Reaper vs Ardour?

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

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Basslint
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by Basslint »

francoisphils wrote: Wed Jun 09, 2021 11:56 pm You may use Reaper freely as long as you like , it depends on your honesty , for me Reaper wins by far!
That's not freely, but free of charge. Very different! :D

I don't have a problem with REAPER. They are just trying to make a living and for some reason selling proprietary binaries is considered more profitable than selling binaries compiled from FLOSS code. What I don't understand is why they don't release it under a copyleft license, since they basically already give it free of charge. They could keep the trademark to avoid bad forks, like Ardour does. Yes, it would probably get in distros but that could only help its adoption. And if they really are annoyed by it, they could use the trademark to prevent distros from calling the program REAPER, like Vital does.

In other words: REAPER is distributed DRM-free. If the trial expires, they don't enforce it in any way, so users can use it endlessly for free, without any limits on functionalities or watermarking that I know of. So most people who pay for REAPER, pay for it out of moral duty. Would this moral duty change if REAPER were to be released under the GPLv3? Absolutely not - or better, yes but only in a legalistic sense: if you keep using REAPER after expiration, you are technically a pirate (or are you, since the program allowed you to use it?). So why use a business model which does not offer any advantages over the one used by Ardour but keep the sources proprietary? I do not understand it.
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by Largos »

Perhaps they don't trust other major DAW makers not to just rip their code off. Licenses are only as strong as your will/means to enforce them and like you say, they don't even care to put meaningful restrictions on the evaluation
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by d.healey »

francoisphils wrote: Wed Jun 09, 2021 11:56 pm You may use Reaper freely as long as you like , it depends on your honesty , for me Reaper wins by far!
Reaper is not free as in freedom, I don't care about price.
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by digitsun »

And What about 'call home' feature? Ardour has a 'call home' feature, is possible deactivate when compiling the app, but we can read the source code and look what is doing the software. But when the application is private, like Reaper, we can't know what it is doing behind the screen. Anybody knows if Reaper is connecting to internet, recollect data and call home?
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by d.healey »

digitsun wrote: Thu Dec 16, 2021 10:18 pm Anybody knows if Reaper is connecting to internet, recollect data and call home?
Well it has a thing to tell you when there is a new version so it's definitely calling home to a server, I don't know if it's sending back any data though.
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

merlyn wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 4:12 pm [...] (at the moment) MIDI is a bit of a weak spot in Ardour. [...]
Sorry, but that is unacceptable in 2021.

Another thing that scares me away from Ardour is the fact that its project file format is not "forward compatible". That is: if you make a project in the latest version of Ardour and you try to use that on an other (older) computer (from your band mate) running a previous version of Ardour than it won't work. Realize that new versions of Ardour are very hard to install on an old system. How's all that gonna be in the future?
d.healey wrote: Sun May 30, 2021 3:20 pm
lilith wrote: Sun May 30, 2021 1:56 pm Yesterday I was trying Ardour 6.7. Made a simple midi pattern with some VST instrument, looped that pattern and got hanging notes after the first loop was finished. --> Checking Ardour 7 next time. I don't know how anybody who is making loop based music can live with these bugs. :cry:
Don't use Ardour for anything but the most simple MIDI, use Qtractor, Muse, or LMMS instead. Hopefully Ardour 7 will have MIDI improvements but right now I use it only for audio sequencing work (and Audacity for audio editing).
Problems like @lilith had are completely unacceptable in a 2021 DAW. Wait for Ardour version 7 for something a basic as Midi suport? You gotta be kiddin'. Thanks for the info: I was thinking maybe of diving down the rabbit hole and learning Ardour because it's so "Linux" despite the non-forward compatible project file format. Thank you both for the warnings: I won't.

I'll stick to Qtractor and I might dive into trying out Reaper because it's so portable from one computer to another. It's only 10 MB (!) and needs no install procedure. Just unzip and run the executable/binary. More software develpers should do that.
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by merlyn »

Linuxmusician01 wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 11:30 am
merlyn wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 4:12 pm [...] (at the moment) MIDI is a bit of a weak spot in Ardour. [...]
Sorry, but that is unacceptable in 2021.
pfffft. There are historical reasons for this being the case. Ardour was intended as the Linux version of Pro Tools, which, at the beginning, didn't have MIDI. MIDI was later bolted on to Pro Tools and the same is true for Ardour. Not everyone uses a lot of MIDI, and for recording and mixing music played by musicians on instruments -- Ardour is good. I've done tracks with MIDI drums in Ardour, and didn't have a problem. But if your music is 99% MIDI you may have problems like lilith did. If your music is 99% MIDI you probably wouldn't use Pro Tools either.
Another thing that scares me away from Ardour is the fact that its project file format is not "forward compatible".
@dawhead already straightened you out on this. Can you tell me a DAW where an older version opens projects from the newer version? Logically speaking it doesn't make sense as it means the project format could never change.
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by lilith »

"Ardour was intended as the Linux version of Pro Tool"


Due to Paul this was never the case.
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by lilith »

Bought Bitwig last year and I use Reaper currently.
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by martibs »

Linuxmusician01 wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 11:30 am
merlyn wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 4:12 pm [...] (at the moment) MIDI is a bit of a weak spot in Ardour. [...]
Sorry, but that is unacceptable in 2021.
Even if you don't use a lot of MIDI in your workflow? Come on, man, every DAW, closed source or open, on any platform, has its strenght and weaknesses. Find the tool best suited to your workflow. If you make loop based music ITB using MIDI and VSTs, Ardour will not be your best choice. But guess what, not all production is done that way. For me, I use MIDI outside the box, and record to the DAW. Do I wish Ardour's MIDI implementation was better? Yes. Can I live with it the way it is? Absolutely.

For me Qtractor is horribly unstable, has an ugly interface, and limited feature set. That's simply my experience, though, and not a useless claim that it is universally unacceptable in a given year.
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by folderol »

I don't use any of them, although I test with Ardour MusE and qtractor.
I strongly dislike all-in-one solutions, so use Rosegarden for MIDI (and limited synchronous audio playback) with Audacity for audio recording. I use both internal and external MIDI sources.

This gives me the flexibility I want, especially when it comes to swapping patches and links around in real time to get exactly the sound I want.
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by asbak »

I'm not usually an advocate for closed software but the ease of installation & "get going" curve, stability & features with Reaper are such - compared to the alternatives - that it's hard to omit a mention.

It's lightweight, things tend to work, most of the required features bases are covered, it even supports LV2.

There are alternatives but they're often in various stages of completeness with regards to implemented features required by musicians & producers, or are difficult & tedious to compile, or suffer from stability issues, or a combination of the aforementioned factors.

One of the sad problems with Linux audio - from the perspective of people who just want to get on with making tracks - is that it's a complex environment to understand and set up. Very few things are straightforward and it's easy to get lost in the "getting it to work" trap, as opposed to making tracks.
Some Focal / 20.04 audio packages and resources https://midistudio.groups.io/g/linuxaudio
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

asbak wrote: Tue Jan 04, 2022 11:27 am I'm not usually an advocate for closed software but the ease of installation & "get going" curve, stability & features with Reaper are such - compared to the alternatives - that it's hard to omit a mention.

It's lightweight, things tend to work, most of the required features bases are covered, it even supports LV2.

There are alternatives but they're often in various stages of completeness with regards to implemented features required by musicians & producers, or are difficult & tedious to compile, or suffer from stability issues, or a combination of the aforementioned factors.

One of the sad problems with Linux audio - from the perspective of people who just want to get on with making tracks - is that it's a complex environment to understand and set up. Very few things are straightforward and it's easy to get lost in the "getting it to work" trap, as opposed to making tracks.
I agree. Just today I've come upon a little downside of using Reaper. The user interface (UI) of, for instance, the Calf and Guitarix LV2 plugins won't show. You can see the settings window of Calf, but not it's accompanying GUI. This is because the UI of the Calf plugins appears to be built in GTK(2) and only X11 will show (link Reaper forum, see reply number 17 from 20-5-2020).
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by asbak »

I realise it's not ideal but you can work around that problem by using the Calf Plugin Jack Host (it's a little application that installs with Calf's suite, not sure if it's in the old Calf build in KXStudio) or by using Carla as a host for plugins such as Calf in Reaper.

Reaper, add Carla as an effect in Reaper, add Calf as an effect in Carla... whew.

Not ideal for sure, but those options do work.
Some Focal / 20.04 audio packages and resources https://midistudio.groups.io/g/linuxaudio
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Re: Reaper vs Ardour?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

asbak wrote: Tue Jan 04, 2022 9:47 pm I realise it's not ideal but you can work around that problem by using the Calf Plugin Jack Host (it's a little application that installs with Calf's suite, not sure if it's in the old Calf build in KXStudio) or by using Carla as a host for plugins such as Calf in Reaper.

Reaper, add Carla as an effect in Reaper, add Calf as an effect in Carla... whew.

Not ideal for sure, but those options do work.
Thanks for the calfjackhost tip!

I'll have to study how to use that on a single track in, say, Qtractor or Reaper. If at all possible. The way it looks to me right now is that calfjackhost makes a Calf plugin act like a standalone jack-aware audio app (a synth for instance). That is: not per se a plugin like reverb or a flanger that you can apply to only the track on which you recorded your bass guitar and leave the violin and drums without reverb.
Last edited by Linuxmusician01 on Sun Mar 06, 2022 9:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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