A quick heads up for Cockos Reaper. Reaper is a fantastic DAW despite having possibly the worst name in DAW history. Free for non-commercial use, frequent updates and will host a large number of plugin hierarchies. Reaper will run on Mac or PC and even Linux, with some coaxing.
Plugin support
Reaper supports a wide range of plugin formats making it easy to switch from Logic, Cubase etc. They also provide their own proprietary set of plugins which are both powerful and very lightweight.
- VST
- ST3
- VSTi
- DX/DXi (Windows only)
- AU/AUi (OS X only)
- JS
Switching to Reaper
I first started using DAW’s in the late eighties, early 90’s. Initially the computer of choice back then was Atari running software named Notator. Notator was eventually acquired by Apple and many of the functions are still familiar in Logic. For a long while I used Cubase but in the last year or two I had major problems exporting my material. It’s a well documented bug that many suffered from (CPU Overload error). I purchased a new PC exclusively for audio recording in the studio believing it would fix my issues but alas, the error persisted. It was time to move on and I don’t regret it. I’ve been using Reaper for some time now and it performs really well, has a light footprint and is both stable and reliable. Reaper does not invest in advertising and instead relies on word of mouth to spread their trade name. Check it out now.
Cockos Reaper
