| I'm another REAPER fan. It's wonderful if you're looking for a reliable, slim, portable, cross-platform DAW. 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. |