Reaper seems to be the standard DAW - is that right?

WiresDreamDisasters

Danny1969 said:

WiresDreamDisasters said:

Danny1969 said:

PT is subscription now so it's not a casual download anyway. I haven't brought a version since 9 myself but as far as I know you can't just buy a version now, it's a subscription model so basically renting the software

We still get developer licenses, so I could install it right now if I wanted to, but I've just never jived with PT that much. I think growing up using Reason and Cubase gave me a certain level of expectation and non-experience with the analog console world, that to me PT just seems primitive in so many ways.

It's an age thing ... when I started out properly PC's couldn't run 32 tracks of audio with a load of plugs and zero latency, PT was the cards and the software so as a package was unbeatable. The actual PC back then was a G4 with 866Mhz CPU 256Mb ram and a 20Gb harddrive

Oh yeah for sure! I totally get it. I did use two 192's and PT8 to record our first EP and first album, used the old FXp studio and at the time we had a full PT rig with a ton of outboard and a Control24. After that I just thought, sack this! I found it way more difficult to use than Reason

At the time I used to use Reason 3 and Ableton Live 3 or 4 rewired together a lot. It was my main way of working, but fucking hell it was a ballache. 

I guess I'm a DAW hipster!

octatonic

Danny1969 said:

octatonic said:

Danny1969 said:

LightB4sound said:

You can still buy a perpetual licence. It's £499 but you only get a year of upgrades.

Wow, if I was still running a studio It would make sense but it's a lot of dough for a home user 

Ultimate is 4 times that and £400 a year for the 'support contract' and free updates.
It is highly irritating but the only choice is to dump HDX otherwise, which I cannot do.

No if you dump HDX you won't be able to open any HDX session I guess .. we used to get work at 2020 just because we had HD and could open HD sessions. We were HD when there was a lot of used HD stuff about though so it wasn't a massive outlay for us thankfully 

You can open HDX sessions on native.
I do this all the time- the plugins just convert.

PolarityMan

All the real studios we've used have been PT and logic but reaper is unbelievable for its price point. Certainly isnt going to hinder anyone achieving a pro quality result. 

spark240

Studio One here....the community is getting big now....nice they stop shipping new products every 5 minutes and concentrate on fixing the issues it should become up there with PT 

west

Chaps ... if you were starting all over again in a non pro setting for home writing what would you use now ?  what is the quickest easiest to learn without getting bogged down with overwhelming tech frustration that restricts creative ideas / flow ...  i was fairly competent with notator / unitor and then nuendo ( poorly ) and that was a very long time ago obvs , i have forgoten everything ....

octatonic

west said:

Chaps ... if you were starting all over again in a non pro setting for home writing what would you use now ?  what is the quickest easiest to learn without getting bogged down with overwhelming tech frustration that restricts creative ideas / flow ...  i was fairly competent with notator / unitor and then nuendo ( poorly ) and that was a very long time ago obvs , i have forgoten everything ....

Studio One most probably.
Or Logic.

I’ll say this though, what most people think of as ‘technical frustration’ is simply not knowing the software well enough.

west

Thanks Oct so logic is out for me ( apple )  so studio one would be simpler to learn than say reaper ... ?

octatonic

west said:

Thanks Oct so logic is out for me ( apple )  so studio one would be simpler to learn than say reaper ... ?

Definitely.

west

octatonic said:

west said:

Thanks Oct so logic is out for me ( apple )  so studio one would be simpler to learn than say reaper ... ?

Definitely.

thanks i will take a look at some vids ....

LightB4sound

+1 for studio one on PC

Or perhaps check out Ableton of you want a daw for purely creative endeavours.

JCA2550

A bandmate and semi pro producer/engineer friend has recently started using Harrison Mixbus 32c and is raving about it, good reviews but I'd not heard of it. Any thoughts?

andy_k

A couple of years ago, I was balls deep in a music degree, already used Logic, had to get PT subscription, which was fine with student discount, 2 years in I discovered Reaper, bought the perpetual PT12 license and have only opened anything in it maybe twice in the last 2 years.
If you are on Mac, Logic is a no brainer, but otherwise, Reaper is the GOAT.
I understand ,you may have built a studio around  PT hardware, (piracy protection), but cannot understand why anyone else would be getting involved with it now.
not sure what key I have hit to get underlines on this,   but maybe it is serendipity.

LightB4sound

@JCA2550 heard some good things about Mixbus, it is fantastic price and from what I heard produced from it, really does have a console like sound to it. The thing is that it has a console like workflow which might be off putting to some. It is more for tracking bands rather than making beats for sure.

LightB4sound

@andy_k the main hurdle from my time using Reaper was the editting workflow. I could not for the life of me figure out how you do a time selection on a clip. You seem to have to do it using a timeline selection, and I could not get my head around it.

andy_k

LightB4sound said:

@andy_k the main hurdle from my time using Reaper was the editting workflow. I could not for the life of me figure out how you do a time selection on a clip. You seem to have to do it using a timeline selection, and I could not get my head around it.

It is a different workflow, if you are used to anything else, but I usually find it too EASY to do a time selection- l-click and drag, which loses the existing selection.
Everything is do-able in Reaper, there is no fixed way, so it is much more personal.
I tried Mixbus, and it does look, and sound good,-a more analogue traditional feel, but I found it difficult on a small screen, another thing which can be made easy in Reaper, I just love Reaper.

WiresDreamDisasters

There's a sort of schism happening in Reaper land right now. A lot of users are requesting complete area-selection mechanics (time selection on a clip being a subset of that), and the developers are trying to implement people's needs without breaking existing time selection functionality.

But I do think a more traditional area selection is coming.

andy_k

Can you remind me what I'm missing about this, probably from PT?
My own workflow has become used to the normal Reaper selection method of L-click, drag, which snaps to a grid-if selected. I haven't really gone into creating actions for things, as most stuff is in the R-click menu.
My only problems with it where when I used to have a loop area set, and the selection would re-do the loop. I get around this by having the loop set to a single item, then when I lose it I can just r-click, set region to item.
I do remember PT had some sort of menu settings for selection, the multi too, but I just get frustrated when I open a PT session now, just the wait for the session to load immediately bugs me.

LightB4sound

IT would be great if area based editing came into Reaper, I would certainly give it more consideration!

Stuckfast

Well the key difference between PT and most other DAWs is that in PT you work with areas rather than clips. So you use the tool to make a selection that covers a particular area of the Edit (arrange) window. That selection can include blank space, parts of clips, entire clips, multiple clips on the same track, etc. You don't need to do that tedious thing of selecting a scissor tool and then chopping clips up, just place the edit cursor and hit B. 

blobb

JCA2550 said:

A bandmate and semi pro producer/engineer friend has recently started using Harrison Mixbus 32c and is raving about it, good reviews but I'd not heard of it. Any thoughts?

It's what I use. The DAW is Ardour but it has a a console emulation which is the mixbus bit. As I don't use all the features of a more complex daw, Ardour is fine for me. The console is great. I moved on from cubase to Mixbus and won't be going back.

The main benefit to me is that all the plug-ins you need are already loaded  into the console. So you record your tracks, and mix them as you would on a real console. You don't need to add VST's in to get a decent mix. It also sounds great and the argument is that because the console models the signal path through the big mixbus units, it imparts the same audio quirks. Others say this is a perception thing.

I think that it's more to do with having the console layout. You don't keep adding in plugs ad infinitum. You just use the built in compressor / gain stage / EQ etc..... You can add in VST's but you can get a good mix really easily without the fuss. You also learn a lot about console mixing, which includes using the mixbusses.

There's a no limit demo, just adds some noise every now and again. I used that for quite a long time before I bought a license.

32C gives you the full EQ, which Harrison are known for.