Hey this is a little bit OT but this thread got me thinking I should download the trial version and give reaper a shot.
Just ran a few tracks goofing around with some idea's I'm working on for a new song I'm writing, and thought I'd share the results.
I think it gives me just about everything I need, plus freedom to goof around with edits and whatnot without being shackled to my digi hardware.
I'm not sure I'll pull the trigger and switch (need to do some rigorous A/B for that) but so far I have to say I like:
1. lightness - loads fast on my laptop and seems to not consume a lot of resources.
2. EASE of use. Very intuitive if you ask me. I was able to get my ideas down onto the hard drive quickly with only minimal reference to the user guide or wiki.
3. I thought the user interface was just fine. I see what people are saying about it but geez man for $50 I think you can't really be picky about such things.
4. Rewire support seems great. I only use reason for drums but it handled that just fine. No latency issues that I could detect.
In terms of what I'd miss about PTLE if I made the switch, well.. I don't know. I haven't tried things like loop record yet with reaper. It might be just as good for all I know but PTLE has this neat feature where, after you loop record you have all these takes lying right on top of each other and you can slice through them all like slicing through a layer cake and they are all still aligned. So... if you like the first 20 seconds of the first take and the last 10 seconds of the final take and the middle 10 seconds of take #4, stringing that together into one seamless piece is, well.. a piece of cake (sorry, that as an awful simile but I couldn't resist!). Truth is if you have good musicians, all strong at what they do you should never need such tomfoolery but with my voice I sometimes need that crutch for vocals (never need it for anything else though
) .
Also I was unsure of whether I can automate fx in reaper. Sometimes I find it very convenient to change reverb settings, and also dramatically alter the mix level on things like delays, etc... via automation of those knobs. PTLE does this seamlessly. I need to spend some more time with reaper to figure out of these things are doable in there. I would guess that reaper does mix/edit groups and I would hope to confirm that as I play with it more.
If it has all those thing then I would have no real heartbreak saying goodbye to PTLE. The freedom from the hardware is a big deal in my mind. One thing I'm sure I'd miss is the BF76 compressor plug-in, which can impart a nice character even to my voice (maybe there is a vst equivelent out there somewhere I have not looked). Oh... and massey... damn I think I would miss massey for sure.
I highly recommend a download to check this thing out for yourself. I'm impressed, and really thinking hard about a change.
Charlie