Reaper is a sequencer, a Cockos multi-track midi / audio house arrived in the summer of 2015 in its fifth version that is evolving in the shadow of many other competitors without much advertising. The flexibility of this program makes it suitable for different production areas, such as: sound design, audio for video games, podcasting, live performance, video editing, mixing, mastering and more, suitable for a wide audience, from the hobbyist to the professional.
With the release of this latest version (Visit the website) there have been many improvements and details of this DAW they are not few.
Cockos Reaper story
Il founder of Reaper è --Justin Frankel, creator of the hugely popular audio player Winamp, a player that, unlike many of its competitors at the time, was able to read mp3 formats, create playlists and libraries. Furthermore, this player was also possible to extend it with themes and plugins, adding features such as the famous online audio streaming called “shoutcasting”. Two years after their creation, the project was sold to AOL for $ 80 million.
After a few months, Justin and Tom programmed a P2P protocol called "Gnutella", which was used as the core for the famous file sharing software "Sharaeza" and "Limewire". However, being under the authority of AOL, they had to stop its development, but the protocol was still shared on the internet.
After years of programming and experimenting with audio processing, Justin decided to start a new company in 2004Called cockroaches, to develop a program of musical creation and sound manipulation, all in total independence. Thus was born Reaper, acronym of "Rapid Environment for Audio Production, Engineering, and RecordingWith a strong assertion close to: "Don't let profit or other companies corrupt the author's view of his software."
Main features
Licenses and packages
One of the peculiarities of Reaper is that unlike many other competitors, it releases one trial version fully functional and without limitations, even dividing a license into "discounted" ($ 60) and "commercial" ($ 225). The difference between these two licenses does not concern software limitations, but rather the use of the software (I recommend that you visit the "place" for more details). Finally, Cockos Reaper does not come with a third-party libraries or sample pack and, as it was for winamp, it has the ability to be customized even in the theme, but let's go step by step.
Compatibility
Cockos Reaper is a cross-platform midi / audio multitrack, compatible for Windows, Mac and Linux systems (under emulation with Wine), available both 32bit and 64bit. Moreover Reaper can be installed in "portable" version (10mb), thus giving the opportunity to be able to store it on a USB device and take it with you and, without having to reinstall it, bootable in other PC / MAC. You can also install multiple instances of Reaper (useful if the PC is used by multiple users, therefore a very convenient feature) without risking losing the performance of your work environment.
Reaper supports a lot of plugin types (VST, VST3, AU, DX, JSFX), audio drivers (Asio, Wasapi, WaveOut, DirectSound, etc), a vast number of audio formats (wav, wav64, aif, ogg, mp3, flac, REX, etc.), video formats (mp4, avi, mov and others) and even image formats (such as gif and jpg), and finally other protocols such as MIDI, OSC, Sysex, Mackie Control and Rewire.
Flexibility
Apart from the Master track, there is a single type of track in which you can insert any type of element (mono audio, stereo, multichannel, midi, video, images, text, ...), one after the other, even in succession, heterogeneously or even overlapping.
Speaking of routing, each track can work as a group / folder or even as an aux / bus. They can be organized hierarchically: the signal from the “child” track goes into the “parent” one, so if you adjust any parameter of the parent track it will be applied to the sum of the signals of its child tracks. From version five, tracks in Reaper can now also work as VCAs for other tracks.
Each track can have unlimited send and return. To help you there is the "routing matrix“, Which displays and allows you to edit all the routing of your project. You can even set up routing systems even from project to project.
Audio
Reaper's workflow is completely non-destructive. You can create fades, change length, add stretch markers, apply effects on objects, create automation envelopes to effects and native properties of the object (volume, pan, pitch etc.) all without rendering, but if you want to in any case can use the “Glue” function.
The elements can also be grouped together in a single group, which consequently if a change is applied to one of them, this change will be applied to all the others.
MIDI
Many features inherent to MIDI-type elements are most of them fairly standard, following the same specifications as other DAWs, but some details stand out. For example, creating a loop is quite simple: just pull the midi object, extend it and it repeats itself. You can also create and edit MIDI objects within the "MIDI Pools". Reaper also provides a "Quantize Events" window, the grid supports swing groove, a "humanize" function,
impose the notes in a chromatic scale chosen by us and, finally, the possibility of being able to edit multiple MIDI objects at a time in a single track.
Video Editing
If you are thinking of an advanced and professional video editing tool that has advanced capabilities, Reaper is not the ideal software. With Reaper you have the possibility to play and edit videos by adding audio parts, thus making in this context a really convenient working environment, but it could not be a substitute for professional video editing software.
From this version you have the possibility to work and edit with multiple video objects and produce HD videos. Using external libraries such as VLC, it will make sure your computer has no lag when playing, working in a wide variety of formats and resolutions.
Obviously you can also render video-type works, unfortunately, however, during the processing phase, the video elements do not present a preview of the images or frames that the object presents (therefore they show themselves as the audio elements).
They can be applied video effects such as resizing, cropping, picture in picture, text on images and much more through the "Video Processor Effects". These processes can also be created by writing in a specific scripting language that reaper proposes, thus showing an interface where you will have the controls on the left and the code on the right.
Regions and Markers
Regions and Markers can be defined in your project. It is a good way to define a part of a song or to write any other information within your project or even to define the rendering sections. With a powerful "region matrix", you can render files related to certain tracks depending on the regions set, a very useful method in sound design.
Customization
Reaper as a feature that differentiates it from all other DAWs is the ability to customize the entire multitrack interface 100%, from colors to designs, from menus to tool palettes.
In Reaper any process can be triggered by an action, which are listed in a window called "Actions window”With the ability to filter and set them to any toolbar in your environment, to a keyboard shortcut or to a MIDI / OSC input. Finally it can be set actions also on mouse events depending on the context through "Mouse Modifiers". In the "Actions window" you can also create Custom Actions, Also known as Macro, or combinations of several actions and execute in a single command you set there.
Final considerations
Cockos Reaper presents itself on the market as an excellent alternative capable of adapting to every type of need that an artist, a composer or a studio needs in his work environment, focusing on the essential and performance.
Alberto Baldi
