REAPER: paid DAW by Cockos
Light, fast and endlessly customisable. Low-cost licence with a long free trial.
Opens Cockos's own site.
Put SCRAMBLE. on your drums, 808s and vocals
One button rolls a new FX chain: glitch, stutter, tape stop, chops, reverb, delay and vocal tune. There are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible chains, the same count as the positions of a 3x3 cube. Save 10,000 presets a day and 1% of them would take 118 billion years, over 8x the age of the universe.
Not just loops: drum buses, 808s and bass, hats, vocals and the master bus. 3,000+ downloads so far.
Other DAWs to compare with REAPER
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Waveform Free
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LMMS
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FL Studio
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Ableton Live 12
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Bitwig Studio
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Reason
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REAPER FAQ
Is REAPER free?
No. REAPER is a paid DAW from Cockos. Free DAWs to start with include GarageBand, Cakewalk and Waveform Free.
What is REAPER good for?
Light, fast and endlessly customisable. Low-cost licence with a long free trial.
Which plugins should I add to REAPER first?
Start with free ones that cover the basics: a synth like Vital, a reverb like Valhalla Supermassive, a dynamic EQ like TDR Nova, and a creative FX plugin like SCRAMBLE. for drums, 808s and vocals. Check each plugin's formats against what your DAW loads.