Hey all,
Setting up a home studio here and am down to the software choice. I have Reapers demo running and like it so far - but could go for a more professional opinion. I have toyed with Cakewalk's Sonar and like that a lot too - seeing the huge price difference, what does Sonar have that Reaper does not? What about other programs? So many options!
Not a heck of a lot - I actually switched from Sonar to Reaper.
There were two main factors for me, one psychological and one practical. First, I REALLY like Reaper's business model, where they offer the same product with different liscenses based on how the program would be used - $60 for personal home use, and $250 for professional for-profit use. There's no restriction on the product or anything, they've just realized (somewhat intelligently) that given the wide availability of pirated software, someone who just wants to record at home for fun is going to be way more likely to download illegally a program than spend $500 on software for a hobby, so by pricing a fully-functional version of their program for hobbyists, they can tap into a market that would otherwise be closed to them, while allowing home recorders to go legit. I admire them for pricing a great program within reach of guys like me who care about quality but do it for fun.
Second, in ways I DO feel it's a better program. The workflow feels more natural to me, it's way less of a resource hog (it loads, opening an entire project, in way less time than Sonar would take to get to the screen that would ask me if I wanted to open a new project or an old one), you can patch anything into anything, and I like the layout. Sonar does have more plugin options, but there's a ton of excellent freeware plugins out there to make up for this if you dig around.
Additionally, as a home recording hobbyist, if you're anything like me you have a very finite budget you have top stretch. I could spend $500 on Sonar, or I could spend $60 on a persona-use version of Reaper and then grab a couple good mics. It's a no-brainer for me.
