When it comes to your DAW of choice, does it work for you or do you work for it? If you’ve ever asked yourself this before, read on...
To use an analogy, let’s imagine your DAW is a car. What made you buy that car in the first place? Is it because it was the only one available to buy when you first started driving? Or maybe you were in the enviable position of having a choice. You bought it, because after a lot of research, you realised that it was the one that did everything a car should; that is to be well-engineered, reliable, capable, fun to drive, and designed around you.
Is your DAW well-engineered, reliable, capable, fun to drive, and designed around you? While many of us might not bother ourselves with the first attribute, the latter four will betray the first anyway. While REAPER might not be my only DAW, it is the one that ticks all the boxes for me.
About REAPER
REAPER by Cockos Incorporated has been with us since the end of 2005. Developed by Justin Frankel (of Winamp fame), the US company is still home to only a very small team of people whose website proudly states their ethos: “We lovingly craft the software that we want to use.”
The product’s name itself is the acronym Rapid Environment for Audio Production Editing and Recording, leaving out the program’s (not insignificant) video functionality that allows simple editing, titling, transitions, FX (including chroma-key), and rendering to name a few. There are personal or business flavours of the licence that comes as a text file, and you can install REAPER on as many machines as you like provided you only use one at a time... There is a 60 day fully functional free trial, which remarkably does not break after the trial is up.
What Can REAPER Do?
Whatever you do in your current DAW REAPER can very probably do, but its own way. If you don’t like that way you can probably change it. This configurability is incredibly powerful, but you can of course just learn it and use it in the factory state straight away. These are some of the things REAPER offers that you may or may not have been aware of:
Well-engineered
The miniscule installer downloads in seconds. Portable installs can be run from a USB stick thanks to REAPER’s tight, efficient coding. Plug into any studio’s machine, record, and go leaving no trace. In REAPER, tracks are tracks. Create one, and assign an audio or MIDI input, or add a video file later. You can mix these media freely on the same track. Far from being a gimmick, this is a big workflow booster that makes the DAW even more invisible in use. For every send, there is a Receive. Creating Receives will create a send and vice-versa. Audio and MIDI can be sent or received using exactly the same controls. No need to navigate to a source to route its assets back to where you were in the first place.
Reliable
REAPER’s near-mythical reputation for stability is no exaggeration and a joy to work with. The DAW is relied on not only by creative audio and gaming professionals, but also those in broadcast, scientific, and research environments. Certainly, from experience of the three DAWs I use, I am under no doubt which one I would take on a mission-critical location job.
Capable
Put simply, take any feature from your existing DAW, and see if REAPER doesn’t do it. Then customise your UI buttons, layouts, themes, keyboard commands and even the toolbar menus to reflect your workflow. For those ‘can’t-live-withouts’ from your existing DAW, search them in the Actions List (there are thousands to choose from) and assign them, or sequences of them to a single shortcut. Or use REAPER as-is from day one.
Fun to drive
Miss your tape machine? REAPER has a master project varispeed Rate control in the transport bar that is automatable. Tweak and hit record for a whole load of true varispeed effects. The included Elastique Pro algorithm sounds great- no per-track plugins required.
Designed Around You
After all, it works exactly as you configure it. Or not, whichever you choose. When you consider the functionality of any DAW, most if not all couldn’t be reasonably accused of being overpriced. That said, compared to the others REAPER’s pricing structure and licencing truly democratises its use and is totally user-centric. Cockos’ own statement puts it best:
“Our goal is to develop software sustainably while preventing profit rationale from forcing engineering compromises. By doing so, we can keep our product visions intact, giving maximum benefit to our users.”
Another winning user-centric feature is the incredibly friendly user guide, along with some of the clearest, most watchable video tutorials you’re likely to see anywhere in the shape of Kenny Gioia’s excellent official videos available on the REAPER Mania YouTube channel.
New In Version 7
Version 7 of REAPER brings a number of features including FX Containers, FX parallel inserts, expanded audio and MIDI I/O, as well as new options for its long-established track folder system. Bringing it into line with the “industry standard” is updated Take comping and in-track gain reduction metering. You can read about these and more below.
Summing Up
Current users, or those who have tried REAPER may concur with the above. For everyone else, I would argue that REAPER is well-engineered, reliable, capable, fun to drive, and designed around you. Can your DAW tick all of those boxes? If not, REAPER could be the best DAW you’ve never used.