Is Reaper Actually Stable?

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Dr. Varney

Dr. Varney

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Reaper seems to crash an awful lot and I wondered what other people's experience is like?

I know I've been saying a few things about 'Industry standards myths' lately but I'm beginning to have a few second thoughts... Could a pro really rely on Reaper or is it definitely aimed at an amateur market where performance is not critical?

Worse case scenario: I take it to my theatre and run music on it during a show. Reaper crashes. Show ruined. I can't imagine Pro Tools, for instance, letting me down but I haven't had the experience to say for sure.

I anticipate some might say it's my computer but if FL Studio is anything to go by, it very rarely runs into problems.

What are your thoughts/experiences?

Dr. V
 
As you may know, because I've responded to a few of your posts, I am a Logic-on-PC user now a Reaper on PC user.

I have found Reaper to be highly stable and extremely reliable.

That's not to say it hasn't crashed (as has Logic). However, the crashes seem mostly to be associated with older DX plugins (which I now prudently avoid).

Interestingly, I recently used Reaper for the scenario you describe: to provide the sound FX for a musical, and it worked faultlessly for that.

For me, performance is critical, so I am happy to place my trust in Reaper.
 
Interesting. Thanks. Incidentally, since posting, I've come across a few sources talking about Pro Tools crashing when it uses certain plugins and being slower to render than Reaper.

FL Studio seems to work a lot faster though and it has loads of instruments.

Reaper seems to deal with long audio a little better.

Where can I get some cool instruments for Reaper? I have loads of FL instruments, but none of them will work in Reaper, so I end up rewiring it or using it as a VST, which seems a bit silly, when I could just do all the work in FL.

Dr. V
 
If you're having crashing problems with Reaper, you need to look at your PC.
Maybe you've got some flakey ram...

If you want 'cool instruments' (that's kind of subjective, your cool may be someone else's 'meh') then all you have to do is go over to www.kvraudio.com they catalog everything VST.

The search button will let you search for type of synth/plugin and even free vs. paid.
 
What kind of things were you doing when it crashed?

I've only really seen REAPER crash when using some flaky plugins or ones that were made with older versions of Synthedit and Synthmaker (before all of the fixes.)

Maybe we can help you diagnose the problem :)

Computer specs? OS? Any 'interesting' plugins we should know about?
 
Yeah, I've only had a handful of Reaper crashes ever, and I've been a Reaper user for, um, at least one, maybe two years now. It seems pretty stable to me.
 
Reaper has crashed rarely, if ever, for me. And in all honesty, I'm probably not being nice to it. I run it with non-audio hardware via obscure, third-party, memory leak riddled software.
I have a bunch of klugey, homemade plugins running. Some of which arbitrarily spike the CPU to 100% if their settings are wrong.

But Reaper doesn't crash! :D
 
Ironically, I had a crash last night. :lol: I accidently "remove all"'d an entire bank of plugins on a track, hit undo, and it froze. Go figure, right? :D Thankfully, I'd just saved so it wasn't a big dea. :)
 
saving in reaper

Reaper is great....but just in case........
 

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d.bop said:
What kind of things were you doing when it crashed?

I've only really seen REAPER crash when using some flaky plugins or ones that were made with older versions of Synthedit and Synthmaker (before all of the fixes.)

Maybe we can help you diagnose the problem :)

Computer specs? OS? Any 'interesting' plugins we should know about?
Click to expand...

Well, mainly stuff I was doing with FL Studio - such as using it on a rewire/as a VSTi.

I seem to have got over that problem now as I'm having to do far less 'fiddling about' as I become familiar with the rewire process.

My computer isn't the nuts... I mean, it was good in it's day. I'm running an Athlon 64 (single core) on an MSI motherboard with 1GB Kingston RAM. That may not seem a lot by today's standards, but it's always been quite solid.

Reaper also seems to enjoy life so much it doesn't want to close. It prevents my PC from shutting down, long after I close it, with an 'End program now' dialogue and then I get the 'Application not responding' box.

That's not a HUGE problem in itself though. Despite some of it's foibles, Reaper is really growing on me, day by day.

I say it's a shame that Reaper won't load Fruity Loops' instruments. Though, if those instruments are wound in/locked to FL then in itself, there's not much I can do, other than rewire/insert VSTi.

I've tried 'free' synths and the Cockos' stuff and nothing compares with the FL Studio 'native' (if that's correct) instruments. I keep coming back to the Sytrus because it's so rich and flexible.

I come back to Fruity to make drum loops as well. The step sequencer makes everything easy and fast. Day by day, it's becoming more apparent, I couldn't rely on just Reaper alone. It has very limited and clumsy editing tools. I think it's found it's use as a mixing & MIDI recording station - which is where it shines. My ideas continue to be roughly worked out in Fruity Loops, while Reaper is used for the final sequence & polish.

Dr. V
 
Dr. Varney said:
I come back to Fruity to make drum loops as well. The step sequencer makes everything easy and fast. Day by day, it's becoming more apparent, I couldn't rely on just Reaper alone. It has very limited and clumsy editing tools. I think it's found it's use as a mixing & MIDI recording station - which is where it shines. My ideas continue to be roughly worked out in Fruity Loops, while Reaper is used for the final sequence & polish.

Dr. V
Click to expand...

You know, I used FL for drum sequencing for YEARS before finally giving EzDrummer a try when they put it on sale.

I don't know what kind of sequencing you're doing, if you're doing electronica then maybe this isn't the way to go, but sequencing MIDI drums through EzDrummer absolutely wipes the floor with FL in terms of realism, and within maybe a week I found it easier to work with, too.

Kind of begs another question, though - if you're working almost exclusively with VSTi instruments and you love the sound of Fruity Loops' instrument bundle, why even bother with Reaper? I don't know the full backstory here or what genre you're mostly working in, but if most of what you're doing is sampled or sequenced then a program like Reaper, which has the quality of MIDI support you'd expect of a good DAW but is really mostly intended as an audio file workstation, might not make much sense.
 
Hello Drew! Yeah, I went to the EZDrummer site only today (before I even read your post). I was so impressed I looked to see how much spare cash I had... Really, even the demo is wildy impressive. I'm interested in electro and rock. EZ would suit my passion for the live rock sound as well.

Sadly, I can't afford it right now.

You've raised a very good point. I go around the block three or four times to make a track in Reaper, because my favourite instruments only work in FL...

I'm experimenting, you see. What I've managed to do is make a compound synth sound, using a bass and a bell from the Sytrus. Being able to hear what two synths played together will sound like before I record, unveils ideas I wouldn't have thought of before. In FL I would have to play one, then the other over the top... but then, I might not have thought to pair them in the first place (which is really interesting). With Reaper, I have one instance of FL running the drums, while Reaper plays the bass on VSTi and the synth on Rewire. That's three instances of FL, all going into Reaper at once.

I export the drums from FL as split mixer tracks to create stems and import those onto individual tracks in Reaper. Then I apply the effects in Reaper. I want to give it a chance to see what it will do.

The two sounds from the Bass and Synth then get played over the top of the drums, directly into Reaper.

There are things I don't like FL Studio's interface or workflow, because it's based on the pattern sequencer. I just like the sounds it produces. Reaper has a much better mixer and track layout.

Yes, I am probably wasting my time with Reaper because I could just record it all in FL Studio. It seems completely stupid, actually... But I'm experimenting because I prefer mixing in Reaper.

Dr. V
 
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I am using Reaper on a pc. Two PC's sort of. One old machine, a Pentium 3 with 512 RAM. I do not use it much as it is slowly dying and flakey but it has older Reaper projects on it and I am trying to remove them. More to your OP Reaper is rock solid stable except when using a few picky plug-ins. Just so ya know I ran the old machine at 96+ % on the performance meter regularly. That was 36 or so tracks, twenty plug-ins, two vsti's and ozone.

The new machine handles the same and more at 6% usage and Reaper keeps on chugging. NB: Cryosonic plugs crash the machine every time. Junky junk. So in short Repear works fine for me. No exp with PT LE. Some years ago I used high end Digi stuff (circa 1990). PS I enjoy your informative posts.
 
Oh damn double post, sorry mod. FL Producer drove me crazy not only in its work flow but trying to upgrade. I did observe that it was a HOG.
 
I have never had a crash with Reaper. Ever.

I am on a Windows 7 OS, and version 3.4 64 bit.

I am about to upgrade to the newest version soon. I have had it since version 2.0, and it's always been reliable. Perhaps the only problems I did have were back when I was on a clunker running XP and only 500MB ram...
 
Dr. Varney said:
Hello Drew! Yeah, I went to the EZDrummer site only today (before I even read your post). I was so impressed I looked to see how much spare cash I had... Really, even the demo is wildy impressive. I'm interested in electro and rock. EZ would suit my passion for the live rock sound as well.
Click to expand...

If you're interested in electronica, you should definately factor in the "Electronic" EZX expansion into your budget, it's $89 you definately won't regret spending. So many awesome, fun sounds.

As per the main topic, I use Reaper and it has crashed from time to time, but so did Cubase. Never used Pro Tools personally. I find my interface needs rebooting more often than Reaper needs restarting.
 
Just in case it wasn't known already...you have to have EZ Drummer to run their Electronic expansion pack.

I'm a fan of Toontrack's products. I have EZ Drummer, a handful of expansion packs, and some of their MIDI packs (as well as some of Groove Monkee's MIDI packs). It was well worth the money Keep an eye on www.audioMIDI.com. They ran Toontrack's stuff at a major discount (45%) for the longest time, and might do it again soon.

Reaper has crashed on me a few times lately. I think there are some plug-ins that don't work well. Seems like one of Edirol's Orchestra plug-ins and a VSTi called "Miles' Tone" were active when Reaper kept crashing. I stopped trying to use them and haven't had much issue.

I never had issues with Reaper crashing before, but I have a healthy amount of VST's and VSTi's loaded now. I'm wondering if that may contribute to the stability question (for me). Reaper never crashed when I had a moderate number of VST's.

Thoughts, anyone?
 
loveofjazz said:
I never had issues with Reaper crashing before, but I have a healthy amount of VST's and VSTi's loaded now. I'm wondering if that may contribute to the stability question (for me). Reaper never crashed when I had a moderate number of VST's.
Click to expand...

That seems to be what cause instability for me too, when I load up the big boys like say the upright bass from Trillian...I have to be really careful (and save often) when opening other effects or, god forbid, another VSTi.
 
FunkDaddy said:
That seems to be what cause instability for me too, when I load up the big boys like say the upright bass from Trillian...I have to be really careful (and save often) when opening other effects or, god forbid, another VSTi.
Click to expand...

Nice to know someone else is experiencing what I'm dealing with lately.
I realize nothing is perfect. I'm almost to the point of uninstalling some of the VST's and VSTi's that aren't as useful. Thinking this way has caused me to and back and take a look at what is necessary, and I've been narrowing down the list of programs I want to keep using.
 
I've never had a problem- but I use everything native and don't use any third party synths.
 
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