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by abaga129
2377 days ago
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Reaper to me is the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to DAWs. I purchased it about 7 years ago for $60 and I'm still receiving updates to this day. They just added linux support not long ago and I was thrilled. Also the Reaper installation is tiny compared to most big DAWs probably due to not being bloated by huge sample libraries and virtual instruments. It also comes the the ReaFX plugins which may not be pretty but damn are they useful. I believe you can get them for free to use in other DAWs. On the other side of the coin it probably isn't the easiest to get started in and it's not the best for making Electronic Music IMO (FL Studio and Reason are much better adapted for this). |
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A few notes:
+1 that you can get most of Reaper's plugins for use in other DAWs (maybe only for Windows though?): https://www.reaper.fm/reaplugs/ - almost any DAW seems to have decent stock plugins these days but Reaper's do some nice stuff like a clean N-band multiband compressor.
Upgrades do go on for quite a while - though @abaga129, unfortunately your free update train just ended a couple weeks ago. Purchasing a license at version N gets you all updates for major releases N and N+1, but N+2 is a paid upgrade (and would come with all upgrades through N+3). Version 6 was just released this month, so it's a great time to jump in and get a license if anyone's been running that trial past the intended period.
Reaper is absolutely worth $60 (for studios with a decent amount of revenue it's $300 or so IIRC), but for some musicians I think other, more expensive DAWs can be a better deal, for example Studio One when it's on sale, or Logic Pro X for Mac users at $200 - it has a huge amount of stock plugins and instruments that Reaper really doesn't match. Perhaps you don't need them. And many people likely end up with tons of third-party plugins anyway so it won't matter. And of course there are plenty of good, free third-party plugins online.
Though elephant in the room (for me) for Logic is whether Apple will continue to support the pro line. Having a nice MBP refresh and the new new Mac Pros out is a good signal.
Students can grab Apple's Final Cut Pro X + Logic X + other stuff bundle for $199: https://www.apple.com/us-hed/shop/product/BMGE2Z/A/pro-apps-... For everyone, you can likely purchase iTunes gift cards at a discount and use that for apple's pro software.
Reaper has a fully-functional 60-day trial and is a well-behaved app on your system (no USB dongle drivers for example). Totally recommend trying it out.