[cdawzrd]

Having used both REAPER and Pro Tools professionally, my opinion is that REAPER is not basic at all -- it has every feature I have needed in a DAW, it's easy to use (for me, at least) and performs better than Pro Tools, at a far lower cost. It is one of my favorite pieces of commercial software.

[diminish]

Cost is low but 3rd party ecosystem including plugins is weak. It s like notepad++ of programming editors or winamp of music players. Effective, cheap, non innovative Yet OK.

[sean_appleby]

I've only used Ableton, FL and Reason, so there could be something I'm missing, but doesn't Reaper support vsts? How could the ecosystem for plugins possibly be weak?

[eon1]

VST/3/AU/DX, and it supports scripting your own in JS as well. Unless they're upset about not having LADSPA or Nyquist, I can't imagine what else they'd be referring to that isn't proprietary AVID garbage.