I recently demoed both, plus Studio One (I come from Logic), in my quest towards finding a second daw that plays well with the Console 1 hardware. I ended up buying Studio One. Reaper never did it for me and this last attempt just confirmed it, there’s nothing wrong with it but I just get lost in getting it to be be the way I want it to be rather than working with it. As it is when you first boot it I really don’t like it. Cubase is very good but I just find Studio One to do the same things in a leaner, more intuitive way. Also, I was a bit disappointed to find that Cubase hasn’t really evolved visually since I last used it a few years ago, to me it looks “old”. I’m still learning Studio One but so far I get the impression that the people behind it were in a position of building something new from scratch without having to add layers and layers to old code. It’s very Logic inspired but with a more intuitive, snappy way of getting things done, and a few brilliant features such as the “scratch pads“. Visually, things like plugins thumbnails and dragging and dropping are just great. The downside is that the CPU efficiency is nowhere as good as Logic’s so you need to be more careful to not overcook your sessions.

I agree. I am current to 10.5 but I still use 4.5 and 5.5 for any serious production. I am going to start using 6.xx at some point in the near future

The performance of Cubase is well worth the price difference IMO. But it depends on your workflow and your needs. If you are making demos in your bedroom with your bros, reaper is fine. If you do a couple hundred tracks of audio at 96/24 and you use lots of VI like drums and orchestra samples, reaper is simply not going to cut it.

IMO if you compose music with VI and lots of audio then you need Cubase or a similar app like Logic. If you do mostly 4/5 piece rock music and need only like 50 -100 tracks, Reaper is fine and going to do the job handily at a discount price. It depends. How many tracks can Reaper handle at 96/32 ?? I have done 500 in Cubase with no issues with low latency.

Also keep in mind ASIO and VST/VSTi are native to Cubase's kernel. Other apps that use the VST technology are not getting the same performance. They are connecting through the API which is another layer of abstraction and hence a performance degradation.

Nothing looks older than Reaper, except maybe Protools. What does the UI have to do with anything? as long as it is responsive does it really matter what colors and dropshadows they use?? PT is the worst looking interface ever yet it is the most popular DAW ever at the same time. I personally think Studio one looks better than Cubase, but only slightly better. Studio One is slow compared to Cubase. It gets overloaded easily. Also studio one midi is weak. VI support is weak as well.

Totally agree. After 6.5 they lost me and I switched DAW. Tried to hang in there till 8.5 and then gave up.

Surely that's dependent on the computer system you're running Reaper on ?

One, I didn't like the new look. I demod 10.5 a few months back, it was just trying to show me too much info at once, it was worse than a spreadsheet. I tried elements and that was actually pretty good, but then it's missing most of the good stuff. Plus, that dock they added to the main screen....why?

The only old school daw I can look at, and say that's clearly better is Pro Tools. It's still so clean and focused.

I have a homemade i9 9900k based PC

it is simplistic but it just looks like a DOS program form the 80s.
It works though

Ok, so you're saying given like for like hardware and choice of plug-in instrument, Cubase will run significantly more instances than Reaper. What sort of numbers are you seeing ? Your previous post seems to imply a lot more, like 2X or more.

yes that is what I am saying especially with VI and VST

When I used reaper on an i7 a few years ago it started to get bogged down in around a 150 at 96/32 with lots of plugins. I did 500 tracks on Cubase at 96/32. The Cubase version I was using only could support 500 so I couldn't go higher.

My guess is raw audio performance in reaper should be the same as Cubase but it is plugin performance where I saw a difference.

What are the most tracks you can do with reaper? I'm not sure.

This odd and useless debate rises on the surface from time to time. To each their own, everyone is pretty much free to choose whatever they prefer, without the obligation to put others down. I'm happy using Reaper, I've used Cubase, Nuendo, Logic and PT previously, and I don't miss anything except PT's editing sometimes and the playlist thingy.

And what comes to Reapers midi, do check out artist Camellia, a Reaper user, almost exclusively midi.

Been using Reaper for two years now. Before that I used Cubase 6.5 for quite a while. In terms of performance I can tell you that Reaper is way, way more CPU efficient than Cubase. Also, CPU load in Reaper can go up to 95% without any problems. Cubase always started to give problems around 65%.
If you do some serious searching you can find the theme you like and the Windows 95 look is not an issue anymore.

Reaper all the way for me!

After around 100 good plugs almost all with latency compensation to avoid aliasing and cramping at 44.1 kHz, at a high buffer for mixing, reaper becomes a creaky mess without freezing on any computer. Riding the faders is a pain in the ass then. They’re delayed and I have to hit stop and break my workflow. If someone wants to use ****ty Waves and Cockos plugins be my guest but I’m not. That’s like eating a microwaved McDonald’s burger when you have a steak.

Reaper will get bogged down before cubase but Cubase will run out of cpu faster. Reaper is more cpu and ram efficient than cubase, it’s Reaper’s blockheaded plugin delay compensation. Cubase just delays it by the samples rounded up to the buffer x whatever. If you’re mixing with 512 sample buffer in cubase with 4 latent plugins reporting 64 samples each for 256 samples total, that’s under 512 and the whole thing gets delayed by 512 in Cubase and most other daws iirc. Reaper delays for each latent plugin by increments of the entire buffer. So 4 x 64 sample latent plugins means 2048 samples of delay in reaper. A plugin that reports 513 samples of delay gets delayed by 1024 samples at 512 buffer. Crazy. Justin posted he would fix it but hasn’t yet.

That being said, Reaper’s automation is more accurate than Cubase’s, which is tied to the buffer. Change buffer, volume automation gets ****ed. I have no ****ing idea what ASIO Guard is doing to the automation either.

Reaper and Pro Tools are the only things whose default settings do not mangle audio upon import too. Reaper just needs a bunch of downloads to work out of the box: SWS, Reapack, the ReEQ JS plugin, and a compressor that’s not a distorted piece of **** like ReaComp. Cubase has it all but needs setting tweaking and being careful with buffer and automation. The midi is great and Channel Strip is the only great digital channel strip I’ve used. Reaper is always some Windows 98 Microsoft office **** but I don’t mind that really.

Both run better than Pro Tools Native ime while HDX is way too much $$$$ and Avid can break non-Avid branded converters at any time to force you to buy outdated crap, Avid branded chinese crap, or the ridiculously expensive MRTX. The cheaper 16 channel MRTX Studio still costs 1k more than the 16 channel Lynx Aurora N Thunderbolt. Avid’s programming is now contracted out to the Eastern Block too. The AVID premium and tax is just pocketed by the management to not update the software regularly to be compatible with operating system and hardware changes unlike Reaper (It will work but features will remain half-assed and cobbled together) and Cubase. Yamaha still pays the Germans to make sure it works by November.

Interesting, Cubase only became viable for me to mix on once they added DCA's in the mixer.

Then they added, plugin text search, mixer undo, and most importantly and recently Session Import Data like Pro Tools has which really has speeded my workflow up massively.

With Cubase Pro 10.5 it's the first time since Cubase 4 I literally have nothing on my features wish list.

I guess we all need different things from our DAW.

Indeed. That's why there is room for competition, and we all benefit from that

It does have a weird look to it, in 2020, yeah Maybe like a 90's hard drive defragmanter. It's so clean though. Probably the best mixer apart from the one is Samplitude, such a good mixer, plus the mixer preset storing (samplitude)

A while ago there was an update for Reaper, which dramatically increased GUI and CPU performance for use with very high track numbers.

It says a lot about the person who enjoys Steinberg’s clumsy stuck in the 90s design.

People who like the design of Cubase also wear Camp David polo shirts and use colourful protective covers on their car seats.

I've been using Cubase since the 1980's on an Atari so for me it's a familiar workspace that has evolved into what it is now by increments.

I'm not a fan of the Ableton live flat look at all . I think Reaper has some great things going for it and I've been a supported since V1.x but I always go back to cubase and the GUI is a big part of that. Cubase seems clean and coherent in comparison.


M


p.s. I don't cover my car seats or wear Polo shirts either

Reaper 6 is pretty awesome TBH. Plenty of new features, and they updated the GUI. The ReaperBlog guy is doing some great videos detailing the improvements to an already great DAW. Like some guy commented in the comments on one of the Youtube vids ''You really need to live inside this DAW for a while to realize what's possible''....I couldn't agree more. If it seems a bit plain when you first start up with it, once you dig into the features and configurations possible, it blows your mind.

https://www.youtube.com/user/audiogeekzine

Yeah, I think that'll listen to you instead of Hans Zimmer...

Hey, you should stop looking at your Cubase SX 3 - we're all on Cubase 10.5 now, it's absolutely fantastic in every way, I honestly recommend you try the current version, the new mixer and feature rich functionality (mixer undo, DCA's, plugin text search, sampler track, Session Data Import .... it's a very long list of great truly useful workflow features) and the GUI is class leading, I think you're missing out not trying the latest version

I demoed Reaper and it felt like a similar challenge to playing Sudoku.

People who prefer Reapers look eat Trail mix and wear long white socks with starchy beige shorts and say "hum-dinger". That, or they're found around train stations doing quick edits of their Excel spreadsheet cataloguing their favourite Batman comics, sipping terrible terrible coffee.

Reaper has a terrible window layout that impedes keyboard shortcuts. It’s like brewing coffee with two sauce pans and a filter versus a coffee pot.

One of the Major strengths of a DAW software or hardware, is that it can show all sorts of information, however it wants, an Analog mixer can't.. They all seem to have forgotten that and just want to cram in as many features as possible. Bitwig, you can't even extend the faders!! Some don't even include basic sample editing...

this is more or less how zimmers crew set up cubase. and they employ someone to keep these features standardised across systems, setup and populate any additions across all of the teams touchscreens. so citing zimmer is irrelevant unless the given user gets their nose to this particular grindstone and does the dirty work themselves. like this guy has.



you can also setup this level of control in Reaper, though it’s a little different. I know because I have done. Reaper isn’t a sample editor of any real kind. it references Audio as items. this likely provides Reaper with a particular type of efficiency in terms of assets. as media being referenced merely as items. it’s pretty much totally non destructive as a consequence. in order to edit Audio, you assign one or two external editors. even its spectral editing is non destructive. if you render in those edits, it’s usually to a new file. some of the window focusing and key commands can feel clunky, but generally if you double click the key command / action, you can set its scope to a global scope. in which case, you probably don't want any other action with the same key bind, in any other window with a different scope.

That is probably a very good description of it. Some serious players use Cubase, but I would not want to have to learn it quickly.

Reaper fanboy here...
Cubase works and is great. So is live, logic and protools and all the others.
If
- it´s your thing to imagine your perfect streamlined workflow for a given task
- you do that task often enough
- you are not afraid of some scripting and a steep learning curve is ok to you

then Reaper is just incredible.

Stuff that takes multiple clicks and going through menues on any other daw can be set up to happen with one keypress.
You can program contextual branches in your scripts, the API is very well documented.

Just an example what can be set up quick and easy if you feel like it helps your workflow ( and be bound to a keypress, osc or midi command):
+ Check if there is an item under mouse cursor.
+ If so trim item to start at mouse cursor position.
+ if there is no item under mouse cursor but above and below on other tracks then trim all of those items to start at mouse position.
+ if the nearest item is part of a group then only apply action to tracks of that group

All with one keyboard button press. Not even a singel mouseclick...
I use similar scripts for splitting items, for setting fades, etc.

Some time ago i had to trim the start of 4000 samples.
I made a script that shows a single sample zoomed perfectly to show the beginning of the audio exactly at 1/3 of the screen.
One keypress would make the cut under the mouse and move to the next sample.
I made about 3 edits in every 2 seconds.

So if you like this type of thing and you often have to do the same thing over and over Reaper is unbeatable.
But if you want a nice and well thought out layout out of the box and don´t mind having to click a litte more often then Most other DAWs might be better suited.



Besides, the comunity and the creators of Reaper are great people. Reaper forum is one of the friendliest places on the web, and it´s very common to get a direct message from the lead designer and ceo when you post a feature request or report a bug.

Also it´s pricetag is very fair, it has no drm and it´s roughly a 10mb download (!!!)
Just for that they deserve some support.

I compose in live but i always edit and mix in Reaper.

I like the snapshot systems, the window snapping, the scripting, the performance, the unlimited tweakability, the OSC integration ..
Everything i didn´t like i was able to tweak to my liking.
Only thing i muss is comp editing of logic 9... that was clarly better than reapers take system.