Cockos Reaper Presonus Studiolive Full Mixing Console
Cockos Reaper Presonus Studiolive Download For Windows

The stock plugins, like the compressor and EQ, look like Settings dialogs instead of tools you use to shape sound (with the exception of a few radically different-looking, bundled third-party plug-ins, which is jarring from a UI-perspective).

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Cockos Reaper Presonus Studiolive Full Mixing Console

Reaper delivers live audio and virtual instrument recording, a full mixing console, and real notation editing, and it supports scoring for video.

Unlike many competing DAWs, Reaper lets you build your own menus, toolbars, and macros, as well as changing the entire look and color scheme of the interface.

Reaper is a complex program that requires studymaking it perhaps the complete opposite of something like Apples GarageBand.

But put in the time, load it up with some free (or paid) third-party plug-ins, and it pays real dividends in power and flexibility.

Reaper covers nearly all of the bases of a Pro Tools or Cubase-equipped workstation at a fraction of the price.

If you plan to use it for commercial music purposes and you are grossing more than 20,000 per year from your audio work, its 225.

Reaper is available in both PC and Mac versions, and a Linux version is currently in beta.

Cockos Reaper Presonus Studiolive Download For Windows

The program is a paltry 11MB download for Windows and 17MB on the Mac, and just 66MB when fully installed.

You can even run it off a portable or network drive, Cockos says.

Reaper is free of copy protection, and you can download the 400-page manual in PDF format from the company website.

Theres a 60-day unlimited trial version, and, if you buy it, you get free updates through the next full point version.

Say you buy 5.9 today; that means you get free updates through 6.99, which should keep you current for several years.

Reaper also has a seriously dedicated online community, and it seems the developers are always hard at work providing updates, bug fixes, and notes.

I also tested Reaper on a quad-core MacBook Pro 15-inch with 16GB RAM and a 256GB SSD.

Both the PC and Mac versions seemed to work identically, and were both rock-solid in testing.

When you first get started, youll need to go to Options Preferences to set up your audio interface and MIDI controller.

The opening screen indicates what is arguably the biggest roadblock to getting started with this program; its essentially a blank slate.

The left side shows your track list, and the main arranging window is to the right.

Along the bottom is the mixer, with the transport sitting above it and to the left; so far, so good.

The transport is smack in the center, as if it were a bad cut-and-paste job.

The tiny icons at the top left resemble those of a 20-year-old Windows 98 application.

The dated feel extends further as you start digging into the menus and customization options; youre faced with dialog box after dialog box, all of which contain system-font-like text, plenty of sliders, and extraneous white space.