THE BEST

It's a war tank! It can handle anything you throw at it without complaining, you opened Amplitube 15 times? Don't worry, it doesn't crash or anything. This DAW can handle everything you throw at it and it's perfectly optimized, it's compatible with everything, you have a 4 dollar mixer? It recognizes it and works perfectly without installing drivers on the PC.

It's the only DAW that never gave me any problem at all!

Fantastic value

The private version is only $60, and even then it's on the honor system. I like to save my money for hardware so spending a lot on either Logic or Ableton didn't make sense to me. I have never felt limited in any way using Reaper. I don't play live so Ableton doesn't hold much appeal for me, plus I just haven't really meshed with it when I have tried. Logic has a great visual look and is very user friendly, but the price point of Reaper was too enticing. There are plenty of easy to follow tutorials on YouTube for any question you have, and a vibrant and helpful online community of users, especially on Reddit. Even if you eventually want to move to Logic or Ableton, starting with Reaper is a great choice for versatility and usability without spending a fortune.

Powerful!

Easy learning curve, very useful training info and videos available, the online user base is the most active for additional free support, incredibly powerful and customizable. For Pro Tool users there are skins that mimic the look, feel, and user quick-keys. Your license is also very portable to any desktop you happen to be using whether Windows, Mac OS, or Linux. There is no expense or hassle with an iLok USB dongle for piracy control required either, that is a huge win for easy of use. Its core engine is built so efficiently that you can easily run on older slower machines with smaller amounts of RAM as well. And its stability is remarkable... You can now see why its user base has exploded with a paltry price of only $60 for the FULL LICENSE. It is a no-brainer: Highly recommended.

Make a DAW!

Reaper has been an absolute joy to work in! The stock setup is not that user friendly but Reaper is so customizable that you set the pace for what your workflow will be.

The fewest words I can use to describe it is: Make a DAW! With the help of SWS Extensions and Reapack you can set up Reaper to work for you, instead of you for it! An absolute steal for the price they charge for small businesses. (its not free so please buy it).

The PDC (plugin delay compensation) has been rock solid in my time using it. Key commands are super customizable so you can have your favorite plugins on the tips of your fingers!!! Reaper is great for working with video as well when you get the FFMPEG libraries installed.

Definitely my DAW of the year (past 3 actually)

The more you use it, the more you love it

I was looking for a DAW, that is simple to use, portable, runs on linux, scriptable and yet professional. It has a learning curve for sure, but it customizable like nothing else and you can tweak it to your exact needs. Did I mentioned it's portable? You can install onto a USB stick and bring your production environment in your pocket to everywhere. The stock plugins are... minimalistic to say the least, however with a little elbow grease you can build a very powerful config and setup, you just need to drop into your next project. Routing is also superb and can be used not only for audio, but midi as well. Start using it a creative way along with folders. This way I built my very own 808 with the stock sampler pulugin on our first night. Of course Reaper can host your favorite VST too without any problem. I could praise this DAW for hours, I really love it. Worth every penny.

A simply perfect D.A.W for custom setups

If you are an electronic music producer that writes music over your own drum compositions with your own sound source and Vst plugins, Reaper is considerably in the top 5 Daws. Either it being PS1, AvPT, FL Studio, Cubase or itself.

Preferred Settings + Usage:

Versatile and customizable beast of a DAW

Intuitable, compared to FL for example. With the free VST market it is perfect to get 'hands wet' quickly and start experimenting. Already built-in plugins have enormous capabilities although the (in web development terms, somewhat) aged visual part may leave other impressions. Robust and straight to the point! Visually customizable but whats more important, functionally superbly customizable with the custom actions feature. Strongly recomment the SWS/S&M plugin as it cuts down on loads of repeated actions and makes working with Reaper a breeze.

Uhhh...

He sold WinAmp in 1999 (just before Steve Jobs arrived with his iPod) and wanted to try something he liked after a couple of AOL corporate years, something that didn't have business as the prime mover. Why haven't I tried this DAW before? Or, I am sure I have tried it before, but was somehow scared away of how ugly it seemed to me, and all of the endless possibilities... well, now I think it's pretty and awesome and I'm in love! :D

Has been my goto DAW since 2007

I started off recording on PC before it was even popular using TwoTrak freeware on a 486 (and god that was a PITA to get working), then using QuartzAudiomaster Freeware for awhile, and then when Quartz went belly-up in 2007 and their website disappeared, I needed to look for a new DAW, and I found REAPER and it has stayed mine ever since.

I've seen REAPER as an excellent DAW both for beginners and pros alike. I'm kind of a "savant" of sorts with this stuff, I never studied mixing, I never learned how to master or how to even USE a DAW, but I figured out REAPER on my own enough to recreate the functionality of Quartz AudioMaster Free years ago and have used it ever since to the point that I've actually learned a lot through using it making demos, recordings for YouTube and elsewhere, and whatnot.

I did have some problems using it at first because my computer was older (an eight year old Pentium III with half a gig of RAM running WIndows 2000), but I found out that switching to a better soundcard caused the metronome and tracks to sync properly.

And even then, I had a period using a Pentium-D using Windows 7 x64 and 4GB of RAM with it where it would go out of synch but was easy to fix everything so no biggie there.

But since about 2012 I've been golden. For awhile I even used an even older PC with it (Pentiium 4 2.8GHz w/3GB of RAM and an SSD) and it performed well there too. Currently I'm using a custom home-built box for it now where hardware is not a concern.

And $60 to use it commercially is a real steal TBH. When a guy who was learning from a major producer tells you he's amazed how your demo tracks you bring to the band sound like actual album production tracks, you know you're using the right DAW.

Great for Beginners

When I started learning about audio, I read several articles on various DAWs. I downloaded and played around with all the popular ones mentioned. However, as a newbie I found them not easy to work with. I came across Reaper and tried it out. It was wonderful! The interface was straight-forward, it was very customizable, and there were a lot of tutorials offered on the site to help me learn. Their pricing was also very attractive. For anyone new to making computer music, I'd highly recommend Reaper to start. If you find your aspirations moving to a more professional environment, then move to another DAW.