Reaper & Swapping DAWs

[Biggins]

Hi There,

Just wondering if anyone here uses Reaper as their main DAW . I've been mucking about with an older version of Cubase and I developed a way of working that I am happy with and and i have reached a point where I am pretty confident in what I am doing. Recently, I have been looking at the possibility of shelling out for Cubase 5 but due to $$$ constraints I have also been looking at Reaper as well. The main reason for this is the costs involved. I'm about to quit my job and I can either buy Cubase 5 or I can get a Reaper Licence and buy bunch of VSTs that i have demoed in the past and quite like.

I realise that you need to try these things for yourself so I've installed Reaper on my second laptop and I've had the chance to play with it a little but I'd be keen to find out if other people have used or do use Reaper and what they reckon.

cheers
B

[Speakafreaka]

Reaper is great and the demo doesn't expire or anything ... no need to be forking out at all IMO - I've used it as the main sequencer in tunes in the past, and have only found it to be both stable and easy to work with - more stable than either Live 8 or Cubase on this PC at least.

Really can't say enough good things about it.

The only problem is it is pig ugly. And this does affect workflow, unfortunately.

[Biggins]

Yeh thats fair. Your comments seem to confirm my first impressions but I'm thinking that I'll probably give it a fair whack in the near future. The workflow thing is a bit of a concern, the offline processing thing in cubase is a staple but in reaper it seems you have to use a second editor within reaper to do audio stuff which seems cumbersome. Also, unless i am missing something, the dialogue for adding VSTi's and FXs to a channel is a dog, especially if you are just working on a single screen laptop (as i am at the moment).

This is a shame really cos I have been turning to the Reaplugs tools more and more and using them within Cubase (reaplugs seems to be bundled with stillwell and schwa and others) and I like the attitude/community of Reaper. i also like the fact that its a lightweight app...installer being approx 4MB