I presume you've understood I'm beginner, discovering many DAWs, plugins, audio editors (Adobe Audition), audio restoration (RX 5, but other good products like Acon Digital Restoration Suite or Sony SpectraLayers), techniques, looking many tutos like Groove3, AskVideo, Elephorm (I'm French) or Music Production Courses...

Using small projects, REAPER and Live (Suite or Lite) can handle them very easily. No experience about huge projects, however, but I never seen comment in this way. Cockos developers are serious, implement user requests/wishes, it's impressive!

I don't want to critic Cubase, Pro Tools, Studio One 3 Pro (I'm using it as 3-months trial), SONAR Platinum, Live 9 Suite or any other DAW, REAPER is largely enough for my usage, sometimes Live Lite is useful for me to trigger MIDI/audio clips (its session mode is unique), in fact depending what I need precisely.

But I'm unexperimented about mixing techniques, arranging etc... I'll must experiment more deeply.

However, stability may depend of plugins (comportement may change from DAW to another) and unknown other "parameters" like memory lacks, running services, BSOD/bombs, DPCs (Windows machines), hardware heats... like ufology, computer science sometimes remains mysterious.

 

Last edited: Feb 10, 2016

In my experience, VST bridging is totally transparent now in Reaper now.

 

You are hungry for knowledge and information and that is the most important thing as you will progress a lot faster.
Dont go too deep too fast,thats what i did,had to go back and re-learn some things.
Make a strong foundation,learn the very basics(EQ,Compression) and build on it.
You have made the right decision on learning with less tracks first.

 

REAPER 4 has handled pretty much everything I've thrown at it. I'm able to render projects 2-4x faster than Audition 4. 7.1 surround project with 32 tracks and a few FX? sure.

 

For Sure. Logic, Digital Performer and Pro Tools require a very stable and power system with lots of memory.
Minimum unlocked quadcore processor with at least 16 Gig of memory.

 

The dark side of the Force... I'm curious guy, it's in my nature. However I try to take required time to understand one thing before to go to another, otherwise all are shuffled, in particular in my 52-yrs old brain.

 

when i deal with small sessions like 800 999 tracks i go with sequoia... no mistake just rock solid....


ok ok... i think other folks can chime in since i never work with 200 tracks... or + ... no im no pro

 

Reaper is great for CPU, and a great DAW indeed, but even after 2 months i wasn't totally comfortable with it ( and don't ask me why, i could'nt really explain it, as it's really a matter of workflow AND subjectivity...). I've used protools and logic for more than 10 years, sometimes studio one on other computers than mine, so i'm not a newbie with DAWs -jut to say. I recently switched from mac to PC, and am still searching for my future DAW.
For more than a week now, i'm digging into Samplitude proX, and so far i'm quite pleased with the workflow, the audio and the midi edition (the simplicity of the "objects" in samplitude is quite astonishing), and moreover, the CPU usage. If Reaper don't fill your needs for any reason (and i repeat, i think it's a great daw!), maybe you can try samplitude. As far as i can tell with just few weeks of use, it seems stable and CPU friendly (with some clever options relative to CPU use).
The point is, you have to try several if you can, and you will eventually find wich one suits you

 

REAPER & Logic can handle 50+ tracks. I've tried.

 

I'm in agreement with REAPER users. I've used quite a few others, but in my personal opinion, for the price and size, it's an excellent DAW for what you're asking...

 

Exactly my experience! Reaper is so powerful, but when I want to lay my tracks down and do some audio and midi routing, I'm so much faster in Live, while Reaper has already killed my creativity when I'm there.
It's a bummer because I really much prefer the JS scripting concept over Max4Live and many other of Reaper's great functions.
As for CPU load, Live is very efficient too.

 

Whatever you might encounter when you make mixes: DAWs will cause the least of your CPU problems - the various plugins you might use are the main culprits. Actually quite recently I got me a new PSP-plugin-EQ and just adding it to a track (no matter how many tracks there were, 1 or 20) ... merely adding a single instance of the E27-plug made Samplitude and StudioOne jump from 1% to 35% CPU usage.

A second reason for troubles and CPU-spikes is the implementation of your audio-interface's driver-software. It's the main ferryman a DAW will have to consult when squeezing bytes out a USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt-, you-name-it-interface. If the drivers suck (the names TASCAM and M-Audio spring to mind here instantly ... lol) you will have problems in the DAW. StudioOne e.g. had severe problems with drivers of some of my hardware units and where - let's say - an M-Audio-driver yielded a CPU load of 105-110% whereas switching to a MetricHalo or Audient-interface the load went immediately down to a normal 30-50%.

DAWs are programmed quite efficiently in terms of how they draw their GUI or the built-channel strip and no DAW that I know will leave an "unbearable CPU imprint" on your system that any CPU from the last 5 years won't be able to handle. It's the "greedyness" of certain plugins and the implementation of drivers that will either cause hick-ups or pleasure. just my 2ct.

 

50,200,300,500+ tracks.....I used 12 one time, thought I was a "power user".

 

REAPER in terms of cpu efficiency

 

REAPER.
On gearslutz therei is a newly-added thread about considering REAPER as a mastering DAW, so everybody says that they all moved to REAPER from overrated Samplitude/SONAR/Cubase/ProTools/Nuendo/StudioOne/etc. because of its CPU performance, stability, possibilities, actions, options, features, built-in bridge, extensions and more-more-more-more-more. It is extremely cheap. And even you can use evaluation/demo mode endlessly without buying it, without feature limitations. So, demo mode = purchased version. But when you open demo of REAPER there is 5-seconds screen only to buy it. So a lot of people moved to REAPER.
There is a lot of huge updates, usually once-twice a month. Cockos updates/extends overall REAPER's stuff like MIDI, VST, FX, FX Browser, stability & performance, API, scripting stuff, built-in effects, Media explorer/arrange window, editing, audio, render, video, actions, preferences, project bay, and much more stuff. Also extensions are updated often, presenting big changes/fixes etc.
RECOMMENDED TOO MUCH!
The only thing I don't like is SRC (sample-rate converter), they updated it in 5.01, so it is much better now, but quality is not so extremely high, it is "optimum very good", so I use only top quality SRCs, not REAPER's ones....

 

FL Studio isn't a DAW, is a toy, or nice PoS (piece of sh***).

First test, FL Studio 12, loading stock demo project, clicking "Play" from transport, was okay, but later, another stock project, clicking "Play", always start @ 36:2:1 or similar (no way to start @ 1:1:1 since) -> no infos anywhere => disappointed, uninstalled, trashed => next! (don't want to waste my time).

Image-Line plugins (for any DAW), like Harmor, are very good, however!

VST3 plugins (when correctly developed, not all) turn off when not used, too

 

Last edited: Feb 8, 2016

In my experience, the new Cubase is great when it comes to handling resources.
than, there are Sequoia and Samplitude that are very good.

Reaper seemed a good option too, but haven`t used it long enough to confirm it`s stability ... I don`t like the Interface, so I trashed it after a few weeks.

 

REAPER all the way. It's buffering options allow for great performance tuning, especially live multithread processing, or thread scheduling.

 

Best DAW for CPU---> Reaper by Cockos.

 

MOTU also showed some magic with their new Pre-gen™ pre-render engine

"During the NAMM show presentation, Digital Performer ran over 150 instrument instantiations from the CPU-intensive, Kontakt™-based Cinesamples™ orchestral library on a Mac Pro cylinder. With DP’s audio engine buffer set to an ultra-low 64 samples (which produces virtually imperceptible latency for virtual instruments), DP’s CPU meter hovered at an efficient 20-30%." - from
DP 9.02

http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2016/01/30/dp-9-gets-new-plug-ins-improved-performance/

dunno it's better or not than the solution of the competitors: ASIO Guard from Cubase,
anticipative processing from Reaper etc.