I apologize for not writing again in this thread sooner. Thank you for the responses.

It is so interesting to ask such a question and to get so many different answers. That's why I gave up on trying to ask "which DAW should I use for EDM" because I get as many answers as people posting in the thread... That's why I asked more specifically about Reaper.

I have been using Reaper casually for a while now and know some of its menus and its very basic workflow. The thing is that I am a big noob in music production in general, and especially EDM which is what I'm mostly interested in at the moment. I am overwhelmed by Reaper, especially since I still don't understand a lot of the basic aspects of a DAW in general.

So I was looking for tutorials, and found that there is barely anything for EDM in Reaper specifically. There's lots for Reaper in general, but only very few stuff for EDM. The one EDM video I watched was super complicated, the guy was turning on and off very specific options and was then arranging wav files on the timeline instead of using an intuitive sequencer for drums, for example. I am sure a professional who knows music production in DAWs in general can use Reaper in a terrific way, but it doesn't feel suited for a noob at all.

Then I found that for FL Studio and Ableton, there are a TON of video tutorials where someone takes you through the entire production of a track. Just what I need. To be honest that is the main reason why I don't want to stay with Reaper for EDM. I'll keep using it for some other stuff, but for EDM I feel like I need something new, and something for which there are videos available that basically hold my hand because of how much of a noob I am.

Thank you @Talmi for that very detailed post - I love reading posts like these, because they contain so many details that I would not catch otherwise.

I am honestly pretty intimidated by this choice because for one, I don't want to waste too much time with something that I end up leaving for another DAW later, and also I am afraid of deciding for a DAW which ends up being discontinued some time down the line. You never know nowadays.

Studio one looks interesting, but there's not many tutorials for that. FL Studio and Ableton have the most video series by far.

 

And that will probably happen. FL, Live and Bitwig and etc. are targeted towards EDM, if you stay in that scope, you are golden, but if you get into huge projects, scoring, tracking, mixing and etc, you will realize they are hot mess suddenly and DAW's like Reaper, Cubase, Logic and etc . will seem much more attractive.

There's no one-size-fits-all DAW, you need to choose lesser evil if you want to stay with one DAW, your choice, my advice is to use whatever feels right to you at the moment and where you can work the fastest, than when needs arise, think about change, but in the present why torturing yourself with the future and what might be, enjoy the present, you are now doing EDM, use the most appropriate DAW in which you can make EDM.

 

As beforementioned, "Reaper is like any DAW." It's customizable and often used to simulate ProTools and Logic.

 

if you wanna go for virtual sound stuff a lot, best options right now (of no particular order) are Ableton Live, Bitwig Studio, Presonus Studio One and FL Studio,
Reaper doesn't have any instruments, so is not a complete out-of-the-box solution

 

Thank you for this. It's spot on and you are right. I worry too much about this. Looks like I have to accept that there might be transition periods in the future. As a complete beginner I just feel pretty intimidated by it all so I want to avoid it, but there doesn't seem to be a way around it.

I really wish Reaper did come with instruments. At least some basic ones. The more I read about it, the more Reaper looks like a DAW for people who know exactly what they're doing. In that case it seems to be very powerful though, when it is used to emulate Pro Tools and so on.

 

Spot on, that's exactly it, Reaper is DAW for people who know exactly what they want from a DAW, I dabbled with it and after trying to make it be like Logic, realized it's still not Logic enough in some things I really wish it was and came back to Logic again, seems like I hit then nail in the head when I was in your shoes years ago with that decision, especially because these days I'm doing more than EDM.

Cubase seems to go in good direction, over here it's industry standard for anyone having studio that do something more than tracking/recording, they are trying more and more to cater to artist's and that's really great thing on top of all that rich audio and MIDI heritage, if you want my sincerest advice, Cubase is the way to go if you suddenly get more into scoring, mixing and etc, it's pricey, but you could also look one day behind and realize you hit the nail in the head with that decision.

There's Pro EDU versions on eBay if you decide for it.

Here's another perspective of one user, don't know if something changed, but that whole trying to make it be something else instead of just using that something else is at display here too: https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=165257

Yeah, I know, I didn't made it any easier on you with this response, but you deserve my sincere input, I'm not into DAW wars or fan boy-ism, just trying to help you make informed decision.

Decisions, decisions...

 

Last edited by a moderator: Dec 9, 2018

Yeah. Like where did Addison Grace go. I do not care if she is looking at me from my computer screen. I know she is not thinking about me and I have no problem with distinguishing fantasy from reality unless I am severely intoxicated. Avatars are not the person in the image. That is the idea. I too like old men but Addison is so much better an Avatar.
Me I am not a boy despite my nomme de plume. Nor does it have any strange entendre. I should call call the politically incorrect thought crime gang (opposite of PC Police).
Now please bring back Addison Grace. We (the great masses of the future and past) want her back.

Oh and for the record. Reaper is pretty much fully customisable.

 

Last edited: Dec 9, 2018

try ableton ,
there are many edm templates for free old few ,see how it works
i used fl 10 ,then 11. fl also works good but for edm it is ableton" man
once you get used to it there is no reason to turn back , it is like ultra fast and you dont have to tweak anything
it is READY to just as it is .
i produce edm 99% times
house , trap ,dnb kind of music

 

Actually the DAW's with the most videos are the ones which have certified training partners. While Ableton has jumped on the bandwagon, Protools, Cubase and Logic have the most amount of videos out there at a non-youtube end user level and mainly at pro level.
There's a good reason for this why it's not out there ad nauseum.
EMI, SONY,BMG,CBS and all the majors do not use reaper, ableton, samplitude (some use Sequoia for mastering).
If anyone says this is BS, then it tells me none of the people saying this have ever recorded or been in a lot of major studios, because most use Protools followed by either Cubase or Logic.
Some studios with a decent cashflow will have all the major DAW's and even Reaper, FL Studio, Studio one and the works, because they tailor to all their users and also have more than one machine and generally with at least 128GB RAM in each.

Whomever said Reaper is based on all the others is not too far off the mark.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Dec 9, 2018

Try Samplitude....I would say that it's the closes to Reaper than any other DAW!

 

Thank you, everyone. I finally started watching some videos (introductory tutorials) and my first impression is that I don't like Ableton and FL Studio all that much. Studio One however seemed much more intuitive to me. So I'll probably buy the Artist version and start working with it for a little bit.

It just pains me that I will probably end up migrating to other DAWs at some point, and that ultimately, no matter how many threads I read or videos I watch, I have to work with a DAW on my own machine, actually making music, so that I can make an assessment of it. It's more or less luck, or perhaps, an educated guess, aided by forum threads and watching videos.

The responses here were very valuable, so thank you for taking the time to write them.

 

reaper is closest...

 

S1 is pretty capable, only reason for migrating further could be for collaboration sake, but if you are so worried to collaborate with industry folks, than just use Pro Tools, it's industry standard, at some point all the major tracks end up in it even if they started in FL on private jet, it's there in every bigger studio even just for the sake of it, majority of recording and mixing engineers use it exclusively, so chances are high if you get to that point, your track will end up in Pro Tools anyways, but it doesn't matter, you should use whatever get's best out of you.

You have less chance to switch DAW's if you avoid EDM suited DAW's like FL, Live, Bitwig and etc, but Cubase, Logic, Pro Tools, S1, Reaper and etc, that stuff is suited for majority of tasks, only reason to switch from them is to make EDM little easier, but you can score a movie, record a band and etc with ease, they are really suited for that, have features that enhance your workflow big time, half of the EDM suited DAW's can't even import video tracks, are bare bones in some other important non EDM aspects, so have that in mind too.