Users

 

From Vital's discord: What DAW do you use?

(of course Vital is free and speaks more to certain crowds than others, so there's a good amount of pre-selection bias here, but...)

 

A consistent UI.
Reaper is the Linux of DAW's.
Good on paper, but in actual use it's a hot mess.
Back in the day, I once spent 2 months trying to get my Palm Pilot to sync to Linux.
I was going to battle the evil Microsoft empire.
What a waste of LIFEtime.
If you need more than 16 inserts, your problem isn't the DAW, it's your lack of understanding of Vibration/Music.
I was pissed when Cubase went to 16 inserts, completely unnecessary.
Plugins will not make up of how to communicate your emotions through motion...

 

Your concerns about bias are well put; but it actually appears surprisingly close to what you would expect. Cubase being that much lower than Logic is an outlier.

 

Surely not a huge benefit if you actually write music rather than just stitch others bits and bobs together.

 

LUA scripting is mega powerfull id have to say

 

Other DAWs offer a better, more straight-forward user experience (UX). Mainly workflow / clarity of the user interface (UI).

For example: Ableton has fewer features than Reaper or Cubase, but it's much quicker to work with, if you make electronic music / hiphop or anything that evolves around loops

 

Gotta love that condescending tone while not actually understanding what a clip launcher does at all.

 

Yeah, I feel you. I love Reaper, but sometimes I feel like they are too scared to make a decision. There are ways of doing certain things that are objectively better, and there are also things that straight up don't matter. Yet, they leave open access to even the most obscure settings, because 1% of people might actually need them.

Like, do I really need to decide on my own what will be the refresh rate of my meters? Is this so crucial? I feel like many of the settings could be hidden by default and this would bring more users.

 

love this thread

 

You really wanna know? There's alot it doesn't do but it does great at what it does... Here's one example of functions that Reaper CAN'T do on a selection in the piano roll or any other DAW for that matter...

This is in BUZE Tracker which is a combo Tracker-Piano Roller-

CTRL-Right Cliock on a selection in Piano Roll-



Here is the list easier to see with many having even further dialogs-


Here is a tut GIF I had made just for 'Echo' command-



There... Reaper doesn't do that, nor FL Studio, Nor Cubase, etc....

 

I really appreciate this take. I'm an Ableton user and while I know it doesn't have everything, I've tried other DAWs (Reaper being among them) and your comments are absolutely on-point. Nice to finally get a reply from a Reaper user that isn't looking at it through rose-tinted glasses and acknowledges its shortcomings. Far too many people don't like to admit that it even has faults, in my experience.

 

the GUI isn't great - even in MacOS (which does work with basically every other programm in Dark mode) - Reaper is not.

No offense, but none of the tools you mentioned are really nice to use. Having to code to modulate several parameters? Seriously.

JSFX might be a native tool, but IMO it is not a tool for a musician. It is just cumbersome. Are you seriously arguing that needing to code while producing /songwriting is not a terrible workflow?
I have tremendous respect for what you have done for the Reaper community, but this just seems like the viewpoint of a person who is deeply in reaper and ignores what most people view as producing/songwriting workflow. (like Loops in logic/Studio One are great)

I am also not sure what the two developers have to do with anything. Reaper is a DAW just like each one. They have the choice to hire more devs. I don't care if they have 2 or 2000. I just want it to work.

 

Cohesion.

 

False.

 

Userbase of people doing the actual thing with the software instead of talking about it across the internet 24/7, 365/1.

 

Last edited: Aug 27, 2025 at 3:19 PM

Okay, let's address this chronologically.

These are two different things.

1. Yes, REAPERs GUI doesn't look great. However, this is a deliberate technical decision. Instead of using modern but resource-hungry graphics frameworks (which would increase installation size, RAM and CPU load, and limit backward compatibility), REAPER intentionally uses the generic UI elements of the respective OS.
   The advantage: an extremely performant, portable application with minimal resource requirements and maximum compatibility, even with soft- and hardware that is over 20 years old.
2. REAPER has supported native Dark Mode for macOS since Mojave. The option just needs to be enabled in REAPERs Preferences.

I'm very aware that coding isn't part of a typical musician's workflow. But the point is: you write a few simple lines of code once for a very specific tool (modulating a target parameter with multiple sources isn't a daily task for most people) and then use it like any other plugin. Historically, "programming" and routing parameters has always been an integral part of electronic music production. But I do agree with you: the parameter modulation system in REAPER is a bit dated and could definitely use a modernization.

I can tell you what the developers have to do with it. The small number of developers is central to the business model. Every additional senior developer is a significant cost factor that would directly impact the final price. The current pricing model (60/225 bucks for a license that is valid for about six years on average, and a virtually unlimited trial period) is only sustainable because of this extremely lean cost structure. More devs would inevitably lead to higher license fees and/or more restrictive licensing models.
And in all of this, one thing shouldn't be forgotten: The frequency and quality of updates these two devs deliver is unprecedented, especially when you compare it to the output, team size, and price of other DAWs.

 

You wouldn't happen to be a REAPER user would you, I can't tell......lol

 

You say that as if it's something as wrong as being a Luna user