Herb, Rayc, i always respect you guys opinion. I too as you remember came from a cakewalk background and always found it fairly easy to use. I also have used Reaper for years. However, i wonder if that is not just familiarity more than capabilities. I have used RB extensively over the years and while veered away for a while i am slowly coming back. I find RB more capable than most give it credit for. Like JAOM likes to say get under the hood. I find it handles some things differently, but just as efficiently if you really learn it. I have used and completed projects with Studio one, Reaper, Harrison Mixbus, Multitrackstudios, and Cake/Sonar. I have done head to head comparisions with many of them. By starting and completing a test project in each. I can say without reservation RB holds its own. Still, that may be me and the needs i have. Everyone has their own workflow, and a program they are familiar with.

Sometimes i feel that folks dismiss RB a bit too quickly because it approaches a function differently. Over a full year's time I literally took 100 midi files i found on the internet and reworked them in RB. It has very deep midi capabilities. I then added RTs and personally recorded tracks to the mix. Mixed them down. Then used RB to play them live for shows and parties. it performed flawlessly. I could not do that with Reaper, or Cakewalk/Sonar. It even scrolled the lyrics and chords for me.

Aside from that on several occasions i complained to PG (Jeff Yankauer specifically) about some perceived weakness in RB only to find out i was wrong. In the last two years it has had several upgrades that helped create a more user friendly feature set.

I guess my point is that If someone likes Cake better or Reaper better because it does what they like or are super comfortable with it. Great! That doesn't particularly mean it is superior to another DAW. To someone just coming into the BiaB world I doubt RB would be lacking anything. In fact it most like would be very familiar to the BiaB user. Especially if they have little or no DAW experience. I have watched for the past 20 year users steer users to the DAW of their personal choice not because it is better but because they personally are comfortable with it's workflow. Reaper users can't say Reaper is better than Cubase, or Sonar, or Studio One, all they can say is it is better for them because they are more familiar or comfortable with it. The same goes for Cake, or Studio one, or Cubase, or Logic users.

I guess i just feel it is a bit unfair to label RB as "basic" or inferior just because we might not be as comfortable with it as we are with the DAW we cut our teeth on. Nor to discourage BiaB users to try something else when they ask questions about programs here. We are here on PGMs site. Just my views and your milage may vary.

Last edited by Rob Helms; 10/19/24 04:31 PM.
HP Win 11 12 gig ram, Mac mini Sonoma with 16 gig of ram, BiaB 2025, Realband, Reaper 7, Harrison Mixbus 9 32c , Melodyne 5 editor, Presonus Audiobox 1818VSL, Presonus control app.