I am still quite the newbie; I have really only experienced two DAWs, Reaper and RealBand but I'm happy to share my views. I use BIAB to generate backing tracks for some of my songs. I have tried to use RealBand a few times and have decided it will never be my DAW but it just might become a useful tool in my workflow between BIAB and Reaper! I use Reaper for all of my mixing and mastering.

I love that Reaper is modern and current and frequently updated with a dedicated community. I love that it is available in 64 bit as that is certainly the future if not the present! My rule when starting to use new software is don't start with something that is already in decline like 32 bit.

I love that Reaper sports a modern design. I know some folks will say GUI doesn't matter but in fact it matters very much. If software is easy to use and even fun to use you will be more productive with it. If it is cumbersome and out of date I'm not interested!

I was unaware that there are DAWs out there that do not support VST! Glad Reaper does and in fact I would never consider a DAW that did not. Not sure why anyone would choose to be VST-less! smile

You truly cannot beat Reaper's price. It is free to try and if you decide to buy it is $60! The trial is 100% functional with no expiration so you can use it with 100% of its features for free as long as you want to make up your mind if it is for you.

Reaper has no copy protection nonsense either. So you do not have to worry about it phoning home or about running out of activations.

I found in Reaper things work like you expect...when you right-click something it reacts normal for today's software standards. Simple things but they really make a huge difference in the usability of the software. For example when you mouse over a control in Reaper the mouse scroll wheel becomes active and you can use it to adjust that parameter. Simply brilliant!

I mentioned before there is a huge online Reaper community...seems much larger and more active than the RealBand community here. I really do not know how large it is though.

There is an accurate and up-to-date user guide for Reaper! And loads of resources included and a ton more available to download. There are GUI themes and templates and user extensions. Just an amazing amount of stuff designed to make the DAW even better. And they provide an open SDK in case you wish to write your own extensions.

The only way I could ever see me leaving Reaper is if I took my music to the next level and needed to be more compatible with professional studios as it seems Pro Tools is the DAW of choice for the vast majority.


As a final comment, I strongly disagree with the advice sometimes given around here that "because you got RealBand for 'free' when you bought BIAB you should use and learn it first". My advice is to check out your options. Who wants to spend a bunch of time learning a DAW that won't do what you want or be fun and easy to use? Not me! So do a little research and see which ones have the features you want. Download demos and test them out yourself on a basic project. As I mentioned before Reaper has a fully functional trial that you can produce music with with no restrictions! So why wouldn't you give yourself the choice? laugh