Check out Reaper
Apropos of the posts the last couple of days about exporting from Logic and Ableton, our dear friend JT Spangler sent me this note:
Highly recommend you spend some time with Reaper if you haven’t already. Especially with your interest in egalitarianism in music and your mentorship. It’ll do everything PT will do, is insanely customizable, stable, and is $60 (or basically unlimited trial period).
This is a very good recommendation, and I wanted to signal-boost it. (And, for the record, I already have Reaper installed — I mentor someone who makes records in it, and as previously mentioned I have a habit of buying DAWs. I currently own five.)
I do want to add a caveat, which is that Reaper is a bit weird! Its particular flavor of weirdness is summed up well in this Reddit thread, particularly this comment:
I'd argue Reaper is the least opinionated DAW (at least that I've tried), which presents a lot of UX challenges. The processes aren't as well defined because it's less interested in funneling you into a specific workflow than allowing you to define it yourself. It has a lot of strange defaults and specific quirks that almost force you to tinker with it to get it into a workable state. It feels like a product designed by software developers, not a UX department. However, the incredible extensibility and customization options probably wouldn't even be on the table if that wasn't the case. I always recommend Reaper to folks who don't mind tinkering and optimizing their productivity. But if Cubase or Ableton works for them, then it's going to take a while to get used to the more sandbox-y nature of Reaper. Not unlike jumping from Windows or Mac OS to a Linux distro.
TL;DR: if you’re not a tinkerer, or if DAWs in general feel overwhelming or complicated or like something that you prefer feel streamlined, then Reaper probably isn’t for you. But if you’re down to get down in the weeds and configure a very configurable program to your personal working specifications, then Reaper will absolutely be up your alley, probably more than any other DAW, and you can’t beat the value.
Subsequently sowing — jamie