Reaper and Reason Rack Plugin (RRP)

[jlgrimes]

Oh indeed Reson is not ProTools at all. Nor is it Reaper. Each of those has focused on things they major in. As has Reason - and I sure hope they stay that way as the more that every tool tries to be like every other tool, the less they are able to shine at anything. I put this as a great part of why Cakebalk failed. The more they tried to be hip, the more they upset their core userbase of Rock people and instead of getting stronger there, they got Gibsoned.

I have just had the displeasure of having to spend a few days in n-Track 9. It leaves me feeling shaken about everything (yes incl life and the universe). I even feel hesitant in Reason! I would be delighted if it was what they promise about making a DAW fun to use. If you see work disappearing under you as fun, I guess they are doing great.

For me, Reaper hurted Cakewalk more than anything. And releasing bad/buggy upgrades.

I'm far from a Rocker (I do Rap) but used Cakewalk for Audio and Midi work in the early and mid 2000s. Sonar did kind of do hit/miss updates in the midi/EDM department, but Sonar was truly great with audio and one of my favorites as I thought it ran circles around Pro Tools in many things. Sonar would produce very bad upgrades though one in which I had to reinstall Windows to fix. What finally made me move permeanatelly was one update that was so buggy I couldn't record a client, I was more/less forced to try Reaper which surpringly worked pretty good with no major bugs. That was it after that.


Also I did leave Sonar for Ableton to regarding midi side of things as Sonars Hip Hop/EDM features did seem sort of an afterthought we're Ableton kind of understood. That said Ableton wasn't that good for audio production/mixing and plan was to use Sonar but the X1 update was truly bad.

I will say that I,ve seen skimpy updates with Reason, I've never seen it get as buggy as Sonar X1. If it did, that would be a huge problem.

[jlgrimes]

Personally, I find Reason Automation waaaaay easier than in Raper where it seems to move everywhere but how/where I want it to.

Besides, I believe my point was somewhat different from this about who has how many features

Reason in general is a very easy DAW. I remember first using 2.5. What originally got me was how I instantly knew how the sequencer worked. Reaper is nowhere near intuitive as Reason. Reaper is almost Anti-Reason in concept where their goal is almost to add every feature users want from a DAW perspective. This gives Reaper some of the deepest, menus, and action lists I have seen in a DAW but that said, it can do things probably quicker than almost any DAW for one willing to put in the time. But that said even it can involve getting dirty in a different way, figuring out how to customize functions. I imagine Reason doesn't want to go that route and I can't blame them.

Studio One seems the most like Reason. It has a more streamlined GUI but still adds powerful well rounded features. But it even have a higher learning curve than Reason. But the price for power is often a higher learning curve.

Reason has fallen behind in DAW features though. That said Reason in the latest few years main/primary focus has been instruments. That is the main place I have seen improvements.

Companies like Ableton in like 2007 was a pretty immature DAW back then (horrid PDC, "only basic automation". In 2021 it is no longer the case. Ableton has had issues but they generally do a great job dealing with the elephants in the room.