Hi Trevor,

I use Reaper these days. It is everything that JohnJohnJohn has said.

Prior to Reaper, I was a Cakewalk user for many years. I loved the program but I stopped using it with Sonar Home Studio 7 because changes occurred that I didn't appreciate. I found that documentation for Sonar was sometimes difficult to follow. Sonar has changed a great deal since Home Studio 7 and I have no idea what it does these days.

Reaper is an incredibly comprehensive program. It also has some amazing documentation that comes with it as well as extra documentation that can be purchased for very reasonable prices.

What I like best about Reaper ...

1. I worked through the examples in the documentation to develop an understanding of the program. (I still only scratch the surface of what it can do!)

2. There are a huge number of free plugins that come with the program.

3. I love the Reatune plugin because my singing would sound lousy without it. I have Melodyne but I still keep on going back to Reatune (it uses the same pitch-shifting algorithms as BIAB/RB).

4. Loop recording is very easy to set up and run. I like to record 6 - 8 vocal tracks and then I compile a track from the best bits of those.

5. I also use Multiriff in Realband to generate multiple instances of a particular Realtrack and I then load them into Reaper and compile a master instrumental track from them.

6. Compiling a track so that it sounds good is easy in Reaper because of auto-crossfade and snap to grid.

7. I particularly like using the "split at prior zero crossing" because it reduces click sounds that can occur when editing.

8. I find the stretch and compress for specified audio regions incredibly powerful and very useful. For example, if I sing a preposition too early and it sounds too stressed, it's very easy in Reaper to 'stretch' the word before the preposition and to 'compress' the preposition so that it sounds conversational while keeping the overall timing of the lyric intact.

9. When I split a track in Reaper, each individual split section has it's own envelope controls that will adjust the wave-form. This can be used in conjunction with envelopes to achieve some outstanding sound adjustments.

10. Each split section can also host its own FX.

11. With Reaper it's also possible to set up a track so that different ranges of frequency can be channeled to individual effect tracks.

I suspect that what I use of the program is well less that 10% but it's all that I need to make my music.

Regards,
Noel


Last edited by Noel96; 01/25/14 01:18 PM.
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