[Rwp] New to Reaper - comming from Amadeus Pro / Goldwave

[Thomas Byskov Dalgaard]

Hi listers!

Today I found the
www.reaperaccess.com website, and decided to take another look at Reaper. Last time I tried it was in version 3, and it looks like accessibility has come far since that time.

Sorry if a lot of people already have asked for this newbie stuff but I am new to Reaper and all it can do, so here I have a few questions regarding functionality.

Over the years I have used software on both Windows and the Mac. I am a Mac user fulltime now and have ben that since 2009, and moved all my audio work to the Mac in 2010.
I have used Goldwave as my editor of choice on Windows and Amadeus Pro as my editor of choice on the Mac. Have played a little with Audacity in the past as well and I love the multitrack aspect when it comes to editing conversations in different tracks.
So for most of you this might sound very basic, but I want to use Reaper for producing podcasts and editing audio most of the time.
For the last many years I have played with audio editing and recording. I have never done anything regarding music productions, since my focus mostly is on productions for podcasting and other spokenword material.
So here are a few getting-started questions:

1. Will Reaper allow me to do very precise edits without having to know anything about music anotation (like beats, bars etc.) as my other apps have helped me doing? And what do I need to know in order to get into Reaper comming from the software I have used in the past?
2. I have also played a little with Audacity on the Mac, so I know a little regarding multitrack editing. Can Reaper do some of the same like ducking background music when a speaker talks, normalize all tracks in a project instead of having to normalize one at a time?
3. How do they developers of Reaper handle upgrades? I see on their website that a license will work up to version 6.99, so version 7 might cost a full price license or have they provided an upgrade discount earlier on before version 5?

Is it corect that the accessibility on Mac OS X haven’t been looked at since the Reaper access went away on Windows? It seems to me that one of the developers of NVDA have done some nice things for Windows users. I hope some of this could be caried over to the Mac at some point in time. I do understand that it might take a huge amount of time and resources doing this, and as long as basic accessibility is there I hope it is enough for me to get some of my basic recordings and edits done.
I am not a programmer myself, but I love to play with software. :)
If my focus is mainly at audio editing and recording do you know of any good resources, podcasts to start at?

Thanks in advance. I look forward to see what you guys are posting and to hear how yu use Reaper.

Best regards Thomas