Need some help for a friend comparing DAWS

[Lt. Bob]

I should have put this here instead of the recording and tracking forum so here it is:

My good friend from Baton Rouge ( been friends for 50 years) called to ask me for some info about recording programs and figured I'd know since I was still involved with it but all my recording is hardware based and I didn't have any response.

So help please.

He has Cubase 5 and Audacity .... he says he loves Audacity but had heard me talking about Reaper.

So the big question is basically Reaper vs Audacity.

A few caveats and what he desires to accomplish.

...... he's using a Zoom R8 as an interface and he's actually happy just using it as a stand alone BUT it will only do 24/48 as a stand alone but will do 24/96 if run into a DAW.
He says he hears the difference .... I know him .... if he says he hears it then he hears it.
But regardless, that's why he wants to run it into a DAW

He want to be able to natively mix down to MP3 within the DAW so he can easily send files around.

He's running Windows 7

He likes the built in effects with Audacity and is under the impression you don't get any with Reaper but I seem to remember that ya'll have mentioned built ins or plug ins that come with Reaper.

Lastly is Reaper still free if you're willing to put up with a nag screen?

So basically if Audacity is comparable to Reaper I would imagine he'll stay with it but balancing all those questions, what do you guys think?

[JD01]

Reaper can mix down to MP3.
there's a fucking boat load of free plugins including mastering limiters.
ReaEQ is one of the best VSTs ever

[SweetDan]

My first computer-recording experience was with Audacity. It's great for capturing things and doing simple edits. (It's great for slicing out and exporting out audio clips from a larger audio file. I do this with simple mono recordings I capture on my phone or a tablet at my kids' school band/choir performances, for example.)

I got frustrated and started looking into using a "real DAW" once I got serious about mixing. True, Audacity has lots of built-in effects (as do Reaper or any of the current mainstream DAWs), but you can only preview an effect one at a time, and to only one track (unless you've bounced down multiple tracks to a single track).

Imagine trying to craft a whole mix by previewing effects on only one solo track at a time; it's nearly impossible to do a good A/B comparison. Do I have too much reverb? Not enough? How can I tell in solo on this one instrument? Because of that limitation alone, and if your friend is going to be mixing down multiple tracks, I'd recommend he try out Reaper or a trial version of another mainstream DAW (depending on Win7 compatibility, of course).

[CeeBee]

Cakewalk by Bandlab is free, and is basically a top level Sonar. There are loads of tuts in youtube to get you started. Another one is Multitrackstudio by Bremmer Audio which is very intuitve and almost like a conventional tape recorder to use. There is a free lite version as well. I use the pro version most of the time as it is so easy to use. I have Reaper and Cakewalk but I'm too lazy to learn them so i only use Reaper for special jobs.

[Armistice]

Audacity is an audio editor, it's not really a DAW. Good for what it's good for, a useful tool sometimes. I realised I hadn't used it for years when I was setting up this new laptop and so didn't bother installing it. Free, but...

Just about everyone here uses Reaper - and there's a reason for that. It's really simple to use. And cheap,

Irrespective of whether, in an objective sense, it's "better" than other DAWs, the fact that many people use it means that if you want to learn how, there are a lot of people who can help with specific answers to your specific problem.

That, rather than feature set, would be a big consideration if I was starting out again - it's forums, rather than YouTube, where you'll learn the most.

[Lt. Bob]

Thanks to all ...... I'm gonna just copy all this and email it to him.

Anyone else?

Also ...... will Reaper work with Windows 7?

[WhiskeyJack]

Also ...... will Reaper work with Windows 7?

yes.

[vomitHatSteve]

I stared on Reaper with XP. As time goes on, features will probably diverge such that older OSes will require old versions of Reaper, but those are available on the site anyway.

[Armistice]

I can't wait for Reaper to introduce some new "I'm going to try to second guess what you want to do in every aspect of your life but really just annoy the crap out of you by making them hard to disable" features, to match Win10...

[TripleM]

Reaper is much fuller featured. It's better documented. Audacity's plugins are all (I think) destructive. Meaning you have to apply them by making a permanent modification to your original wav file. Going back is not an option. There are lots of free VSTs you can use in Reaper.

There are lots of other things.

I can't remember for sure, but after a month or so, doesn't reaper put in a couple of seconds of silence every so often in a song that you export?

Reaper is $60 - and I think that gets you free upgrades for the next two major revisions? Something like that. Audacity is free, but to me Reaper is worth the extra money. I would suggest he try it for the trial time period and see what he thinks. If he doesn't think it's worth the money, he can always stay with Audacity.

[Greg_L]

I've been on Reaper for about 15 years. I don't know if it's better or worse than anything else. All I know is I've never wanted to do something that Reaper couldn't do.