Good bye Pro Tools. We were in love until you showed me your true colors. You never opened up to me and gave me your true secrets. This is why we cant be together anymore because all you do is throw shade. Limiting me to 32 outputs because I don’t have the hardware that you like. Why can’t I have as many outputs for what ever hardware I have. Don’t you love me for me?

All jokes aside. I have seriously stopped using Pro Tools 2018 as my everyday mixing driver. I have the privilege of owning the Zen tour and Orion 32 + from antelope audio that has given me the capability of having 96 inputs and outputs. Im really getting into outboard gear so I thought of limitless possibilities when I first hooked up both interfaces and made an audio aggregate. Then pro tools comes along to put a limit on my imagination. You can only have 32 inputs and outputs in PT. Now at first I was ok with that, until pro tools 2018 didn’t allow me to route audio past the number 32. So remember i said I have 96 IO with the zen tour and orion 32 together. I wanted to have 32 outputs in total amongst that 96. So If I wanted to use channel 55 and 56 pro tools didn’t pass audio to those channels. It only passed audio to 1 to 32. I was furious, at this point I wanted to force this to work. So I looked into getting pro tools unlimited, and guess what! You can have 64 IO…… if you own avid gear. Ive already invested in antelope gear pro tools due to the amazing ADC, DAC as well as FPGA based plugins. What is so special about avid gear? Lets wrap this point up by saying I don’t like companies in engineering who force engineers to stay in hole, not allowing appropriate interaction with other engineering groups. If pro tools opens up there limit to 3rd party interfaces to us more than 32 IO Ill be very happy to get rid of my rant. Now Im using reaper.

Pro Tools is my first love, but Reaper is my best friend who always has my back. Reapers flexibility is beyond wild. If you are a hardware junky, using inserts in reaper is possible on any sequence of channels. With my antelope gear I can route anything anywhere doesn’t matter what. Reapers editing is mature not as developed as pro tools, but you can live with it. Mixing is really cool once to get to the know the ins and outs of routing sends and outputs. Same for recording, once you take the time to learn how to use it, its second nature. Now the biggest thing that has annoyed me with reaper is buggy plugins. I have couple of plugins that misbehave in a session and reaper skips my audio playback when it encounters a problem. This makes it hard to bounce sessions. So I have to painfully find the plugin that is causing problems for the skips to stop. Overall I like reaper. Now this might be my imagination or it might not be, but reaper seems to have more of the 3 dimensional feel when mixing through it. In pro tools i had to work to get that same feeling.

Lastly I have not completely stopped using pro tools. I still use it for recordings, just cause I am faster In PT than reaper for recordings. I don’t mind using different tools for different things. Reaper is good for mixing and pro tools is good for recording and editing in my mind right now. So as an engineer what tools work best for you ?

Let us know

Hunter

Outbox Sound LLC

A while ago, Justin did some articles on Pro Tools vs. Studio One. Recently we were introduced to the incredible DAW Reaper. I can’t speak for everyone but for me, it’s the DAW of choice for me going forward. It takes a little effort to learn it but we’ll get into that! What I want to do is speak on my experience with it and a few of my favorite features that I’ve discovered.

First…Some Resources!

If you want to learn in depth about Reaper I recommend going to the Reaper Site and The Reaper Blog for VERY in depth information. Now. Let’s get into it!

My Favorite Things

So, first of all Reaper is an EXTREMELY light program. From what I’ve seen it’s roughly 65MB. You can create a portable install on a FLASH DRIVE! And it will hum along with ease. This is excellent if you have a not-so-powerful computer or want to run Reaper away from your own setup. You can export your configurations and key shortcuts to import on the flash drive as well (More on that in a second). I have to say, Reaper is probably the most tightly coded DAW I’ve ever used. And what’s more, the developers are EXTREMELY responsive and provide updates regularly. Let’s get to my actual list though.

1) Price!!!!!

If there’s one thing engineers, producers, and musicians can agree one it’s that saving money while maintaining a quality product is paramount. Reaper utterly DESTROYS every other DAW that I’m aware of in that capacity. Reaper is FREE for 60 days and then after that the license is $60. SIXTY. DOLLARS. Even if you don’t like it you should still buy it just for when you DO like it. This is a DAW that is so flexible, that editing, recording and mixing can be a SNAP.

2) Stability

Reaper, while being the cheapest DAW, is also the MOST stable. As mentioned above, Reaper is extremely lightweight and light on CPU as a result. That said, recording and editing is a snap because it does not tax your CPU or throw you annoying error codes like OTHER DAW’s. You can add plugins while recording, edit an entire other SONG while recording too. Reaper doesn’t even flinch. It just runs so smooth and I have no idea how they do it.

3) Rendering

Perhaps my most favorite feature (because it saves me the most time), is the Render Queue. Imagine this. You finish a mix and the producers wants your mix, vocal up, vocal down, instrumental, stems etc. Well, all you gotta do is add them to the Render Queue! Basically, what Reaper does is take a snapshot of the current session (Exact settings and all) and will print it according to those settings. It will close and open the same sessions as you make changes to print. The great thing is you can do these prints and walk away and come back later and all your prints will be done. I often find myself doing this with Masters. Instrumental, CD WAV, Full Quality WAV, MP3, Performance etc. I can go eat dinner or do something else productive while that’s happening. Absolutely love it.

4) Customize EVERYTHING

So, this is the most powerful thing about Reaper. You can customize pretty much ANYTHING (Almost to a fault). This can get complicated for many users who just want to use a program and keep it moving. You can customize toolbars, individual track faders (height, color, information displays etc), even menus! It is insane how much you can customize this program to fit like a glove. What’s more, you can create custom shortcuts and actions (Macros) to perform common functions. I will say this- get a gaming mouse and watch things be AMAZING. Editing functions and such at the stroke of a key are awesome. Personally, stringing together multiple macros to lessen my key presses saves TONS of time. Also you can get custom themes from savvy users on the internet! Customize it how you like it. I won’t even go into scripts and code you can write to do cool things. I recognize I’m barely scratching the surface but to see just how powerful customization is, I strongly urge you to check out the links above.

SUMMARY!

Reaper is an amazing DAW that many people know about but are either afraid to try or think it is inferior. FALSE!!! I challenge you to take a chance and try to wrap your head around this DAW. The possibilities are endless. I have barely done this amazing piece of software justice but I hope this will at least pique your interest in exploring a very affordable and extremely powerful DAW. I realize some readers will say, “Oh this DAW can do this and this other DAW can do that. While that may be true for a few of them, I would bet that none can provide the value, flexibility, speed and raw power that Reaper can bring. I for one won’t be changing anytime soon! Enjoy and keep making music y’all!!

Pro Tools Vs Reaper

Reaper. The DAW everyone (and no one) is talking about.