reaper

[kip4]

is anybody here using reaper
im new to it and would love to know how it stacks up against cubase please
or any tips and avise

[stainless]

I used to use Reaper much more than I do- it's very CPU friendly and it's great via ReWire if you have a lot of midi.

as a stand alone it seems to work just fine. Don't know if they have improved the interface capabilities with control surfaces, but if you use them, check that out.

I've gone to the "box" and no longer have a control surface or a mixer as my stand-alone pres are better than any mixer I could afford to buy, and a standing complaint I have with a great many company's that offer gear with interna;lpre-amps... you can't truly bypass all the circuitry... it seems pointless to run a high dollar pre through the gain circuitry of a multi-channel unit that costs a less than the pre-amps  going into it. So I rum my pre's directly into the converters

I've kinda settled on Digital Performer now (over ProTools)

but 'bang for your buck' Reaper is pretty hard to beat as an alternative platform

[pyrohaz]

I personally think Reaper is brilliant I use it for all of my audio wants, along side with Audacity for final mastering touches. In college, I use Pro Tools and Logic Pro 8 and I can say IMHO that I prefer Reaper for recording all together, Logic is easy but annoys me when it comes to using AUX channels and Pro Tools doesn't come with many free plug ins! Reaper for the price is a brill DAW and if you don't like the interface, you can download skins

[stainless]

pyrohaz

Welcome to HRS

I'm curious about the aux channels with Logic? I'm not a Logic user, so I have little experience with it. I learned on ProTools for 10 years, and now mainly use Digital Performer. I think Reaper a great deal for the cost, but have pretty much gravitated to DP, which once I got past the fairly marked difference between it and ProTools (in some cases I had to retrain the way I approached recording software) I like DP very much with no regrets about leaving PT (I gave my Power Mac with the last PT it would run to my bass player after realizing i wasn't going to use it anymore... and he's happy!)

DP has skins, which is nice on the eyes, but it's what it does- I can route to outboard gear for old school analog touches or work in the box (in fact I went from large mixer to control surface to just using the mouse... without issues... and I have a lot more area on my console/desk

so back to the aux in Logic... are they cumbersome, hard to set up and route?

[pyrohaz]

Hey Stainless,
Thank you for the welcome

Well I don't use logic on a day to day basis because i'm on a Windows platform (The scourge for poor musicians! Haha) So I like Reaper a fair deal because its Windows really. But as you were asking, one feature I like about Reaper for example, say I am setting up a homogenous drum reverb where all the drum tracks are getting sent to one aux track with a 100% wet reverb plug in on top, on Reaper I can just solo the reverb aux channel and hear just the 100% wet reverb (I find this extremely useful as I can tailor the reverb to exactly how I want for the song to then be able to mix into the clean tracks). Unfortunately, you either can't or I haven't found a way yet to do this in Logic and I just find that the general aux channel system of logic can be annoying. On the other hand though, I do like how on logic you have the individual send volume control on each channel strip so you don't have to delve into the sends of each track to adjust the volume, this is very useful if you're using the aux track for feedback, e.g. with delay to produce intricate trails.

I'm quite impartial to the Pro Tools aux system as it is pretty much the same as Logic, unfortunately since I do own a windows PC, I can't really get to use Logic out of college time so I may be just being oblivious to how its done! I can't use Pro Tools either out of College because I don't have a Pro Tools verified piece of kit (I use an ESI interface, Pro Tools only seems to like M-audio interfaces or digidesign!)

How much does DP cost and is it an efficient DAW?

My laptop has the spec of:
1.8GHz Phenom II Quad core
8GB Ram
500GB 7200RPM HDD
4GB Readyboost (configured as HDD cache to speed up quick read and writes)
Radeon 6470M

[stainless]

ahh, I see.  DP is similar, but the "work around" is rather simple, I can send the Aux channel to a 'regular channel and solo there  (in fact I do this sometimes as an alternative to side chaining, but to be honest I usually set the drum aux verb (and a separate compressor aux for the drums) so they are set to sit within the mix, but, yes, i can understand the frustration... seems an easy fix

One of the reasons that I started looking to over from PT was the proprietary hardware (which has changed with 9), as well as the price jump to move from LE to HD (I started with PT on an 001 on PT 4.2)... the latency issues really PISSED ME OFF... and the fact that some plug-ins were only HD... I felt i was being held hostage

I'll admit I originally bought into the "industry standard" thing... but I think that's now merely a grasping marketing attempt (IMHO)... and the "shape of things to come" is smaller (many in home) studio's are replacing the big studios. Granted a big live room with iso booths is something to behold, but a lot of people are getting great results from smaller rooms and less elaborate set-ups.

I thin much of the finished sound lies in

first off, a decent room, acoustic treatment is grossly overlooked and under appreciated..... no wonder as it's still very much a trial and error enigma for most

1) the skill of the engineer, coupled with  a savvy producer

2) good sinal chain (mics and pre, mics and pres, ... did I mention mics and pres?)

3) converters and the clock... in the digital domain, this is damn important

2 and 3 really play a big role. Marketing hype  really pushes the "sounds as good as something costing much ....)... but there is a reason the high end gear costs what it costs.  I pooh-pooh the "expensive crap for years... but have to admit, a lot of my mixing (and mastering) issues lessened greatly as the  gear got better

is it a guarantee your recording will be ABSOLUTELY AMAZING?

nope, for the same reason buying a Les Paul Gold Top and a Marshall stack won't make you sound like Page (or anybody else if you copy their set-up)

but lets face it, the lure of recording the next #1 hit in the luxury of your bedroom sells a lot of stuff   

OK... I'll get off my soap box

[pyrohaz]

I completely agree with the whole Pro Tools situation, it is a complete market hype along with a high quality piece of Pro Tools gear, the gear and software is going to set you back one hell of a lot of money as it is! I think its stupid that you can't use their software with anything other than their gear. That is one thing I like about Reaper, because it seems to have been quite an efficient build without many software screw ups, I don't experience much latency on the CPU side of things, I can play live (enough to not really notice the latency) through my Maya 44 while using a compressor and live noise gate. Since I have no major need to do this, I'm quite happy at the latency side of Reaper.

On the finalised sound side of things, I partially agree with you on the acoustic room. I generally find the only instrument that is majorly responsive to the kind of room your in is the drums. I find drums one of the most interesting instruments to record and process out of anything recordable in my opinion because you can just do anything to them! I mean my favourite technique for drums goes:

Spaced pair (Equidistant from the snare) 2x AKG C414
Snare top & bottom - SM57's I'm afraid although the Sennheiser E604 is growing on me very quickly!
Kick - AKG D112
Toms - SM57 for rack, SM57 OR D112 on floor tom

I generally leave my hat to be picked up by my right overhead as I prefer to base my mix around the kick and snare vs a large cymbal range. I also like to have a very wide stereo image so I pan the OH's hard left and right.

Because I don't close mic each individual cymbal, I find that the room can adjust the sound of the kit by quite a lot by imparting its own tone on the recording. As you say, a good track also required a good engineer and a good engineer will know from experience where the mics will sound good on the kit, how to reduce phasing and how to capture the best sound of the drums as possible.

It is here where I don't believe that the final sound comes from. In general, a high quality mic fed into a preamp with a flat response (no tonal colouration) will in my opinion capture the best representation of the instrument (which is what recorded music is anyway!) without the need of £1000's of valve based equipment. Obviously, pre's should have a low noise floor to capture the full dynamics of the instrument but most preamps of this day and age do have this!

I agree on the final statement though. Even if you have the worlds greatest ever gear, it depends on you as a person and how you use that gear, how your players play their instruments and how you go about the whole recording process. You could have the best selection of gear ever and still place mics in the wrong places producing a terrible track!

[stainless]

I would counter vocals also benefit from a good room

as to drums , I use a lot of mics, as well as I've tried a lot of tunings, drums (especially different snares),and lots of pairing of cymbals. My goal is to have to do as little as possible EQ'ing as possible

as to pre's, does a great mic compensate for a crappy pre?  well it might help a little, but the noise floor is still there, and as to coloration, well, I'd have to say if they were all equal, we'd all be using Behringer pre's

does the MSRP mean it's exponentially better? proportionately, maybe not, but are there differences?... well unless a lot of ears are full of wax... a lot of people seem to think so

as to valve pres, compressor, EQ, etc, whereas solid state is intended to be more equal across the bandwidth, tubes do react differently relative to design (plate voltage, bias, etc)as well as input signal  level (ask a guitar player)...AND, the very same tube type can sound very different depending on manufacturer, age, hours of use... and just the luck of the QC draw.

i have found most inexpensive valve gear can be significantly improved by getting a better tube (noise and microphonics is a huge issue) in  IMHO

sheilding and components with greater tolerances add to this... Name me an IC, and in most instances I'll name you several "alternatives... that are close, but not identical... consider the Burr Brown IC's often mentioned in mods/upgrades... they have better signal to noise ratios, etc

mics, like pres, generally have peaks and valleys in there freq response, as do the majority of voices , I suppose most all sound sources)

so I will respectfully disagree on your comment that "most preamps of this day have this"