Over the years I have played with a number of DAWs. I have used cut down versions of Cubase (Cubasis it was back then) CM Magazines DAW, Plazma, Music Maker, Sonar Producer et al. I have had several looks at Ableton but it is not for me. When the Cakewalk carfuffle hit last year I downloaded Reaper. Within two days I purchased a license.

I use BIAB to generate the song, I might use RealBand to make some adjustments to RealTracks, I might go to Sonar to edit or create MIDI parts (then render them to audio), I pull the audio into Reaper. Why this way, RealBand helps regenerating bits of Realtracks but I am more used to mixing in Reaper. Sonar has better MIDI editing in my opinion but I’m more used to Sonar. When it comes to slicing cut and pasting audio bits Reaper does this better and easier. Setting things such as slowing endings or whatever Reaper is far simpler than elsewhere IMHO. Once I learnt how to set up mixes I found Reaper easier and more flexible than Sonar.

Yep it took some learning and some of the stuff I learnt in Reaper can be applied to Sonar, which has help Sonar for me. Same can be said for BIAB. As I learn more, things change for me but essentially the learning for me is as much fun as creating. I still spend a couple of hours a day researching plugins and better methods for doing things but I’m lucky, I’m not on any deadline. At my age to get out and playing at all is a blessing. Making the tracks sound as I want them a joy. I believe there is not one product that does it all, neither am I looking for such a product but I embrace each for what they deliver and the knowledge they bring me. (I had a wise man once say to me “knowledge may be hard to acquire, but once you have it, it is easy to carry.”)

My thoughts Tony

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