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haha...yes I think manning1 may have used reaper once or twice...
I've never used Sonar in any depth, am a hardcore PT guy..but just recently I needed to finish up a project, and only had access to an iMac plus whatever free stuff I could download.
Great chance to see what all the fuss is about then. So down comes Reaper and off we go.
Have to say - I didn't find the experience half as enlightening as I was expecting. I found the zoom/scroll setup cumbersome (I want my mouse wheel to move round the project, not zoom in/out when I'm trying to find the first verse). I thought the automation was difficult to get into, I found it difficult to see edits clearly, the included plugins weren't particularly good, and the routing system for busses and sends fairly confusing. It seemed much less like software designed by an audio engineer, than software designed by a computer planner - and the appearance is very basic, anyone who complains PT is plain-looking will think this even more so.
As a free, unencumbered program - obviously it's great value and in theory you can achieve anything you can do in Sonar, PT etc. In practice, I never felt like I was actually doing anything other than working on a computer - with PT I find it much easier to work as if it was a console-based setup.
Obviously I'm making very unfair comparisons here - 8 years PT experience, out of my usual environment, no control surface etc etc, so I don't want to sound as if I'm making a hard and fast judgement, more just some initial impressions. And I wanted to like it, I really did.
But for me this is really a program in development, and those who think it should be a replacement for PT or whatever in pro studios can't have any experience of how those pro studios work.
oh, and manning1 - if I was the teacher, and the student who you recommended show his teacher Reaper instead of PT LE...I think I'd have a few things to say back!
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