[RWP] I need all of your input, please. Abandoning Reaper vs. ProTools, should I stay or go?

[Chris Belle]

You make good points why protools might be a good choice, but consider 
this before you abandon windows.

There are accessible ways to back up windows, been doing it for many years.

Also, though windows isn't necessarily the perfect audio system right 
out of the box, that is a mater of hardware choices, and people think 
mac is better because a mac buy forces you to atleast get maginally 
decent hardware where with windows machines, it's too easy to try and 
get a bargain a the expense of your work.

My sonar rig running on a purpose built daw configured by a professional 
daw builder will run circles around most home or mid studio user 
protools systems, run more tracks, run at lower latencies,
etc, and also supports more plug-ins through the fine work done on 
advanced technology like hotspot clicker for jaws, and I think, though 
protools is getting better and beter, right now you have more useability 
and access to more stuff with sonar.

Also we know dancing dots has committed to making x3 accessible, and 
that is huge for me.

Maybe if you haven't had the luxury of working with somethin that just 
works well, or very close to a no aggrvation system like a hotdog sonar 
system, and all these things are not perfect, after all, they are 
software, but
if you think a mac system is completely trouble free, think again.

Your trading one set of hassles for another, but then again, if that's 
what your used to then maybe protools is your ticket to ride.

I'm just saying, before you comit yourself, you should consider sonar as 
the long time standing champion, and where the best and more prolific 
work have been done by our kind.

And I'm not kidding,
a high ;end windows system with tuned dpc latencies down in the single 
digits
will out perform most protools systems unless you spend 3 times the price.

But do not, do not, do not try and do it on the cheap with a 300 dollars 
tiger direct or walmart system some some idiots here have done,
and then got mad at us because they didn't listen.

With more choices comes responsibility and learning, along with the 
extra privs of having something maybe better.

mac is like buying everything prefab,
it serves most folks, and is built toa decent spec, but if you want the 
best you can get, then you need to go custom.

Windows allows you to go custom, also to go really junky.

Don't try and get a custom shop even to build you a daww if you go 
windows, go to a daw builder,
  like jim roseberry or sweetwater,
they know the bios, motherboard, processor throttling,
the whole 9 yards, parts and software tweaks to do to make you have a 
really fine experience, don't listen to idiots that say, you can do it 
yourself, maybe you can,
but all the time and research, and if you make one mistake it's on you,
and if you want to do this seriously, then you don't have that margin 
for error, that's ok for hobbiests, but not if you are getting paid for it.

When I switch to using custom daws,
it was like night and day difference.

Also consider this, all it takes is one regression, or mac to change 
their mind and break something and you are screwed, you only have one 
screen-reader choice, and no recourse to fix anything except lord 
supreme apple.

They control everything.

Microsoft may change something but they have a long history of backwards 
compatibility, I can run software from 1995 on my modern i7 machine, try 
that with any mac software, and grit your teeth and weep.

They've thrown out the baby with the bath water several times, I'm not 
saying mac is not a great product for those who just want stuff to work, 
but remember for us,
it can be an all or nothing proposition,
and well, for instance, I can get a motherboard right now and run w7 32 
or 64 bit, or even xp,
which believe it or not still can be a great choice for a daw, 
especially with older tools, and some plugs which have not been replaced 
yet with w7 equivalents,
that's why I have both a xp and w7 daw worthy working systems around 
here incase I want to load up something really groovy from my old tool 
sets, and run it along with the new stuff.

Well, even with boot camp, you have to run what mac wants you to run on 
the windows side, and believe me, your dpc latencies will be terrible on 
windows boot camp these days, that's not the point, if you get a mac, 
you will be running mac software, but just saying, if you wanted to run 
reaper and sonar from boot camp, you won't have a  good experience.

But a few years ago, when mac didn't cheap out on their hardware so much,
this was a reasonable option,
but you can't tweak the mac universal efi and
make it play nice like you can if you get certain motherboards and the 
right bios and hardware parts with a windows system.

Anyway;, you probably get the idea of what I'm saying,
protools is also a bit of a dog with midi so if you are mostly working 
with audio, and gonna do mostly real time recording, they protools will 
probably serve you fine, but if you want to work with midi alot, and 
have access wo the best kontak libraries, and take advantage of all the 
fine work done by developers in our community, then you want to maybe 
give sonar a try, even older sonar 8.53,
it's still a good choice even in 2014.

I hope protools continues to grow, but I am not convinced yet to abandon 
ship for the many years of great productivity I've had from cakewalk sonar.

You didn't mention this as a choice,
but we are on a reaper list talking about protools, so hey,
my bad, I have to say for the record,
I love reaper too for it's whizz bang audio editing, but I hang my head 
in shame when I want to do automation or midi,
I'm so spoiled by sonar.

Also, here is something sonar has which might be of interest to you may 
daws do not had, it's own wdm implementation.

that means you can take class compliant devices and run them in wdm 
mode, and get low latencys.

A dedicated asio device is always prefered, but I have actually shudder, 
shudder, done a project on an old sound blaster live card running sonar 
on windows 2000,
and windows xp,
and made it work.

It never got the credit it deserved, but sonar had superior technology 
long before many daws did including protools, like 64 bit and plugin 
delay compensation, and
a 64 bit audio path even in a 32 bit environment, ok, now I sound like a 
fawning fan boy, but just saying, these are things which have kept me loyal.

Including all the hard work which has been done for years to keep sonar 
the pinacle for us as a working daw.

Vic recently  updated jsonar, there are still people doing that, 
window-eyes works with sonar, so does nvda,
what I mean by recently is more recently than reaccess.

YOu can't consider jsonar and nvda module abandon ware yet.

So you have three screen-reader choices, not just one like you do with 
voice over.

Voice over is extremely primitive conpared to the advanced features of 
scripting and such we have with the long time windows readers, and the 
johnny come lately upstart of fabulous n v d a
but, voice-over is ready to go as it is, right out of the box, so there 
is that.

For me, it's a lot of faith to put that much in one basket, maybe it's 
because I've been so rooted in sonar for years, but I'm going to need a 
bit more convincing before I go protools in any kind of serious way.

I take care of all kinds of people
and what daw I use has never been an issue.
Nobody cares, and when i have collaborated with people, wav stems have 
always worked fine, and been enough.

Besides, unless you guys have all the same plug-ins, it's always gonna 
be an issue porting over projects.

You can always freeze tracks, but then,
it's about like wav stems.

Ok, all the midi and automation and such and your edits will be the same 
on any daw you have which you are the same on and moving projects back 
and forth,
and if compatibility with a large number of users running protools is 
gonna be a determining factor, then maybe you should go protools.
So those are my thoughts.





On 7/12/2014 5:29 AM, Jes wrote:
> Hello list.
>
> This is a very, very long post, so sorry about that but you have been 
> warned.
> A while back, as some of you may remember, we had a nice discussion 
> about the advantages of Reaper vs. ProTools and which one aparently 
> was better.
> Well, it's decision time for me. I have learned Reaper somewhat well, 
> at least well enough to get things done. I have talked about this with 
> my wife, as we are trying to get a music business going, and aparently 
> people liked what I contributed to the list as far as an audio sample 
> of my work. I really appreciate all of your feedback on that, by the 
> way! Well, long story short, I am beginning to do work for other 
> people and contributing music to a full-time radio outlet here in my 
> area. IT's purely a volunteer effort right now, something I look 
> forward to doing. Plus, I will probably start receiving payments for 
> my work, and this demands that I have a stable system that I can 
> immediately have working at a moment's notice. Just in the last five 
> minutes, I have come up with six reasons why ProTools, in the long 
> run, might be a better option for me for productivity sake. I'm not 
> trying to start any flames, I just need your help to make an informed 
> decision.
> So here are my six reasons, with an explanation for each. Are all of 
> these reasons bologna?
> 1. ProTools is accessible right out of the box, Reaper is not.
> Avid has done a heck of a lot of work to make ProTools accessible with 
> Voiceover right out of the box. From the minute you get things setup, 
> bam, you're ready to rock. Yes, Reaper is accessible on the Mac, but 
> there is a lot of footwork to do, even to get just the basic stuff 
> going, and this is something I really don't have the time to 
> undertake, no matter how easy it appears.
> 2. ProTools is the industry standard, Reaper has a long way to catch 
> up, if it ever does. To be honest, ProTools is out there, people use 
> it, and there is a lot of support for it by a company who is in 
> business for the professional audiophile. The result is you will get a 
> great deal of support for your product, and the product will continue 
> to evolve. After all, Avid has built up a rock solid customer base and 
> they have a responsibility to be loyal to their following. If they 
> aren't, it will be a huge loss of money and customers. On the other 
> hand, from what I have gathered from some of the posts on this list, 
> Reaper is basically a side-project, with very little interest in the 
> money. According to a contributor, the only support Reaper gets is 
> through message boards and mailing lists. Plus, the developers don't 
> enforce their customers to adhere to their thirty-day trial. I have 
> been using Reaper for over three and a half years and have never 
> gotten flagged for it. Thus, Reaper could become abandonware at any time.
> 3.  Reaaccess, like it or not, will one day be rendered useless.
> It's fine for some of us to say we don't care, and we will be able to 
> use Reaper 3 dot so and so, or 4 dot so and so. But one day, Reaaccess 
> will no longer be an option, and if the Reaper devs don't do 
> something, I will not be able to be a productive musician if I rely 
> solely on Reaper. Time and technology marches on, and with it, the 
> need to keep up-to-date with the latest versions of the products you 
> use. If you lag behind, it will eventually come back to haunt you. Let 
> me put in a disclaimer right here. I know some of you will say that 
> it's your choice to use an older version or move to a new one. With 
> ProTools, I would agree with that, seeing as how the product is 
> accessible right out of the box. With Reaper, however, if Reaper 3 and 
> 4 are accessible to us, but later versions are not compatible with a 
> screen reader, there is no choice. IT is a necessity that you remain 
> where you are for accessibility's sake.
> 4. I have no easy, accessible way to backup my internal hard drive on 
> my Windows machine.
> I have put in a lot of work getting this PC optamized for audio work, 
> from installing drivers to my USB audio interface, to installing sound 
> forge, to installing Reaper and konplete 9. Native Instruments product 
> was a bear to get going, and I had to spend two hours on the phone 
> with a merciful sighted person just to get the thing registered. When 
> my hard drive goes bye-bye, I will have no choice but go through that 
> painfully grooling task again, and I cannot afford to spend my days 
> trying to get this setup installed again. To my knowledge, on the 
> windows side there is no means of taking an image of my C drive and 
> being able to restore that image onto a new drive where the process is 
> able to be done totally with speech. I would have to have sighted 
> assistance at some point along the way. I'm not talking about 
> unattended installations, I want to be involved in every step of the 
> backup and installation process of my image. On the Mac, there are 
> plenty of ways to do this, and I have used them with great success.
> 5. I already have a Mac and am familiar with VoiceOver, and it is easy 
> to collaborate with sighted professionals on an audio project.
> 6. Windows is not made for audio work. There is a slight delay in when 
> you hit a key and when you get output from your instrument, even with 
> Asio. The Mac is made for audio stuff, and the core audio shows it. 
> Even if that is not Apple's primary focus, the Mac is just much more 
> stable and much more responsive and allows one to get audio stuff done 
> a lot quicker.
> So, am I just talking out both sides of my mouth, or do I have some 
> valid points? Any opinions will be appreciated.
>
>
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