It depends how you look at this. Sure, it might be useful to me or you, but imagine that you just started working with music and you barely know what buses and sends are. I feel like an average user will drown in all these settings and won't even understand half of them.

Many of them are not even presented in a user-friendly fashion. In this case, for example, the user is required to input refresh rate in Hertz, which has clearly been designed with power users in mind. Personally, I think that most of these settings should be hidden by default, behind an "Advanced" button or something similar, and the UI should be cleaned and slimmed.

In my opinion, Reaper right now suffers from Linux syndrome and will never get popular without systemic changes to the UI.

 

Calling Hertz "not user-friendly" is a bold claim. It's the universal and by far the most understandable unit for anything related to refresh rates. Even if you completely zoned out in math or physics class back in school... Anyone who has bought a synth, monitor, tv, console, game or even a smartphone in the last decade has come across this unit.

I'd bet that for most users, reality is one of two things: they either never touch that setting at all, or they instinctively enter their monitor's refresh rate (which is probably 60Hz) to get a smooth display. I see no reason to artificially introduce meaningless options like low, medium and high here. That ultimately confuses more than it helps. IMHO Hertz is the most honest and direct way to present this setting.

YM2C

 

What I don't understand is this obsession some people have with indirectly denigrating a DAW and making people believe that users of that DAW are insecure. It's like playground talk.
Do you use a special DAW that makes fries and chicken?
What is this obsession?
Reaper is the benchmark DAW in gaming, music for film, and many other areas of audio recording.
It supports ARA and Dolby Atmos, for example. What about yours?
You think you can't make electronic music with Reaper? Who decided that? Loop DAW users?
Fine, if you want. But you don't need a loop DAW to make electronic music. I was already doing it on an eight-track TASCAM cassette recorder. It's not a question of DAW, it's a question of preparation, like a construction site.
Launching loops? Very good, my friend, but let me hear it, please. Show me that you have complete mastery of your DAW.
David Farmer; Bilbo The Hobbit: Reaper.
8 years ago:

David Farmer :

Listen to what a professional has to say about Reaper, please.
As for modulations, everything is adaptable in Reaper, EVERYTHING!
But if you don't know this DAW, don't come and talk nonsense on this forum.
You use Live or Bitwig. Great! I'm happy for you. But it's the result that counts, not whether your graphical interface is pretty or not. Do you imagine that a listener is going to care about which DAW you used to produce your track? Give me a break.
And as for loops and modulation, install this on Reaper:

.
At the end of the day, it's not the tool that matters, but what your music inspires to your listeners.
Bye...

 

Last edited: Aug 29, 2025 at 12:29 AM

Always ask on the Reaper forum. Sometimes you get answers almost immediately and always helpful and friendly.
What does Reaper have that other DAW's don't have? A fantastic great forum for ALL your questions.

But the problem is never the equipment. It is the lack of being able to create music. If you're not talented, than the best DAW (if there even would be one) will not help you crating that number #1 song.
I'll be totally honest: I created the best songs with my Philips sound-on-sound machine, a Roland TR626 and a Roland Juno 6. Of course, the sound is terrible dull and there is a lot of noise, but it sounds honest and inspired. My latest songs are made with professional stuff and sound immaculate, but it lacks that special thing that keeps one wanting to hear it once more, and once more.....

 

Oh my oh my, I use Reaper AND Linux. I feel I'm doomed......

 

What many people who have never used Linux don't understand is that it's often much simpler. But it's a matter of education.
When someone says, “Reaper is the Linux of DAWs,” there's contempt hidden in that statement. But contempt is often a factor of ignorance, just like social contempt.

 

People who compare Reaper to Linux often have used Linux or know it quite well, actually. They are commenting about the "community coded" aspects of Reaper. You want something? Just code it yourself, or ask someone to do it for you. Does that sound like compiling everything yourself in Gentoo? Because it does to me. People like those who value putting in free work to someone else's product under the guise of contribution do not realize they are probably making someone else rich off their own work. It is called Digital Sharecropping. Does that sound familiar to you? It sounds like Linux. And then when said development (aka distro) finally gets rolled up into a product to make the owners and any shareholders lots of money with the work product from other people? That does not sound like Logic to me. It sounds like Reaper. You know what Linux it sounds like? RedHat.

Now of course, you wish to hear other peoples music as proof they know their own DAW? That's a good one. There are plugin developers who make horrible awful stuff you can barely call music. Are they not smart enough to know their choice of coding platform or DAW?

You sound really impressed with yourself. Bye bye.

 

@clone

I don't understand what you mean by "You sound really impressed with yourself". English is not my natural language.
I don't feel impressed by myself but sometimes I don't understand some people about software war. What's the goal about that?
If i can't talk about a software that I don't know I shut my mouth. I used Reaper for 10 years and now I can say I know it a little bit...

 

You know what other DAW's and OS's don't have? The oddly fanatical fanbase that shows up on every other thread about anything yelling 'REAPER' or 'LINUX IS THE ANSWER TO WORLD HUNGER'.

 

I don't know what you mean. Is that supposed to be funny or provocative? That's the problem with forums. Everything becomes vague and inconsistent. It's as childish as a teenager craving recognition.

 

Giving users too many options is considered bad UX design. It's called "choice overload". Assuming that the end-user "knows" something is also a bad practice. The good practice is to aim for the less cognitive load and design for users with varying skill levels.

I think that limiting the available options to Fast/Slow/Custom or 30Hz/60Hz/120Hz would be the correct choice here. I don't understand why I, as a user, am even allowed to input 99999Hz in this field. And this is of course a very unimportant setting, but I'm talking about the whole philosophy that Reaper devs follow.

I love Reaper, but you know, sometimes we need to face reality. The cool kids never used Reaper

You are very wrong about me, but nice ad hominem and projection. No one has started a "software war". And there was no contempt in my statement. The only person who went straight up to calling people ignorant and uneducated is you.

My arguments is still valid. You can't tell me with a straight face that Linux is objectively simple when it requires the end-user to use a console and there are dozens of different distros to choose from. There is a real entry barrier, which is often too high for an average Joe. And the same is with Reaper.

Remember, there is a fine line between being a fan and a fanboy.

 

Ah, that's why I was never cool....
But seeing what people are mostly considered "cool", I am glad I use Reaper!

 

@Ak3mi91
Who did I call ignorant?
Do you want to start a debate that goes deeper than your anathemas?
What boundaries are you talking about? The ones that separate those who master software from those who claim to know it?
And as for Linux, it's probably been a long time since you installed a basic Linux Mint.
I did it for a 70-year-old man who had an old computer and uses a Linux distribution that works very well for him.
Did you know that you can install software on Linux distributions without using command lines? We're no longer in the 2000s.
The tone you're using is pointlessly passive-aggressive, and it reinforces my belief that you're determined to prove you're right. But in this case, being right is meaningless because that's not what this is about. It's only about music and nothing else.
Being right in music is like being right in politics. It's absurd.

 

The cool kids never used Reaper
You're wrong. Sorry! and there are a lot of young people using Reaper. So you're not a cool kid?

 

Last edited: Aug 29, 2025 at 2:16 AM

You have your head stuck so deep up some *place* that you have not even realised it was a joke. A tongue-in-cheek comment. And I also use Reaper. And I love it. And yes, I called myself a not-a-cool-kid.

I don't think there's a point in continuing this conversation. It seems only muffled sounds reach you from the outside, but not actual words.

 

@Ak3mi91
I don't care if you use Reaper. What I don't understand is the purpose of this comment.
Your arguments don't hold water because they are not based on objective reality.
I can hear muffled sounds. Really?
You're kind, my boy. Those aren't arguments, they're just words meant to discredit me in your eyes.
You know how my ears work? Bravo! From this forum, you know about the spectral analysis of my hearing? Wow!
My head is buried? In what? In the sand?
That's an argument from authority. So you know who I am? Do we know each other?
You're the one who wants to end this conversation.
Are you running out of arguments?

 

Everything written refers to something else, it's not about Reaper at all. Seems like you don't really understand how the community works in Reaper.
>You want something? Just code it yourself, or ask someone to do it for you - It only concerns scripts that you use to expand the functionality needed for your tasks, no one even forces you to share them, they are not included in the distribution, you can use them privately or in your band only, no one will ever know, or you can sell them. It may even be that no one will need it except you.
>"community coded" aspects of Reaper - means that developers listen to users on the forum and then implement what users ask them if its possible

 

What! Linux and Reaper with this combo don't even think about talking to me, you are not cool as David Guetta

 

There is nothing complicated out of the box when you install Reaper. Use as it is, all power and uber-options are hidden until you need them.
But you can hide even more features if it's too much for you by turning it into eJay Music Studio

The worst practice it is an illusion that you as a developer know everything and foreseen all the cases of which the user will need using your software and can dictate users what you think is a good solution and thats what most developers are guilty of. That's why Ripper is the most democratic of DAWs almost fully open to it's users.

 

It also means that while they listen and add things, or decline them; it doesn't mean you cannot use it. That is about as close to open-source as it gets for a major DAW. Maybe it would be easier for you to tell me how it is not like Linux when compared to other DAWs?

I see plenty of similarities between them, and I'm not sure how you can not.