Reaper is an incredibly powerful Windows DAW, which is as increidibly affordable at a price of $39.00 and which has a very active if not passionate community behind it. I bumped into Reaper because my usual DAW Adobe Audition does not have VSTi support. VSTi support means being able to load virtual instruments not to be confused with virtual effects which it can indeed do. There are many more reasons than just VSTi support to contemplate using Reaper. It is really a powerful multitrack recorder with very flexible signal routing capabilities. It also comes with a ton of free effects which seem to be very well liked within the community. Reaper does not have in my estimation the editing tools that Audition has. My guess is that I will be using both tools with Reaper being used for the intial multitrack recording to initial mixes and Audition in the final mixing and mastering process.
Some of Reaper’s features:
Portable – supports running from USB keys or other removable media
64 bit audio engine
Excellent low-latency performance
Multiprocessor capable
Direct multi-track recording to many formats including WAV/BWF/W64, AIFF, WavPack, FLAC, OGG, and MIDI.
Extremely flexible routing
Fast, tool-less editing
Supports a wide range of hardware (nearly any audio interface, outboard hardware, many control surfaces)
Support for VST, VSTi, DX, DXi effects
ReaPlugs: high quality 64 bit effect suite
Tightly coded – installer is just over 2MB
ool-less mouse interface — spend less time clicking
Drag and drop files to instantly import them into a project
Support for mixing any combination of file type/samplerate/bit depth on each track
Easily split, move, and resize items
Each item has easily manipulated fades and volume
Tab to transient support
Configurable and editable automatic crossfading of overlapping items
Per-item pitch shift and time stretch
Arbitrary item grouping
Markers and envelopes can be moved in logical sync with editing operations
Ripple editing – moving/deletion of items can optionally affect later items
Multiple tempos and time signatures per project
Ability to define and edit project via regions
Automation envelopes
and more well worth checking it out. Don’t let the prize fool you Reaper in many ways is just as powerful as any of the other well known DAWs such as Cubase and ProTools. It may well be exactly what you need.