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I’m still using Reaper as my main DAW and I still love it. I’m hacking away at the next album with it. Reaper 4 should be released shortly as they’re up to Release Candidate 4 as of this posting.

Here are some of my favorite things in v4:

– ReaEQ – They added a live spectrograph to the EQ, which was a feature other EQs (like the one in logic) made me want.

– Selecting chunks of audio in the media explorer is pretty sweet when you have compatible VSTis. You can preview an audio file and select a section from the waveform and drag it right into the plugin or timeline. Very handy.

– Midi Track Controls (ReaControlMIDI) – I’m not actually sure if this was in v3 but I know I was trying to get a weird midi controller to control the tracks long ago and had no luck. This makes it easy.

– Project Bay – Now you can see and manage all the effects and media you’re using in your project.

– Screensets – save and recall Reaper window layouts easily. Nice.

Here are some things I am not fond of:

– The default theme is too dark and the color coding of tracks is really hard to see. I was finding it really tough to organize my projects so that I knew what was going on at a glance. So I switched back to the v3 theme, which is OK for now.

– The Media Explorer is slow on my Mac. Hopping between files with the cursor keys is weirdly slow. This was never a thing on Windows.

And here’s my wish list:

– I’d like a simple multi-sampler. A Battery-style ‘pad’ sampler would be my preference. Setting up many tracks of ReaSamplOmatic5000 is cumbersome.

– Some metadata/search in the Media Explorer would be great. I have a ton of samples kicking around but if they’re not easily at hand.

– Workflow improvements – Reaper is already so far ahead of the competition in functionality that I think it’d benefit from some time spent on its usability. While it’s awesome that each pulldown and context menu and preference page are overstuffed with cool options, it can be overwhelming. And I’m a pretty huge nerd so I assume the less techy out there go into cardiac arrest at the sight of it.

Anyway, great job Reaper team.

Posted on - August 1, 2011 [at] 2:00 pm by Brad
Tagged in - music, software

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5 Comments on this post

fluffy on Reaper 4 Release Candidate
August 1, 2011 at 2:50 pm

I had no idea Reaper had a Mac version! Logic’s been starting to show its bloat recently and I’ve been thinking of trying something else, so it had might as well be Reaper.

LarryKingsShoes on Reaper 4 Release Candidate
August 7, 2011 at 4:15 pm

I’m also pretty excited about Reaper 4. I’m actually a fan of the new color scheme. I used to use the classic scheme because of the lighter colors but the new style impressed me enough to make the switch, at least for now. Some of the icons are hard to read but I’ll spend some time with the customization options before passing a final judgement.

I keep hearing people talk about how they love certain features or wish Reaper would add something and it makes me feel like a complete amateur (which isn’t far from the truth). I wouln’t know where to begin to use some of these new things, I’m just really glad that they continue to release stable, quick, and easy-to-use software! Maybe someday I’ll figure out the more advanced functions, until then, Reaper is still an awesome product!

Brad on Reaper 4 Release Candidate
August 7, 2011 at 6:35 pm

Larry: I wouldn’t worry about not using advanced features. Everyone works differently. Some people need more of a straight-up multitracker, some people like to experiment more.

I may have solved some of my new theme track color issues by turning on ‘tint track panel backgrounds’ — but I still think v3 is easier to read, at least on my screen.

Jeramiah on Reaper 4 Release Candidate
November 6, 2011 at 3:23 pm

Hey Brad, did you figure out why it was slow? media explorer on my iMac is slow also…wondering if it’s anything to do with the way it’s looking for things….digging deeper

Brad on Reaper 4 Release Candidate
November 8, 2011 at 9:43 am

Jeramiah: I posted a bug report but nope, it’s still pretty slow. I should hassle them again.