What can Reaper do for me?

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hmmrnhnk

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It's cheap, open sourced and people seem to love it. I'm looking to run a set up through saffire pro 40. Which people also seem to love. I'm still cutting my teeth on the details of how all this works, but I have two basic questions
a)does reaper allow me to record with saffire?
b)if so, how does it compare to more pricey suites?
I have a 2011 iMac, roland v-series edrums, guitar and bass both running through amps with phones/rec outputs. My goal is to be able to get the most versatility out of my set up as possible. I may have a guitarist come over who is more inclined towards a full room feel, or another who wants to get more precise and actualized with the session.

Please impart wisdom!!

Cheers,
HmmrnHnk
 
I don't personally know the Saffire, but I have played around with a different Focusrite interface (the Scarlett 2i2) and I'm really impressed by their preamp quality in that price range.

As for Reaper, I love it. I've used a couple of different versions of Cubase, FL Studio, Ableton, Cool Edit Pro (back in the day), and a couple of other DAWs and I whole-heartedly love Reaper above them all. It has pretty much any feature that a home recordist would need (native direct monitoring would be nice though). It's easy to use on the surface, and very tweakable under the hood. It comes with several freeware VSTs that are remarkably good for freebies, and plays nicely with all of the free and retail VSTs i've used. And there's a lively user community supporting it. I can't recommend it enough.

I have had Reaper blow up on me a few times over the years, but it's pretty rare. Once it froze up, once it flat-out crashed, and another time it was a fault of a VSTi (EZDrummer2 before the patch), but those are the only times I can specifically remember it crashing on me in the 6+ years I've been using it. For the $0.00 price, it's a simple decision to try out to see if you like it. And for the price of the single-user license, it's a damn fine bang-for-buck DAW.
 
First off, thanks for the reply. I value the weigh in on Reaper.
So set me straight on my terminology.... what is a VST? what does a VST offer? and how does it work between the digital mixing interface that comes with saffire and reaper?
I'm headfirst down the rabbit hole right now-
Throw me anything you've got!
 
No problem, there are too many acronyms in this arena!

DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation, and usually refers to the software that you use to record, sequence, mix, etc. Sometimes people use DAW to refer to the machine/computer that you use, but around here we generally mean just the software.

VST is a plugin format developed by Steinberg (of Cubase fame). These are effects or utilities that you can add to tracks in your DAW like reverb, delay, compression, EQ, spectrum analyzer, and the like.

VSTi is a virtual instrument. It's a library of samples that can be triggered by a keyboard, an electronic drum kit (or whatever MIDI instrument), or manually input with some tedious mouse clicks. These are things like drum sounds, or synthesizers, or orchestral sounds, or just about anything you can imagine.

There are a ton of helpful and knowledgeable folks around here that can help you get off the ground. Take a look at the sticky threads at the top of the various forums here, they have some helpful information that might answer some of the initial question that you have.

Most of all, have fun, experiment, and ask any questions that arise once you've looked around!
 
Reaper is the best DAW I've ever used in over 20 years of waiting for this "Virtual Studio" thing to actually become a reality. There are a couple features I would like to see, but there are so many ways to skin a cat in this DAW that I can't say I really "miss" them.

So, if the DAW is the virtual studio with mixer and patchbays and "tape machine", then VSTs are kind of everything else - instruments, effects processors... They are technically a subset of what we call plugins, which are actually little independent programs that extend the functionality of the DAW itself. Most DAWs nowadays come with a set of plugins, and the ones in Reaper are great. Even better, Reaper (technically the JS plugin format) allows you modify some of the plugins at the code level, or even write your own!

I worry about noobs with Reaper, though, not because it's any more complex or difficult to get running than any other DAW, but because it doesn't come with any really good VSTis (VST instruments). All of the big boys come with full-featured synthesizers and decent drum plugins, so that you can literally just install it and rock. There is no such thing that comes with Reaper, so instead of instant gratification you end up hunting around the internet for something with which to even make sound! Probably wouldn't bother a lot of people, but I think a whole lot of home recordists are looking for at least some of that, at least at the very beginning.
 
fyi....Reaper is not open-source. Its a commercial product.
 
hmmrnhnk said:
It's cheap, open sourced and people seem to love it. I'm looking to run a set up through saffire pro 40. Which people also seem to love. I'm still cutting my teeth on the details of how all this works, but I have two basic questions
a)does reaper allow me to record with saffire?
b)if so, how does it compare to more pricey suites?
I have a 2011 iMac, roland v-series edrums, guitar and bass both running through amps with phones/rec outputs. My goal is to be able to get the most versatility out of my set up as possible. I may have a guitarist come over who is more inclined towards a full room feel, or another who wants to get more precise and actualized with the session.

Please impart wisdom!!

Cheers,
HmmrnHnk
Click to expand...

The bottom line with any particular DAW (software) is how it works for you and your particular brain. Sounds weird but that is the way it is.

Once you have understanding of how they work, then you decide what works best for you. Most usually go with the one they start with.

Reaper is something I would always recommend to those looking to get the most abilities from a DAW with a low price, even though I am a Cubase user myself. My needs and the fact that I started with Cubase makes it comfortable for me. I can't say that would be the right choice for another.

Reaper has most everything that someone looking to record needs. There are things that the 'other' DAW's can do differently/better than others can. It is up to you to figure that out and ask why.


It just depends on what it is you need. That comes from experience I suppose.
 
Yeah i botched the nomenclature there... I meant that it's free to try and is user mod-friendly. It's a free spirited DAW
 
Cheers for the crash course! I've been reading around and taking notes. Literally I pulled out my spiral notebook and have begun writing things down.
The connections are beginning to form!
 
hmmrnhnk said:
Yeah i botched the nomenclature there... I meant that it's free to try and is user mod-friendly. It's a free spirited DAW
Click to expand...

Nomenclature? lol! No need for big words I don't understand. :)

Just try Reaper and see if it works for you man.
 
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