Reaper vs Ardour?

What other apps and distros do you use to round out your studio?

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Kott
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by Kott »

For the record AVL-MXE (by arrangement with Paul Davis) always provides fully functional and supported bundles that are the most recent versions at time of release so that is another way to get a free fully supported version.
Interesting. It means you haven't compile it for AVL?
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by GMaq »

Kott wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 4:02 am
For the record AVL-MXE (by arrangement with Paul Davis) always provides fully functional and supported bundles that are the most recent versions at time of release so that is another way to get a free fully supported version.
Interesting. It means you haven't compile it for AVL?
I stopped compiling it years ago, the only downside is the bundles for both Ardour and the Mixbus 32C demo take up quite a bit of space..
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by sysrqer »

Why would you need to differentiate between mono and stereo tracks? I always found that such a pain in Ardour and never understood why it was like that.
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by Basslint »

bhilmers wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 11:16 pm Launching the program? The first thing you see is a dialog box asking for a new or old session. New session? Here is a dialog box asking you to pick a template and directory. Ready to go right? WRONG! Please set your sound server preferences. Great, now I finally have a session window. Adding a new track? Here is a dialog box asking you which kind. But wait, why can't I hear anything? Oh, I have to open another dialog box to set up the routing!
While this complaint is valid, Ardour is FLOSS so this could easily be implemented.

All that is needed a simple "Do not show session manager at startup" checkbox in the preferences, which enables a combobox which allows you to choose the default session template to use at startup.

You could ask the devs for this feature :D
When I downloaded the Linux version of Reaper, I launched it and was immediately given a session window. And, Reaper chose to use my OS sound server preferences so I was able to start recording immediately by choosing "Track > Insert New Track (Ctrl+T)" then arming the track for recording. Literally immediately. The experience was so good I bought the license after finishing my first song.
In my own experience, recording tracks in Ardour is as immediate as you describe it in REAPER from my own experience!
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by merlyn »

sysrqer wrote:Why would you need to differentiate between mono and stereo tracks? I always found that such a pain in Ardour and never understood why it was like that.
You don't need to. That's what I'm used to. Instead of the grenade of a word 'analogue', which conjures up images of glowing valves, I'll use the word 'hardware'. This is also often framed as 'out-the-box' and 'in-the-box'.

Hardware mixers have mono and stereo tracks because they are different. Mono has pan and stereo has balance. It's possible to move a stereo source around in the stereo image with more control by bringing the stereo track onto two mono tracks for example. Stereo width kind of addresses this but it's not exactly the same.

Inside a computer there is really no reason to use a mixing desk as a paradigm. One of the dialog boxes I was referring to in Reaper is the routing dialog. It's fine, but it's not what I'm used to. For example the master bus has a special status as a tick box at the top. On Ardour it's simply another destination. I like that there are different kinds of tracks on Ardour. For example I use a bus as a send destination partly because it looks different and also it's not a track -- I'm never going to record onto a reverb send.

The best suggestion so far has been to try AVL-MXE so the OP can have a look at both. The more Linux way would be to try Ardour first, then, if the OP experiences as much PEBCAK as skei and bhilmers did, then try Reaper. :lol:
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by bhilmers »

Basslint wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 9:18 am In my own experience, recording tracks in Ardour is as immediate as you describe it in REAPER from my own experience!
Sure, once you set up your initial environment future recording sessions are basically immediate, however, that's true of any DAW. But a fresh install? Noooo. Not even close. Reaper and Ardour are drastically different. Also, I perfectly understand why Ardour works this way. It's a solid UX design choice, just like how the rest of Ardour is implemented. It's fantastic software and the documentation is top notch.
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by JamesPeters »

merlyn wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 2:42 pm...but it's not what I'm used to.
This is a tall hurdle for people to overcome. I doubt you can appreciate Reaper until you've gotten accustomed to the way it works. Which by the way, was very easy for me after having used: Cakewalk, Cubase, Nuendo, Logic for PC, n-Track Studio, Sonar. Reaper has some things which seem unusual, as all DAWs do. The basics though, for "just recording", are ready to go. After choosing my audio device, I double-clicked in the track control panel area to add a track (I guessed at that, and I was right), I armed the track and hit record. It was the "most hardware-like" initial experience I've ever had with a DAW. Like some others here, I started with hardware recording devices (tape) in the 80s and moved on from there.

As for Reaper's master track: it's the final bus things funnel through before rendering, which when working with a stereo mix is commonly referred to as "the 2-bus" on hardware mixers, so that's also quite representative of a hardware workflow. If you don't like working with it, you can use any other track as a bus.

Of course, Reaper doesn't strictly follow a hardware-based paradigm. Any Reaper track can have up to 64 audio channels and rout to/from any other track. (The exception to this is the master track, which can't rout to other tracks. It only routs to hardware outputs.) Someone made a tutorial about how to do an entire mix with Reaper using a single track, for instance. There are so many things about Reaper which allow it to be flexible that I have trouble limiting it to a few examples. To use that functionality usually requires some sort of dialog, or at least triggering an action, but that's to be expected of any program. If you want to limit the number of dialogs from your specific workflow, chances are there's an easy way of doing it whether you add toolbar buttons, make custom actions, use third-party scripts, assign things to a MIDI controller, or all of those. Again though, for the basics, it's ready to go with very little to slow you down.

The only thing I notice about Ardour that's missing in Reaper is about how the effects chain works specifically. Ardour has some things in this regard that some Reaper users have asked for. But on the other side of that coin: there are many things about Reaper that Ardour isn't set up to do, or capable of doing (at least yet).

Keep in mind that good MIDI functionality is important even for people who don't make "electronic music". I use a drum instrument for realistic sounding acoustic drums, and that is programmed with MIDI. Because of this, I want some more advanced MIDI functionality to make that easier for me. Having used MIDI sequencers alongside tape-based recording devices (and having a "sync stripe" track to keep MIDI in time), just for the sake of using a drum machine (let alone any synths), once you leave that paradigm behind you can really appreciate MIDI functionality which helps your workflow, even if "just for drums".

There are more workflows for different reasons, too: scoring video, foley work, video game music, voiceovers/podcasts, live performance, and more. Reaper can handle all of them, sometimes amazingly well. Someone recently made an "automixer" Reaper plugin (for free) that balances volume levels across multiple audio tracks (with or without priority on a particular track), and can switch video sources automatically at the same time. Imagine using that for podcasts or interviews (and yes Reaper can handle playback of video tracks, several of them simultaneously, and has video editing/effects functionality).

This doesn't mean Ardour is inferior. It's about the workflow a person wants/needs. But Reaper isn't more difficult to start with compared to other DAWs, unless you've gotten accustomed to the way another DAW works. Reaper can be used for "just recording audio" very simply, or it can be used for many other workflows (some of which are necessarily more complex).
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by merlyn »

To me there is no Reaper vs Ardour.

To me it's free (as in speech) software vs proprietary software.

So I do have to ask (and it's a genuine question) if you're OK with proprietary software why do you use Linux?
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by tavasti »

merlyn wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 9:46 am So I do have to ask (and it's a genuine question) if you're OK with proprietary software why do you use Linux?
I use linux primarily because of features.

Linux veteran & Novice musician

Latest track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycVrgGtrBmM

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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by Largos »

merlyn wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 9:46 am To me there is no Reaper vs Ardour.

To me it's free (as in speech) software vs proprietary software.

So I do have to ask (and it's a genuine question) if you're OK with proprietary software why do you use Linux?
Most Linux OS have proprietary drivers. Software license ideology is far from the only reason to use Linux. Speaking as someone who switched during the days of Windows Vista.
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by GMaq »

merlyn wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 9:46 am To me there is no Reaper vs Ardour.

To me it's free (as in speech) software vs proprietary software.

So I do have to ask (and it's a genuine question) if you're OK with proprietary software why do you use Linux?
I'm in the Ardour camp, only because I've been using it since v2.0... Reaper is begging me to take a better look though especially with the new LV2 support.

I don't see why wanting to use prorietary software would dissuade someone from using Linux, Linux is just as much about freedom of choice in general: FLOSS vs. Proprietary being only one of many choices... For me it's 100% about customization and scalability of the DE and software to the hardware in order to keep older machines viable. I am not limited to participating on either side of the screen as much as I want and of course it's about the collaborative nature of the community. I choose the excellence of FLOSS where it dominates and add in whatever proprietary bits I need to produce in the way I see as being optimal... I don't see a need to limit and in some cases hobble the workflow with one kind or the other especially when I see the symbiotic nature of some of these relationships (Ardour + Harrison) and how both FLOSS and Commercial applications mutually benefit.
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by bhilmers »

JamesPeters wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 6:56 amKeep in mind that good MIDI functionality is important even for people who don't make "electronic music".
Exactly. I'm pretty good at guitar and bass, but not as good on a keyboard. I don't have the time or patience to keep pressing the record button until I get that "perfect" performance. One of my last Reaper projects involved me recording the MIDI from my Juno-106, cleaning up the notes, then playing the MIDI back while recording the synth's output. That's what we have computers and MIDI for!
merlyn wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 9:46 amSo I do have to ask (and it's a genuine question) if you're OK with proprietary software why do you use Linux?
Hell yeah I am. I gave up on software purity years ago when I realized I was never going to achieve my goals with it. I do professional work in media and back in 2010 when I started with Linux I just couldn't produce content and assets as efficiently as when using closed source alternatives. Time is money. Jesus, it's 2021 and Linux doesn't even have a good font management program. I have to use and old Win98 program in WINE and a script I wrote.

I'm not Richard Stallman. I've got work to do and Linux is the best environment for my specific skill set. If I want to make things hard on myself I'll use BSD.
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by tramp »

merlyn wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 9:46 am To me there is no Reaper vs Ardour.

To me it's free (as in speech) software vs proprietary software.

So I do have to ask (and it's a genuine question) if you're OK with proprietary software why do you use Linux?
Unfortunately this is a lost question. Those who been OK with using proprietary software wouldn't ever understand why you ask this, and those who don't wouldn't ever understand the answer.
On the road again.
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by JamesPeters »

@merlyn :

Like bhilmers, I'm not an open-source snob. If some software isn't open source and does what I want, I'll consider purchasing a license. Humanity being what it is, sometimes you need to ask to get paid a fair price for your work, and also that you prevent your product from being released by another company to safeguard your investment. I don't mind that. I'll assume that the rapid/consistent development of Reaper has at least partly been due to the fact the developers are being paid (and releasing Reaper as open source would jeopardize that).

If you're equating using Reaper instead of Ardour to using Windows 10 instead of Linux, you've made an odd comparison. Anyone who's compared Reaper to Ardour (properly), and who's compared Windows 10 to Linux, wouldn't make this comparison.

Not everyone needs to be a 100%-dyed-in-the-wool open source snob to appreciate Linux. There's plenty of room for developers of closed-source software to exist.
Last edited by JamesPeters on Sat Jul 31, 2021 6:05 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by Gps »

tramp wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 5:07 pm
merlyn wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 9:46 am To me there is no Reaper vs Ardour.

To me it's free (as in speech) software vs proprietary software.

So I do have to ask (and it's a genuine question) if you're OK with proprietary software why do you use Linux?
Unfortunately this is a lost question. Those who been OK with using proprietary software wouldn't ever understand why you ask this, and those who don't wouldn't ever understand the answer.
Let me put it like this.
I am a fan of Richard Stallman idea's.

If you have an nvidia vidcard and want to game, you better install the proprietary drivers.
I now again have an AMD gpu and am using the opensource drivers.

Although, I am overall happy, this causes some issue with Blender. (rocm related)

One fix would be to install the proprietary drivers.

Although I would prefer everything opensource, I don't always have that choice as a simple user. :(

To end positive though, I am very happy that I can game with the opensource amd drivers, although some games complain I should not.
( that is because of the poor state of the amd opensource drvers when steam game to Linux)
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