Thanks to Mike DelGaudio aka Booth Junkie, I bought Reaper about five years ago. Not knowing much about audio editing software in the beginning, I didn’t embrace it right away, even after following along with his tutorial videos. I just recently finished up his course for configuring Reaper for voice over. Finally! And for the first time, I feel comfortable with the interface; however, I didn’t do all of Mike’s suggestions. I thought of what I want/need/am familiar with and customized it to my tastes. I even managed to learn how to do some editing techniques where I could see myself actually using Reaper for my voice over work.
However…
Am I going to use it? No, at least not fully, not yet. This DAW is…not easy. After you get it customized to your tastes, it becomes easier to navigate, but that doesn’t make it easier to use. Reaper is not what they call an “out of the box” software program. This is a very deep program with a lot of tentacles to it. In my opinion…for what I do (which is nothing more than editing narration/dialogue and adding sound effects and music occasionally), I’ve come to see that Reaper is too much for my needs. It’s over-the-top. I’m not an audio engineer or a person who makes music so I don’t understand 99% of what is there.
Would I like to use it? Yeah, sort of. I hate feeling defeated by a stupid software program. lol But this feels too much like advanced math or when I learned to code with Java for me. It’s bringing back some bad memories.
Is it a good program? Sure. It’s a good DAW. If you have time, which right now, I don’t because of two geriatric cats, and you want a robust program, I say go for it, but don’t beat yourself up if you can’t grasp it. I don’t believe that this DAW is for most everyone.
Why am I not going to use it? I’m still going to tinker with it, but the biggest reason for not going all in is because it’s simply too much for what I need and what I do. Look, if you’re sitting on the fence about this, try it out, but I’m of the camp that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. There are so many little things that I do in Audacity that I haven’t been able to find a command for in Reaper…yet. My Audacity interface is so customized to my workflow that I can use it in my sleep. I hate Audacity because it’s so basic, but it fits my needs for now. Reaper isn’t an industry standard and, even though I hate the subscription model, if I get to a point where I’m making more money at this gig, then I’ll probably give Adobe Audition a go. I’m already familiar with Adobe’s platform as I use photoshop and premiere for publishing related things.
So, not good and not bad. It’s just not for me.