Like the title says.

I've been using REAPER for 5 years now, but been also dabbling in Cubase and Ableton for the past year or two.

REAPER is my main DAW, I use it professionally for my day job (sound design), which is also why I've kinda grown tired of it and started looking for something else to write music in after work and not having to look at REAPER for a couple of hours again.

I love REAPER, I love the fact that it can be whatever I want it to be, but sometimes the lack of clear direction/specialization in just one field that's specifically tailored to certain tasks (like composition/songwriting, for example) make it a bit cumbersome, even now after 5 years and tons of personalized scripts and behaviors.

With all that being said, are there any particularly unique or workflow specific features that make other DAWs like Cubase, Studio One, Logic Pro or Ableton better than REAPER? What are they? I'm mainly talking about music-related features, stuff for songwriting/composition/production, but anything will do.

All input is highly appreciated!

 

aaf import export, hardware acceleration for videos and gui are the big ones for me. Reaper is an amazing daw if you customize it. But its not musician friendly. No daw is perfect though. I use many daws, cause I am getting bored easily, and there is no daw that can cover all my needs. If I had to pick one daw for music, I would pick studio one.

 

Funny, I'm kind of in a reverse situation... I run ProTools at work and use Reaper at home just to do something different.
One thing I like better about ProTools than Reaper is how all the information is accessible in the edit window without opening anything else. By this I mean, audio, automation lanes, MIDI notes & data etc, all in the same timeline window, all editable without opening up anything else. I have a feeling you're going to tell me you can do that in Reaper, but I'm not a deep Reaper guy and I don't have time or patience to set it all up with macros, etc. I'm using reaper at home as a VST host for my digital piano really, and only doing some modest MIDI recording when I want to hold an idea. But right away I'm frustrated that you have to go to a second window to modify MIDI notes, even just to do stuff like quantize.
Generally for me, ProTools is the best out of all the DAWs for clarity and organization of the interface. I can spend a moment or two looking at any ProTools session from anywhere, and grasp what's going on. The mixer is clear and easy to see and so is the arrangement. The simplicity of the interface in spite of the amount of information shown is really first class.
There are some legitimate gripes about MIDI in protools, namely historically poor virtual instrument performance and bugginess with timing over the years. But in terms of the philosophy of how it's implemented, I'm a huge fan- I much prefer the all in one edit window for all data- opening sub windows just to get at my MIDI always feels disorienting and clunky to me.
You were asking for specifics about music related features, and for me workflow is #1- I don't rely on plugins to arpeggiate, give chord ideas, or anything like that. So from my point of view, as someone who jumps between keys, guitar, vocals, but basically working by performing parts and overdubbing, the all-in-one unified approach of ProTools really works for me.

 

For my needs, the clip launch features like the ones in Ableton, Bitwig and others.

I know that you can (or could) buy one for Reaper (forgot the name) developed by another guy, but...

PS: Playtime, the name!

 

Long time Cubase / Studio One here, currently also giving Reaper a go, to see whether it can combine all the features I am missing from one another, as well as other DAWs, along with the advantages of its own.
My experience so far is alright, I haven't really met any major adaptation barriers as many people claim, it's not like it's a whole different beast like trackers, it mostly behaves just like you expect it to, if you ever had experience with any other traditional DAW, no problems there.

The thing people usually complain about I've actually found annoying myself is the GUI. It just looks plain ugly and cumbersome to me, it looks like a program stuck in WIndows 95 era. And I know about the themes, I've tried a few, even the Reapertips one which is probably the one I liked the most so far, but it is still far away from a modern, sleek DAW in my opinion. The FX browser really hurts my eyes.

Looks isn't everything of course and I am willing to look past them, if I manage to replicate some essential features to me. People who swear by it often say "whatever you can do in other DAWs, is also possible in Reaper" so I am exploring the possibilities.
So these are the things I am currently looking for and I have a hard time finding satisfying results:

1. Studio One's Scratchpad feature. It's really useful and important to me so I am actively looking for a way to replicate that. I've posted on Reaper Forum and I haven't got a single reply. Subprojects are a great feature but it's just not the same thing and I haven't found a way to replicate what I want utilizing them.

2. Studio One's Musicloops. Another essential feature for me, they are just awesome. There's a thread on Reaper forum where someone says he was able to get a similar behaviour using a script, but (seeing I am new to this) I can't really follow what he says and from the looks of it I doubt it's as streamlined as on Studio One, where you can simply browse and preview them by pressing a play button, before dragging them on your project. Someone else asked for a more detailed tutorial and no answers were given.

3. Cubase's Track Versions. Now, I saw an addon which supposedly covers that, but I haven't tried it so far to check how good it works, seeing the first two features are more important to me.

4. Functionality similar to Studio One's "Harmony Wizard" addon. You asked for composer-related features and I haven't found anything replicating its advanced midi/harmony functions.

5. A good launcher. This is probably covered by the Playtime extension, not sure if it's as good as Bitwig's but if/when I manage to satisfy the previous requirements I am gonna look it up to see if it is worth it.

That's pretty much it for me for the time being, in general I can say I like it more than I thought I would and I think I am going to be a bit more patient with it to see if it can win me over, I really like the fact there are so many addons/scripts from users and I appreciate some other things about it, so If anyone is able to with those, I'd be glad to know.

 

Last edited: Jan 25, 2025 at 4:20 PM

a big price

 

My main gripe with Reaper is that "Linux" spirit : you can do a lot of things BUT you need to do it YOURSELF.
I don't have time and energy to "make a DAW mine".
Second point : STACKED piles of features, like throwing a pile of things into a shoebox

I want something that works for most tasks directly, without STACKING a pile of extensions, settings ... to get it.
I prefer someone more experienced, like Cubase/S1/Logic makers, "doing their stuff" with THEIR experience.

I love S1 "all in one" tracking mixing mastering ... experience.
I love Cubase "king of MIDI" features.

YES Reaper is a good DAW, like Linux are good OS.
But not for me AND no time for that : already lost countless hours with them

 

Not sure what these Musicloops are but Reaper has Media Explorer (accessible with Ctrl+Alt+X) which allows to, well, explore your file system, prelisten and drag what you need

 

Thanks for the reply. I wasn't talking about an explorer/browser. Let's say you are working on a track and you come up with an idea that might not really fit the specific project, but you really like it and you wanna save it in the most efficient way possible, in order to use it at some other point. On Studio One, you simply drag the midi event in question on the browser open on the right and a musicloop file is automatically created.
This is now available for preview at any time and project from the browser, you press play or double click and listen to it, adapted on your new project tempo even (if you want). Like it? You simply drag it in the timeline. A new track with the instrument (along its entire effect chain) and the midi event in question appears, exactly as it was when you saved it. It's awesome.

 

Last edited: Jan 25, 2025 at 4:22 PM

I like Live because of the built-ins, macros and various groups types for encapsulation. Oh, and Max4Live.

 

Longtme Logic Pro user here. I tried Reaper (two years ago) to see what all the fuss was about, but gave up as it was too convoluted and "all over the place" for me to make a switch. For songwriting Logic's Arranger and Chord Arranger are excellent. The Studio instruments (bass, keyboard, drums) are fantastic for generating ideas. Its just a solid and flexible DAW and very intuitive/EZ. Bonus: the new Quantec reverb is perfect for placing all your tracks into the same space or room, and sounds as good to my ears as a Bricasti M7.

 

Playtime 2 can be added to Reaper to provide clips to record and launch.

 

Okay, I just realized Cubase has a limit of 14 insert effect plugins per track, wtf? That's definitely something all of the other DAWs can do, c'mon, how is that possible in a professional setting, with today's computing power, massive FX chains for instrument processing, massive FX chains for video game/film sound effects etc? It boggles my mind that this software is $580. Also, no "show automation lane for last touched parameter"? You have to run transport instead and touch the params? Wow.

 

This. While other DAWs have their interface and capabilities at your face, on Reaper you have all of the capabilities but you need to elaborate that for your taste and this can take time. If you're a producer/songwriter it can be harder than Ableton/FL/Cubase and if youre a mixer, can be harder than ProTools. But you can make it look like any of the forementioned DAWs.

 

ugly? i don't think so

 

There is nothing "ugly" in Reaper, because you can change (almost) everything ;D
Even GUI behavior.

Some examples here :
https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=519611&start=60

 

Surprised no one mentioned MixFX on Studio One. One of the most underrated features in S1. I have the SSL emu in every mix.

 

Functionally, it doesn't matter which of the major DAWs you choose. You can do 99.3% of the things in all of them and the remaining 0.7% are not worth FOMO'ing/being picky/having a war over or can be fixed with a script or plugin.

Accept/deal with the few shortcomings, pick whichever one you're having most fun and you're being most efficient with and move on (instead of constantly questioning your choice).

As for "missing" functionality: I don't think stock Reaper comes with an action for "(de)select first/last voice of a chord". Pretty useful when composing.

 

Last edited: Jan 25, 2025 at 8:39 PM

Yeah, you're 100% correct and I am aware that it's most likely a FOMO type of reaction on my part. What DAW do you use, if you don't mind me asking? How do you like it?

 

Last edited: Jan 25, 2025 at 9:29 PM

I use Reaper and it's the best match for me. I like tinkering, figuring stuff out, and being in an environment that encourages creative exploration.

Reaper is like handing someone a bag of thousands of Lego bricks when you first install it. It ends up being what you build out of those bricks. But that takes a long time. Easily more than a year of pretty constant "I should change that", "I should get a script for that", "I should make an action out of that" and then actually figuring it out and doing it. So definitely not the best DAW for everyone, particularly if tinkering is a waste of time in your eyes.

The reward at the end is having the most customised experience out of the major DAWs. I haven't adjusted, modified or installed anything that took actual effort in years, so it is not a fool's errand.

The last things I installed to aid with composing were Lil' Chordbox, MArpeggiator and MVelocity.