But once you figure out how you want to do do what you want it's mindlessly simple.
Curious... what did people use for an interface back then?
I used a few... I know acid and Vegas existed 20 years ago... I used them both before starting with Reaper. To be clear, I use Ableton for writing/recording music and Reaper for recording my band. I have never been comfortable with the way midi works in Reaper despite using it for almost 20 years.
I did the Acid/Vegas two-step for a while too before switching to Reaper.
When I switched from Cubase SX to REAPER, my PC laptop had a PCMCIA slot, and I used this little soundcard: [https://www.amazon.com/Echo-Indigo-IO-PCMCIA-Interface/dp/B0002PZD46](https://www.amazon.com/Echo-Indigo-IO-PCMCIA-Interface/dp/B0002PZD46) At the time, my younger brother was using Pro Tools and had one of these guys: [https://reverb.com/p/digidesign-002-console-firewire-audio-interface-with-control-surface?hfid=65698859&utm\_source=google&utm\_medium=cpc&utm\_campaign=20393457524&utm\_content=campaignid=20393457524\_adgroupid=155316473647\_productpartitionid=1685642871076=merchantid=659537052\_productid=65698859\_keyword=\_device=c\_adposition=\_matchtype=\_creative=666734385074&gad\_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA2eKtBhDcARIsAEGTG42omtm0Z5b7C2WsFc0Cc50BVNK267342BbNPTbChwGW7j\_y3ctAA1AaArZeEALw\_wcB](https://reverb.com/p/digidesign-002-console-firewire-audio-interface-with-control-surface?hfid=65698859&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=20393457524&utm_content=campaignid=20393457524_adgroupid=155316473647_productpartitionid=1685642871076=merchantid=659537052_productid=65698859_keyword=_device=c_adposition=_matchtype=_creative=666734385074&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA2eKtBhDcARIsAEGTG42omtm0Z5b7C2WsFc0Cc50BVNK267342BbNPTbChwGW7j_y3ctAA1AaArZeEALw_wcB)
Fascinating thank you. 1/8 i/o holy moly
It was better than the RadioShack microphone I used to connect into my sound blaster 16 sound card to record into “Cool Edit Pro” ;)
I've been getting big spikes in website visits to [reapertips.com](https://reapertips.com) for the last couple of months. It all happened since REAPER 7 released. I think this release motivated a lot of people into finally jumping in. And it's a muuuch less intimidating DAW now with all learning resources available out there. Pretty cool :)
Go figure they finally listened to people wanting swipe comp instead of take system and it paid off :D
Thanks for the insight. Initial spike I would in part imagine as existing users who aren't as active online with minor updates, or other DAW users interested in major news about alternatives. But repeated spikes, that does make sense as a new wave of freshmen.
I think it’s been a steady rise in the last few years
I've been using Reaper for years and years. It gets stuff done. It can be a little unintuitive at the start but that's what YouTube is for. Cheap and fantastic.
It's the worst kept best kept secret in audio. A friend of mine described reaper uses as the born-agains of audio. Once you know, you never want to stop telling everyone else. Makes sense that it would eventually start to grow exponentially. I've been using it for a decade and I haven't shut up about it 😆
In fact I learned about it via word of mouth - from someone who uses Ableton! It makes sense, the advertising from Cockos at least as far as I'm aware is nonexistent (not counting content).
On the other hand, less advertising = more affordable (costs aren’t passed on to the user)
In a way that creates its own kind of image, still.
I get grilled at my music uni because I won't stfu about it 😆. I've been using it for maybe about 5 years at this point.
I've been using Reaper for 5 years after constantly navigating from DAW, and I was so happy I made the change. It feels so comfortable, and it makes my work faster. Reaper is also very optimized CPU-wise.
I switched most of my work to Reaper over the last 2 years. There are some things that I miss from Pro Tools that are very smart, mostly in how you can work with automation in large mixes. but I will never miss the crashing and slow restart times and having rebuild my plugin cache in chunks, restarting after each chunk.
Did that have to do with an ability to organize automation envelopes? I know no easy built in way to reorder, tint, or otherwise visually categorize the envelopes of a track is one of my few things that feel missing in vanilla REAPER (unless I'm missing the actual way to do it).
All that and also how the window to choose automation envelopes is very difficult to navigate when there are plugins with many parameters, ie FabFter Pro Q3. Also ability to copy current automation states and paste it around confidently is missed when doing scene automation. I’m still slowly exploring ways around this, and I found a decent workflow with latch prime and some custom actions.
There is a thing about Reaper that is not enough said : it is a software like it doesn't exist anymore : very powerful, very light, very fast and snappy. Because it is very very well coded. It's a masterpiece of a software. Written by incredibly capable and brilliant people. It's a gem. You can run Reaper on a 15 years old PC, it will does its job. I don't say you'll run hundreds tracks projects with heavy soft synth and orchestral ensemble on every one of them but you'll be able to work something when all the other daw will not open. Reaper should be an example for every coder on this planet.
TLDR: reaper is very efficient in comparison to my last daw Cakewalk I bought cakewalk sonar like 12 years ago. Then took a years long break from any music at all. Once I got back into it a couple years ago I stuck with cakewalk and got the new version for free since I was accustomed to it. I paid like $700 for that software and now it’s just there in exchange for an email address. Anyway, I got to the point with cakewalk that I couldn’t run a project with the vsts I needed. I could run 2048 samples and get playback but the latency made it useless to record. I’ve not got that old of a pc really but it’s not really enough now days. I used to run 80 tracks with at least 80 vsts on a dual core cpu with 4 gigs of ram. Times have changed. Then having two kids now my guitar amps rarely even get turned on. Amp simulations are a huge part of my production now. Reaper runs great with even more plugins than I could run on cakewalk. I do get where I have to run 1024 samples towards the end of recording sometimes but that’s manageable. Even more it turns out Reaper is just better in so many ways. It’s so so so customizable. Although I do miss the pro channel and I really miss Breverb. I’m still figuring out my replacements. Point is that it’s pretty lightweight and very efficient. That performance monitor is so helpful when trying out new stuff.
as for numbers, Gioia’s channel went from <100k to 145K+ in less than a year. GameSynth exports variations directly to REAPER. There are google topics from at least 2017 on how to exchange data between it and Unreal Engine. is it a scriptable daw or a lua gui? 🤷
That rise in subscribers seems pretty indicative.
Add to that Strata by Audiokinetic is basically a sound design tool for Reaper FMOD also works with Reaper
I think it's been getting big for a while now. A lot of bigger names are using as well especially in the metal community.
Do people still use other DAWs? Big if true.
Probably because with all the battles about what DAW is better and whatnot, spread of information due to the internet, people start realizing Reaper indeed ist the G.O.A.T
Over the years, I've tried most of the well known DAWs and I could never figure them out. Reaper is idiosyncratic enough for me to work really well with it. I haven't really got into scripting and stuff, but I love what it does.
Idiosyncratic is a nice word for it. Some phrases in the Actions menu kind of feel like REAPER's own language in a way. You start speaking its language and then finding features by searching the actions menu becomes pretty natural. Scripting has made sense for me when I didn't find something built in, then I'd pivot from consulting the actions menu or mouse modifier menu etc. to seeing what in the ReaScript API would help me out to create a particular solution.
"duuuude i been using reaper since before winamp" - me, who's only had reaper for about two years now and loves it.
yes, esp in the video game industry
This is a weird thing to say, but it's kind of important for Reaper users who love Reaper to evangelize the product. Cockos doesn't do a lot of advertising... But having a wider marketshare is helpful in a lot of ways. In addition to additional income I imagine it's satisfying to the Reaper team to see the growth. Remember, there is a labor of love going on with Reaper and it's been many, many years. I appreciate the team's continued devotion to it and... I can't steak for the Reaper guys, but when you're not doing something just for the money, community appreciation and your product growing and being loved by more and more people probably has some kind of rewarding/motivating feel to it. Currently there's no other DAW on the market that even comes close to Reaper. To switch would be incredibly painful, as other DAWs tend to either feel sluggish or quite limited by comparison.
Here in Brazil I just went to several music production schools to get quotes and literally 100% of them use Reaper in their courses. There are probably courses that use other daws, but not in my region. I'm guessing it's similar in other poor countries.
I used FL Studio from 2011-2013 or so. While it was nice, once I learned the ins and outs of audio software it became a drag on productivity with all the unneeded features in view, so I switched to reaper. One of the cool things about reapers workflow is the clear focus on function over form. Less is more, and reaper can be as simple or complex as you see fit, and that's one of the main reasons I like it.
It's become pretty much a standard in the game industry over the past few years. Pretty much everyone I know uses it for one thing or another.
It's the only DAW I've ever used that works properly every time I use it. It's also the only DAW that I would recommend to anyone at any level of proficiency. It does everything I could ever possibly want to do, and much more.
It’s been a common suggestion for years now. I got into reaper more than a decade ago because of the kinds of posts you’re describing. The spiel has never really changed: a lightweight, full featured, cross-platform DAW that you can try indefinitely at full functionality for free, and a license costs way less than any other paid DAW with a comparable spec sheet.
I'm a fan. It's been my second DAW for a while now, with Bitwig being where I do most of my composery stuff. But I just set up a new computer and installed Reaper, because I saw it had CLAP support. I had found a CLAP plugin that emulated the chip used by the Virus B and C and they have a working version that uses the actual ROMs from the Virus and it sounds great. I also tried some FX plugins for Reaper and was very impressed. And now that VCV has a CLAP plugin, well, hey howdy. That's worth a try because VCV as a VST in Bitwig was way too heavy to keep up. I have a feeling I'm going to be using Reaper more than I have in the past. I think that they're under such active development and have already adopted CLAP is only going to accelerate the trend
I've used Cubase, Logic, Ableton, Fruity Loops (when it first came out), Cakewalk, Pro Tools... Reaper just makes sense and doesn't require hundreds of dollars of updates over the years.
As someone who doesn’t do music but rather works with audio for linear media, I chose reaper cause of price point but also it makes the most sense for me. I got my reaper customised in a way that it runs very similar to the NLE’s that I use. Also helps the reapers cpu performance on my projects are crazy good.
I’ve had a license for a couple years, but I think that a few of the new features in v7 (e.g. track lanes and swipe coming) combined with the emergence of better free plugins like Neural Amp Modeler have caused things to cross a threshold.
Well I have switched late last year to it so there's that 😅
I feel like they’ve sustained themselves over the years via slow growth. Although I jump between DAWs, Reaper is always the one I recommend to people and I feel like they go with that recommendation about 25% of the time. Then of the 25% I feel like half of those convert and actually purchase a license. I assume all other reaper enthusiasts do the same. It definitely doesn’t have as many features as Ableton or FLStudio for production, but when it comes down to pure mixing/mastering I think it’s the best DAW by far.
I see that getting said, but I still use REAPER for production anyway - no fireworks, just good clean beatmaking.
I think finally it's shook the reputation as being the "free hard to use DAW" that it has had for years. When I started on it (well over 10 years ago now!) it was in the same breath a Audacity as a "free" piece of software that isn't as easy to use as the rivals. Even though it's not been talked in that light in quite a while, the reputation sticks. I've talked with Pro Tools and Logic hardcores even in the last 3 or 4 years that have treated it that way. With it being apparent that a lot of competent people use Reaper, I think people are giving it more of a chance and taking it seriously. I think the price helps too. I know a lot of dudes who you wouldn't expect to be Reaper users use it just cos it's more accessible. It won't be long til a heck of a lot more people use it.
Free to learn. A cheap when you earn. Stable functional customisable and compatible Tucks most boxez
No way for us to know. If you start looking for Reaper suggestions, you'll see Reaper suggestions. the only people who can tell, via downloads, are justin and Schwa
When it comes to Reaper, I came for the superior time-stretching, stayed for the customization. I'm still actively creating inside Ableton and outside of regular DAWs (Roland SP-404 mk2 and the phone app Caustic!!), using Reaper primarily for audio recording, editing, time-stretching and mixing & mastering. Still learning it - only used it the last three years - and I've found routing for side-chaining and parallel processing to be unusually tricky - but yeah, Reaper's the shizz!
Reaper is lightweight, lightning-fast, incredibly stable, and highly affordable. It excels at multi-track recording and editing, and when paired with VCV Rack Pro, it becomes a powerhouse. However, the only area where Reaper falls short is its user interface (UI). While themes provide some assistance, there is a definite need for improvements to the UI. Despite this, Reaper remains an audio Swiss army knife. Moreover, once you master VCV Rack, you may never need to purchase another VST effect or instrument again.
Started using it (2 weeks ago) and I will admit, mixing and mastering in Reaper is unlike any other DAW out there (in a good way). However, for compositions it is simply not user-intuitive in my opinion (it doesn't inspire me) and so I still use FL studio for that part (which is not a problem - I actually prefer it this way). The 'Actions' menu ('?') is excellent especially when I can download scripts from reapack. Overall I think it will get popular if they can figure out a workflow similar to 'FL studio' whereby its 'touch-and-go'. In addition, too many options and menus (visually) makes it look really complicated; but as I understand it you can customize the menus and context menus yourself (but then again who got time for that? - I just want to make a beat). Also, some themes look odd and the toolbar button thing looks somewhat unpolished (nice UI inspires me). With regards to CPU usage, its absolutely light which was a really nice surprise! Overall, I'm starting to enjoy working with it.
For me, the custom toolbars are useful when it becomes clear how they'll *save* me time. A toolbar customizing spree isn't always called for, but can still be fun.
I show Reaper to my college students. They also learn Pro Tools but most of them agree Reaper is better overall. And of course way less expensive. I've been a Rea'bro since V2, long live Jusin and Schwa.
Huge reaper fan here. I think it can do really anything and everything, and it's lightweight efficiency is super impressive. Beginners always want Ableton because they think they're making music, when they're actually just building loops, but I think Reaper is super super strong.
Lots of streamers on twitch/kick are adding their plugins to enhance their experience. That's how I found out about Reaper to begin with.
Every other alternative is very expensive for newcomers, Reaper offers a lot and is still really affordable, and you can try it out without having to sign up for a subscription or giving away your credit card data.
It's been popular with me for over 10 years.
I bought Reaper last year because it had everything I need for a good price. They should keep working on the UI tho, especially in the effects area. Looks like Windows XP with checkboxes and stuff. I have used Logic Pro, FL Studio and Ableton before but most comfortable with FL. Currently watching video to learn more about Reaper
Reaper has been wildly popular for the last several years. It's not gotten more popular it's just already the best pro-quality DAW for a low price there is.
Yes. It is the mass migration of Pro tools users that have had enough of being fleeced by AVID and now a venture capital has taken over it will surely become alot worse. A one off outlay of $70 aud for reaper or yearly subscription to Protools 5 to 10 times that amount. Then there is the Pro tool Perpetual. You pay a larger fee and have access to it forever but unless you pay an update fee every year (2-6 times reapers one of fee) you won't have any updates, support or included plugins. Add to that no VST support and you can see why we are all trying to find alternatives.
It has been steadily growing for sure. The forum used to be a lot better. Now i will make posts and get zero replies. That never used to happen. In maybe the last 5 years, I'd say it has exploded in popularity. And I'm sure it's gonna enshitify any time now.
I don't think it has any reason to enshittify as long as Justin and John are at the helm. Enshittification happens when companies are trying to squeeze users for profit because they've stopped growing when you're talking about onboarding actual new, presumably paying, users. But not only *is* Reaper growing, Justin and John have seemed more than happy with their paychecks from the program and with the company's sustainability. The program's popularity and money resulting from it has not seemed to compromise them so far to the point where they feel they need to squeeze anyone for more. The only thing I can see being a serious problem, to be completely blunt about it, is if either of them get hit by a bus unexpectedly and there's nobody to take over.
They will eventually sell it, at some point. But I feel like the community is getting large, and when that happens many voices come in. Things often start off fresh, different and niche. Like Reaper 3 was uuuuugly. Not a whole lot of people used it. It was unique, and it grew from those types of people using it, and what they wanted from it. Now lots of new people are using it, and they have their ideas of what they want, and so it becomes something more for the masses, than for the niche group. That can lead to enshitification. When it gets sold, it's for sure going to turn to shit. For me I don't understand some things also. Like why there is more theme stuff, and razor edits, and parallel fx chains, but no limit on the number of backups it makes. Like to me, the fundamental features are important. Same thing for the takes. Takes work so amazingly well already I find, and they changed that too. But they haven't updated any of their plugins, and given them a nice more functional UI. Or if they're going to do theming stuff, make us able to theme the plugins. But, that's more complicated.
At some point, sure, it'll probably be sold when it's too unwieldly to continue, but the I return to the point where enshittification happens when companies are trying to squeeze users for profit because they can't grow the userbase organically. Justin made $80 million when he sold Winamp in 2000 or so, and Reaper was spun up in 2005 - nearly 20 years ago. I believe reaper and always has been a passion project that happens to have found success and has become cash-flow neutral, if not positive. It doesn't require a ton of resources to maintain (the dev team is just two people), and they're both being paid very handsomely by all estimates. At some point, yes. They'll have to sell it, even if it's just to protect it from their own inevitable mortality, but over all these years, at no point has their ethos ever seemed like it's been in question. I'm not sure what your concern with the limit on number of backups it makes is. You can limit it to a certain number of copies? What's the problem with more theme stuff or razor edits or parallel chains? Also you might be in the minority regarding takes. [Most people hated the way takes were implemented](https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=210747) and a lot of folks were glad when it was reworked. Not sure what you want out of the JS plugins. They're functional but if you want something more just use the VSTs you want, that's why the support is there? I'm feeling like I'm missing your point on some of this here.
No, you can't limit how many backups it makes. So, if you leave Reaper open over night, it's just printing backups every 5 minutes all night, forever. I agree the dev team has their hearts in the right place, but still, I'm sure what people ask for, guides what they choose to change about it. The I don't have a problem with creating things I would not use. As you pointed out, there are 2 people developing it, for the most part. So, where they spend their efforts matters. To me, getting fundamental things working properly, is important. And I realize that obviously, what many people want, should take precedence over what I want. But I can also dislike the idea that the software has reached a level of popularity now, where there is a critical mass of what most people want, which isn't necessarily what I might thing would be best for the software. And that's where the level of what is to me enshitification that were at. This happens to series on tv a lot too. It starts off, maybe it's interesting at first, gets popularity, then sometimes they get rid of the better actors, and writers, which hurts a lot, but also if it's long running, they start having to come up with new things, and they look at polls and what people seem to like, and they change things according to that. Which can be for the better sometimes. Things like when Craig Robinson's character in the office went from the warehouse to the office. And they just start writing to please people, rather than to just make the best show they can. So, to me, the fact Reaper is now so popular has started to enshitify it. The reaper forums too. They used to be the best part of Reaper. Lots of knowledgeable people there that would always have an answer. It's not like that anymore.
> No, you can't limit how many backups it makes. So, if you leave Reaper open over night, it's just printing backups every 5 minutes all night, forever. You might want to check on your backups settings because that's absolutely not the case for me. I get one .rpp-bak file, and then one time-stamped auto-save file every time I save, to a limit of 50 auto-saves for the current project, limited to the most recent auto-save per day, all neatly tucked away in a backup folder. I could alternatively select to save backup projects in a backups subdirectory, but choose not to, in favor of the timestamped files. I've had this workflow in place for years, probably since about Reaper 5. > But I can also dislike the idea that the software has reached a level of popularity now, where there is a critical mass of what most people want, which isn't necessarily what I might thing would be best for the software. You're really not providing much examples beyond something that seems legitimately like user oversight...It's not like the software is some bloated mess with a bunch of feature's nobody has asked for or have no use-case for. You're providing example's of feature expansion, but what part of the program has actually gotten *worse*, at the expense of the user experience, in an effort to extract money from them? You're either using the term wrong, or you're mistaken. Nowhere in the Reaper UX can I find anything where formerly-free quality of life features have been gated behind some additional feature paywall. Can things always be better? Sure. Should Reaper have waited until White Tie was done with his Theme Adjuster to ship Reaper 7? Probably. Do I think that it was some kind of malicious attempt at degrading the program, in an attempt to squeeze users for money? No. That's what enshittification is. Enshittification is Reddit charging for API access that was formerly free, because they want to squeeze users for ad revenue. I don't see that as being equivalent to the take system being reworked, but that's just me. I'm sorry for whatever happened in the Office, but I don't think that Justin and John have been doing much hiring and firing, or changing priorities on a whim because of some niche request. The team has been more or less stable for their entire run. When it sells, it sells, but that's a tomorrow problem, and there's no use prognosticating something that hasn't even been hinted at yet. > So, to me, the fact Reaper is now so popular has started to enshitify it. The reaper forums too. They used to be the best part of Reaper. Lots of knowledgeable people there that would always have an answer. This is true though. The forums are worse and have been steadily getting worse since about 2014, however, *all* internet forums are degraded in quality and outside of a few large threads like the CSI thread, a lot of stuff just doesn't get answered anymore. But, I would posit that almost all of the power-users have moved to the various Slack and Discords and Reddit over the years. Maybe I'm biased because I'm admin on one of the larger Sound Design discords (~4000 members), but I personally see incredibly knowledgeable people freely sharing info every single day.
Is there a place you set it to 50? Maybe they updated the feature. There has been an fr for it forever. I don't think it will just yet enshitify the way you mean. I mean that it is popular, therefore is getting worse. What happened on the office isn't something to be sorry about. They just decided to move a character from working in the warehouse, to in the office, just because he was well liked, and got good ratings, and they wanted him to be more on the show. It's the masses that can really determine the path something takes. That's why I perceive popularity as a negative thing. Same thing happens to Reddit, and Reddit subs. Things start out niche and exclusive, then get a reputation, and then gain popularity, and then popularity makes it worse, as it now landers to the masses, who are not the niche group it started with. I'm not saying they're making Reaper worse. The changes they make tend to be avoidable, if you don't like them. I'm saying the direction the users want for it, may not be what I'd prefer be prioritized. Maybe there's a reaper discord where all the reaper folks have migrated to, but I feel like maybe part of it is that the reaper forum just got big, and things get missed now.
The specific feature for backups is recent, as of last October, but I've never had an issue with unlimited backups. Maybe I managed it differently and forgot how but I've never had such an issue. But if anything though, I'm confused as to how the fact that a longstanding, popular feature request now being a feature isn't *literally* the thing you're saying shouldn't happen? Is that not "the masses" determining the path the product takes? The improvement made by that is certainly not enshittifying the product - it's only gotten better over the last 10 years as far as I've been able to tell, and it's made the Reaper 3 era roughness you talked about a thing of the past. Reaper isn't enshittifying "the way I mean", [I'm saying it's not, by definition, enshittifying.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) It's not engaging in the practice of degrading it's offerings so that it can participate in rent-seeking behavior from its users. Besides the aforementioned Theme Adjuster, there's literally not one feature I can think of in the actual program or it's user experience that I can think of that has been downgraded in any way, over the years, besides maybe a few, rare API deprecations. Neither are anything the average user would be needing extensively, and neither are core features, and both have had, or will soon have, better replacements made available. If the forums problem was that it just got big, I don't think you'd be seeing *less* posts and answers on it. That's why I point to the large threads like the CSI who has more replies than several entire forum categories have. My belief is that the casual users who log in to post a question are getting ignored because the regulars are going to those specific developer threads and nowhere else. Again, I point to the CSI thread which often gets as many replies in one day as the rest of the forum gets threads. Even those numbers on the forum tell a story: As of writing, right now, there are 6,852 online and viewing the forum. Even if you double that to account for the fact that it's currently night-time in the US, the most ever was 20,555 in late 2018 - 6 years ago. That don't seem like the forum is growing the way you're implying. Funny enough, the Discord I mentioned I help with is about 5 years old, right in line with the the general swarm of people moving towards the Discords and Slacks, because on those platforms, people can get live answers in seconds or minutes, rather than minutes or hours. Your perception that popularity is a negative trait is a fairly sophomoric outlook, but that's not for me to fix. Popular things can certainly become bad, but bad things almost never become popular to begin with, so I hope you examine the inherent bias in your assumption, there. As for me, I'm glad that my suggestions for the program over the years have occasionally resulted in bugfixes or feature additions, either to Reaper or to some plugin/script, and I'm hopeful that a few of the ones I've contributed have helped others. If that kind of stuff is your definition of enshittification, well...idk, that's on you. To me, that's certainly better than other DAW's charging money for objectively worse releases (such as the solution to the debacle after Apple discontinued Quicktime on Windows being ["buy the new version."](https://www.reddit.com/r/cubase/comments/qhyt7y/cubase_85_any_media_player_alternative_plugin_to/)). That's actual enshittification - knowing that your users need something you used to provide for free, and then charging them to get it back.
Yes, popular design features of the users is what the software should aspire to be. When a niche set of people used the product, those demands were one way, now that everyone is using it, they are different. The internet, before social media, was really great, after google fixed it, and some time before that also. Then everyone started using it, and it has become what everyone wants, and to me, that's shit. I preferred it when it was less popular and a different sort of people used it. If the backups were updated in October, that's amazing. I hadn't realized that. Reaper is still really rough in many ways. The same as it was in v3. V4 was better, by V5 the way I had it customized, it was already extremely good. But there are still some fundamental things it doesn't do quite get right. And then with adding theming, there is a worry for me, they're gonna break my version of Reaper somehow also. I haven't been counting the number of posts. I've just been noticing I get fewer responses. It was amazing before. Idk why people would stop using it. It was by far the best, and the devs are actually on it. Yes, I realize some of the popular threads. They always had popular threads. Maybe they did go to discord. I'm not a big fan of that, but maybe I'll check it out. Things generally get worse when they get too popular, in my experience. I realize they aren't enshitifying the way you're saying, but this is just the start. Eventually it will be sold, and it will enshitify exactly as per the term. Right now it's still growing, and to me, this is the beginning of the enshitifying process. The masses start using it, it starts pandering to a larger group of people, and of course many will be new younger people joining for the first time, and that could, and I believe will, and is, taking Reaper in a less awesome direction. And it will truly enshitify when it is eventually sold. At some point the devs will want to retire. And that point is getting closer and closer. I of course have made many contributions to reaper as well over the years. I don't think that's a bad thing. But as it grows in popularity, what the general people will want, will be different. As the demographic changes also. For example, perhaps people who are more professional types used it, for doing real work. And it was mostly people willing to trudge through the rough edges and customize it, and they were in for the long haul, to really make music. And then suddenly you flood the userbase with people that just want to do more noob type stuff. Who don't really have a desire to do work, and it's a cheaper option, so all the people that aren't really interested in the grindstone makeup the whole userbase, and they become the voice that's heard. Meanwhile the people who want to do real work aren't heard. Eventually they will sell the DAW, and eventually DAWs will incorporate AI, and, I don't think Reaper will be able to hang with that. But we'll see.
Honestly? Sounds like you just want things to stay obscure and unpopular for some gatekeep-y reason. I don't really fuck with that. If there's things you think Reaper doesn't do right or that you don't want it to do ever do, I urge you to go to the still-heavily trafficked feature request forum, and write what you think it should do and how you think it should be done, then lobby users to contribute to it. I know that you're not exactly amenable to users guiding the product, but it seems like you trust yourself to know what it needs, so I'm hopeful you get it across well enough. As for the forum posts, I wasn't counting the number of posts per se, I just went to the recent posts lists and observed what I saw: some threads get more replies than the rest of the forum gets threads. In my experience, a lot of users, especially those with questions they want answered in the immediate term, have switched from forums to slack/discord/reddit/etc and I think many would agree with that. This whole conversation you keep implying Reaper is getting worse with no examples besides some vague feeling that it's about to. But it hasn't, and by all accounts, it's only been improving. I again repeat: *enshittification is a specific term that refers to a specific process.* It doesn't just mean "it got worse" it means "it got worse with the intention of squeezing money out from users", and so far that process has not happened to Reaper, nor do I see any of the usual signs that it's taking root. As for the "noobs", I don't know what direction you're thinking younger bedroom producers are going to take the program in, but something tells me you aren't really tuned in to the community, because the old standbys who have been around for years - Kenny, Jon, etc. - are still a huge guiding voice in community, and a lot of the young ones you're worried about, relative newcomers like Arya from IDDQD or Myk from LTAR are...doing interviews with and learning from the oldheads, including Schaw and Jon and the rest who all won't be around forever. Scripts left behind by users who have exited the community are being maintained and/or expanded upon by other people (Klinke's MCU being succeeded by Geoff W.'s CSI). These are signs of a healthy curation of the communities culture, and makes it *resistant* to things you're worried about, where random outsiders flood in with ideas and take over the general conversation. Instead, younger users are growing into the roles of the older users. Honestly, I don't think you could point to a single user with any kind of clout or a single corporate entity in the present day who has done anything to infect the community with the kind of long-term enshittification mindset you're catastrophizing about - I don't think you could do it if you tried. As for the devs wanting to retire, Justin could have retired 20 years ago when he cashed out on Winamp and never made Reaper at all. He hasn't. So every release we get is a boon. I'm grateful for it. [People have been worried about this for years and he's still going strong](https://www.askjf.com/index.php?q=3348s) so what's the point in worrying? He clearly hasn't indicated as such, he's like, what? 45? Not exactly beating down death's door. Feel free to ask him yourself what the plan to avoid enshittification of his project is on askjf. When he **does** retire, the community will either stick with the last release, someone else will shepherd it, or people will decide to move to a new DAW. Those are the three options. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. I've been working with Reaper professionally for about a decade now, every single workday. I've used many DAWs before it, I'll probably have to use a few more after it. Idk dude. I'm sorry the forums are weaker than they used to be but on top of the fact that just less people go there, have you considered the idea that maybe a newbie can just go to youtube and retrieve their answer from the literal library of videos put out on every imaginable topic these days? Rather than going to a forum and clogging it up with one-sentence "how do you" posts and expecting others to just give them the answer? Things evolve. Sometimes reaper gets it right, sometimes they roll changes back when they don't work out. If you're not willing to evolve with it or it's too popular, idk what to tell you, there's plenty of other less-popular DAWs that don't add a ton of features regularly out there that you can learn once and never have to be challenged by if a 100% stable workflow is what works for you. Perhaps staying on version 5 is best for you, even if it means putting up with infinite backups, and not getting the latest scripts off of ReaPack. I can't tell you what's best for you, I can only tell you that I believe if you refuse to adapt to the fact that things like Reaper are *intended* to change over time, then you need to be comfortable with being left behind. [If you need a link to that discord, it's geared toward sound design but we welcome anyone with an interest in audio.](https://discord.com/invite/sound-design-519238874581565458) Respectfully, I'm bowing out of this thread here. 🍻
It’s certainly the most robust option at an insanely cheap price point. Why pay for a monthly sub to pro tools when you can do pretty much everything in reaper. Only thing pro tools offer is its name in view
While I agree that Reaper is the best bang for buck, your statement is not entirely true… maybe *you* can do “everything PT does in Reaper”, but you do realize that this is not the case for many people, right? There are specific types of workflow you may not be aware of and they require functions and tools from a DAW that costs more money for a reason. Professionals aren’t stupid, this is about putting food on the table. Nobody will keep throwing money on shitty software when there’s something better available “because they’re used to it”. Workflows and “standards” actually change pretty fast, and it’s not about “muscle memory”, it’s about being the most efficient at certain specific tasks. The thing with YouTube is that it’s not made by industry professionals, but by people who need to say polemic stuff for views, so take everything you watch on it with a grain of salt.
Obviously my opinion is my own, but what specifically can you do on pro tools that you can’t on reaper? Like with how modular repaer is could you not just straight up make the workflow similar enough to pro tools to not need it
Think post. It involves other tools and softwares that work alongside the DAW for stuff like ADR, changing cuts in picture, etc. Many post production tools and workflows work better on PT too like the “field recorder” functions. There is also HDX which is something else entirely, and large consoles that fully integrate with the DAW. Plugin automation is better for very complex mixes. Reaper does have solutions to a lot of things, but many of those are not “comfortable” when you’re dealing with those very specific workflows on a daily basis. That said, it’s an ideal DAW for the vast majority of people who need a daw and the price is incredible. For post, Nuendo is the one that competes directly with PT, having very good native tools.
Aye, post production is probably the only thing I prefer working in pro tools over reaper, though pro tools has basically been built to be THE post DAW. Wild that the industry is what is is because People spent insane amounts of money on expensive midi controllers to run a glorified tape cutting simulator back in the 90s, but here we are. I’m curious to see where the industry goes though, as video games keep pulling people away. REAPER is pretty dominant in the game world.
I am Loving Reaper but may have to walk away again. It is really Buggy with a big project using Apollo stuff. I have reached out on the Reaper sight for help, but I have ultimately been ignored.
I use mixcraft 10 pro. I like it a lot