Live vs Reaper

Discussion in 'Reaper' started by signalflow, Jun 22, 2016.

  1. signalflow

    signalflow Rock Star

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    Hi guys,

    I'm an avid Live user and I've been reading a bunch of good things about Reaper. What are the main differences/benefits of Reaper over Live? Are there any cons?

    I'll most likely download the trial and check for myself but wanted some experienced feedback.


    Thanks in advance,
     
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  3. Davey Jones

    Davey Jones Producer

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    I love Live and went to Reaper and HATED it. It may be a different effect with you, so I suggest you try it for yourself for a few.
     
  4. signalflow

    signalflow Rock Star

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    Yeah I'll have to give it a try. I was a avid Protools user way before live came out and when live came out, it was way more user friendly and intuitive so I completely switched over.
     
  5. signalflow

    signalflow Rock Star

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    I've also tried using Logic X and I thought it was just horrendous and not for me.
     
  6. Exidus

    Exidus Rock Star

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  7. signalflow

    signalflow Rock Star

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  8. subGENRE

    subGENRE Audiosexual

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    Mixing is a lot easier in reaper, plus it can handle more plugs than the same project in live. I work in ableton, make the track or beat then export to reaper for the mixing. Been working like this for over 5 years now. Its a lot more efficient for me than using only one of the DAWs. Reaper is also a lot better for tracking live vocals or instruments, better comping and less latency than live. I LOVE ableton live because it the fastest way to get the ideas out of my head in to something tangible/audible. It has what I like to call a "musicians interface", but mixing in it is very tedious compared to reaper.
    ....SO? Use them both? Yes......
     
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  9. subGENRE

    subGENRE Audiosexual

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  10. dipje

    dipje Ultrasonic

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    not at all the same league of products really...

    First: Reaper is a 'standard DAW'. It has tracks and audio clips in linear left-to-right fasion. The whole 'parts' view and doing stuff live (hey, is that why it's called Live? :S :S) is not in Reaper. It's one of the things that makes Live one of the more unique audio products out there.
    Reaper is more in the line of Studio One, Pro Tools, Cubase, etc..
    (edit: 'session' view, that's the word I was looking for. Live's session view is kinda unique and not something out of the box in Reaper (or most other DAWs))

    I'm a real Reaper lover (and every DAW I try I think 'this is cool' yet somehow always fire up Reaper when I need to get things done) but I can be very simple and honest: It's absolutely NOT for everyone.

    I would describe Reaper as the pure technical DAW. The nerdfest, the real 'engineer' DAW. Technically it's pretty much unmatched, can be configured and customized in pretty much every way you want and I don't think I've seen a feature in another DAW that is not in Reaper.

    But it also means that sometimes you need to know a bit or two about the technical side, or it means that to let Reaper do what you want you must spent the time to tweak and configure it how you want it to.

    You must click with it. If you do, nothing else will suffice or come close. If you don't, you're not alone and no shame on you :). I - as a Reaper user and fan - understand perfectly why there are a lot of people not liking it :).

    I think if I generalize it I'll explain it this way: Reaper is for the recording _engineers_ or mixing _engineers_. If you describe yourself more as a producer or composer, it's probably not going to click with you. If you describe yourself more as a performer, don't even try it :).
     
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  11. Preza

    Preza Noisemaker

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  12. Exidus

    Exidus Rock Star

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    TBH, the only thing I'm missing is something like WaveDNA's LiquidMusic incorporated in the MIDI editor of REAPER..
     
  13. signalflow

    signalflow Rock Star

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    @dipje thanks for the your explanation. I will give this a whirl.
     
  14. Ankit

    Ankit Guest

    Watch these tutorials from start. If 1st tutorial impress you, then you're gonna love Reaper.
    No other Daw is that efficient or can be customized to your need.

    You follow other DAW's workflow. But Reaper follows your workflow. Endless possibility.
     
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  15. reliefsan

    reliefsan Audiosexual

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    Thanks guys for all the awesome links.
    i'll have a go at reaper for sure. time to replace that old cubase 5.2 for mixing duities! about time!
     
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  16. Blue

    Blue Audiosexual

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    for me the best is far cubase,although I like Live.
     
  17. Zentropy

    Zentropy Kapellmeister

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    I just switched to Reaper in the last week from a mix of Ableton and Studio One. dipje's post is probably the most accurate thing I can imagine. I just wanted to add from my experience trying Reaper 4 or 5 times briefly over the years: the Reaper that opens when you run the app the first time is NOT the Reaper that huge Reaper fans are praising. It's more like a blank DAW canvas waiting for you to create your own idea of a DAW. It's perfectly usable fresh outta the box but you're not going to "get" why people love Reaper if you use it that way.

    If you just want something that "works" out of the box and have zero interest in customizing your DAW, Reaper's not going to be for you. I spent many hours this week learning it and customizing and I now have a DAW whose GUI looks and works EXACTLY how I want it to, a MIDI editor with a combination of all of FL Studio's piano roll features plus all of Cubase's features plus a ton of unique features scripted by third parties/myself, and custom buttons/keybinds to everything I could possibly need. I have not yet found a single Reaper can't do either natively or via scripting. Performance is 3x what Studio One had and the entire program opens in less than a second. At this point, I will never go back because I'm still in awe of how amazing this is, but it took a LOT of customizing. If you're not interested in the techy/engineery side of setting it up to work exactly the way you want, you're probably not going to like it very much. It's super worth it though. The amount of time it takes to set up is easily made up for by the time saved when a DAW does exactly what you want at every step
     
  18. bigboobs

    bigboobs Kapellmeister

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    Full ACK on that!
     
  19. signalflow

    signalflow Rock Star

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    One last question before I go balls deep in Reaper. Will it recognize my interface? I have an old digi 002 rack. Maybe I can google it if noone knows.
     
  20. subGENRE

    subGENRE Audiosexual

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    No need to go elsewhere......

    Uh, those link to the same videos by the same guy that I linked, try clicking the watch on you tube and see where it takes you. And you can also save a YT playlist insted of clicking little links on the reaper.fm site. Also on his channel you can get all the official latest update vids......

    You know Kenny Gioia, the same guy who did all the other official reaper tutorials for the previous versions, but now they give them away for free.
     
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  21. Preza

    Preza Noisemaker

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    Did not know, good information.
     
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