i’ve been on the hunt for a decent audio editor on the Mac ever since i got my laptop. in this post i’ll try and jot down my first impressions of REAPER since it looks very promising. I decided to do this after a post on a thread on Gearslutz.com effectively suggested a Reaper-based workflow as a replacement to a Sound Forge-based one.
Disclaimer: these are my own personal views so add salt. Lots of it. Also this is a pure goodwill post, and i hope it helps the developers.
My background after some 14 years of working with audio on both windows and osx includes major DAWs like Logic, Pro Tools, and Ableton Live, as well as file-based editors such as Cool Pro / Audition, Wave Editor, and Sound Studio.
In addition to mindlessly clicking and testing its forgiveness, every now and then (and not explicitly) I will compare REAPER to a rather primitive app called Sound Studio that has no mixer and no DAW capabilities, but is a fast and straightforward multitrack core-audio sound editor. It’s full of bugs but for day to day quick and dirty hacks I haven’t been able to replace it. Although they won’t admit it, support for SS3 is being phased out (thanks for spending my $$ wisely, Felttip).
To this list I will apply common sense regarding interfaces in other apps as well as system-wide behaviours normally observed on the Mac platform. It is a bullet-list about details not concepts. I like Reaper, just find it a bit awkward to use. I don’t aim to use it as my main DAW, since I already use not one but two of them. DAWs feel heavy. Reaper feels lighter, despite all the hard work gone into it, but can I really throw quick edit jobs at it?
Here goes, my first 45 minutes with REAPER 3.6*:
- The download weighs 8MB! Unpacked and placed in Applications as quick as you read this.
- I click on the app and an icon appears in my dock and nothing happens for the next nearly 20 seconds. Then a panel, loading status info. First launch must have taken some 30 seconds and then asks me to select an audio interface (fair deal). I judge an app a lot by the time it takes to start. I’m certain so do other people.
- Out of curiosity I compared this to Sound Studio. SS launches in 1 second, beach-balls for another 3 (since it’s first launch too) and is ready to work.
- On subsequent launches Reaper starts faster. I saw on the website that there are no artificial restrictions, or interruptions. But the button “Still Evaluating” now has a 5 second “Buy me” counter before being available.
- I believe in setting no preferences (i.e. I expect the app to work just fine with the default set) so naturally I’m staying away from that window (do see what I mean). It seems to work.
- I’m not here to arm tracks and hit record. I want to try out being random andgo with whatever springs to mind, thus reflecting the random nature of my day-to-day work. Under absolutely no circumstance must I spend brain power on elementary stuff such as scrolling, zooming, and getting to the contents of my tracks. Other DAWs allow me to do this. I expect the same from Reaper.
- I don’t seem to be able to drag a wav file and drop it onto reaper’s icon. True, it may not make much sense but a lot of the time I have a wav file i wish to edit and i need to be able to open that with no fuss. - create me a new or a sub-project automatically please.
- The interface zooms correctly on mouse wheeling but the weird relationship between the playback head and the center of the _viewport_ it zooms in, not the center of the _screen_, bugs me a little. i can get used to it. Wheeling in SS zooms where the mouse _pointer_ is, i don’t need to click or anything. This is a huge productivity enhancer, why it’s not out there in other software, is beyond me.
- But the window won’t Scroll vertically on mouse wheeling?? What’s with *that*??? Cmd+wheel zooms vertically. Something somewhere does the trick, but where is it?
- No, no, Cockos, you’ve got the Macbook trackpad entirely wrong. Double-finger drag really means scrolling. Especially vertically.
- I’ve locked audio at 48khz in the first-launch dialogue. Technically this isn’t wrong since I plan to do audio post work. I can hear Reaper nudging my audio interface every time it gets focus back from the browser where I write this.
- I had my headphones unplugged and playing through the built-in laptop speakers first. I felt intrigued, so I plugged my headphones in. This introduced some horrible latency so I had to restart Reaper. Worked OK next time.
- Scrubbing is nice, feels fairly tactile, and lots of fun.
- The interface starts to confuse me. Granted I am not jumping to the usual workflow immediately - create tracks, arm, record and all that. I want to have a look around and test the design’s resilience to my expectations.
- It won’t allow me to click -inside- a region and make a selection. It seems to want to move the entire region instead. Why?? Frustrating.
- How do I “select none” or “deselect” other than manually bring the selection edges together?
- Alt-dragging a region wraps the sound around itself. Great feature! But I’m used to alt-dragging to copy an element. Every other app does that?
- Oh, Cmd+drag makes a copy of things. This is unexpected. Alt, anyone?
- Global pitch control!! I just found out I can double-click the slider to reset it. Double-click things to reset them. Keep in mind.
- Getting the Blender syndrome. Interface as wheel. Inventing the wheel.
- The selection area really feels more like the cycle-area or loop range in other DAWs. How do I deselect in one click? I’ve learned to double-click but that just selects the entire timeline.
- Anyway, I’ve got my test track playing (dragged a stereo mp3 onto the track, nice, v.fast!), and click the little Fx button next to it. I see something else launch in my dock briefly. An ugly dialogue box staying dead for a couple of seconds. Then I’m then given a fairly unordered list of plugins to choose from. I want something unusual so I go for soundhack:+delay. A bit of a roundabout way of adding an effect but it works.
- Oh snap, I can hear the changes to the sound when I use the plugin interface but the interface itself does not refresh.
- I like the buttons just above the plugin. Nifty options. I click “2 in 2 out”. It’s a little routing configuration window. I click it again to disappear, but alas, it wouldn’t, until I clicked away.
- The FX parameter list is a seriously nested menu. Those five options all terminate in the same long list of parameters. I’m curious to see the fatigue it causes once a plugin has 100+ parameters.
- In the spirit of provocation I invoke Native Instruments Spektral Delay to find out that these nested menus also scroll when needed. I’m almost certain this menu can be redesigned. With the LFX-1310 a dozen of “Unknown” automation parameters appear. Oh this needs reworking.
- And because it lets me, and because I can - Battery 3 AUi (instrument) in the FX plugin chain. Same Param menu.. Oh boy, it’s broken. Could be NI’s fault though.
- Gah, I dragged a region again instead of making a selection.
- My track won’t play now, until I switch off that AUi in the FX plugin chain.
- When playing, things scroll by page. Half a page would have been better so I don’t lose my context. Where was I?
- I like the mini meters. Anything above -12dB looks hot. But boy is that gradient one ugly passion-killing motherfucker.
- Oh! Clicking somewhere when playing moves the playhead immediately and interrupts the sound :/ (there must be an option)
- I’m trying to split this region at the playback head but the selection is confusing me. Oh, neat shortcuts - S to split. Shift+S too to split at selection edges.
- I FOUND IT! Press Escape to clear the selection. Oh my life!
- Playing with fades.. Still no idea how to crossfade. I could use a toolbar. The default one has: Open, Save, Undo, Redo, Metronome, and various options. It’s a command-and-options bar, I can’t see any tools.
- Selecting an area and hitting Backspace doesn’t do anything. OK.. that fundamental key has no meaning when I want to delete a portion of a file.
- So, so, to edit something out, I have to select, then Shift-S to split at selection, then press Backspace to delete. (and I cannot click inside a region to start making a selection).
- Cmd + right click drag to make a selection. Ok.. after what seems like half an hour I’m still learning how to select. Command plus right click drag.
- Right click region - Item Properties.. Wow
- “0.0dB center” … :/ it’s me.
- Video window - Strangely when I click on it, the menu bar disappears. I couldn’t find an “Import video” command but placing a quicktime movie on a track does the trick.
- Multiple video clips per project!!
- Hmm.. just found intermediate render files in “Documents/REAPER Media” - i would have appreciated a status message somewhere so I don’t find out by chance. Plus, I never store anything intermediate in Documents/.
- How do I bounce? OK, Render. The resample modes are ordered as follows: Good, Low, Lowest, Better, Best, Fast, Fast, Fast, Extreme.
- Now it’s getting annoying. I keep finding out really nice details - clip-based gain, pan, pitch. Also re-link region to another file with “choose new file”.. But this strange interface :((
- It feels really snappy though.
- And it’s got pretty much everything.
- There’s just something that feels like a language barrier between us.
- I want to use it. It wants me to. But we mostly keep smiling at each other.
- I’m definitely intrigued. I’ll probably try a simple thing next, like putting together a podcast - nothing special - some gain, some EQ, some fades.. I feel we’ll get along fine. But I’ve had enough for now. There’s some work ahead today and I don’t feel Reaper will be of help at this point.
So, as I said, I’m definitely intrigued. I’ll certainly give it a further, thorough, look, but (as I expected) it seems to have been designed, to an extent, disregarding ergonomy, intuition, and common platform sense. What’s really beyond me is a certain disregard for the existing market (read: users). I certainly don’t feel at home w/ REAPER. I don’t remember having the same issue with Pro Tools.
I’m not scared of REAPER’s left-field interface, and It’s never too late to learn but I feel this application comes with a wound in the foot. Strangely it needs me to shoot myself in the foot a little, in order to comprehend it. I’m not sure, I’m not sure……..
P.S. Just really annoyed that with major DAWs like Logic and Pro Tools both at versions 9+, Reaper still tries to invent its own interface conventions. Nothing kills creativity like a botched-up software environment, unless, of course, you have a recording engineer/assistant to take the endless pain. Sorry.
*Reaper has been updated since then. I caren’t, however, until 4 at least.
June 30, 2010, 3:46pm
