I dunno about you but after looking at Reaper since v1 I've felt a creeping suspicion grow.. the feeling that it might just be horribly ugly and no matter what anyone does with it in terms of customisation, it simply never reaches escape velocity from it's own inerrant look.
We've all got used to it - but just about any other DAW is a relief to the eyes after looking at Reaper for weeks.
The trick (at least on Windows) is:
- customize the Windows theme
- custom icons
- custom cursors
- custom Walter layout
- attractive color palette (mine was inspired by Reason)
- custom knob/slider images
Admittedly, it was a ton of work.
My only real complaints now are:
- choppy play cursor (this definitely makes REAPER look not so premium)
- low-res icon in window title bars (possibly patchable via resource hacker?)
- lack of scaled scrollbar theme images (only effectivley affects direction arrows if finessed right)
I'm not sure if I can share that sentiment. I mean, yeah, parts of Reaper always look "utilitarian" on Windows - unless you mod your system. But as for the basic look of Reaper...we have SO many themes that change the look of the TCP, MCP and windows + SO many scripts that you can use instead of the default look - like scripts that you can use instead of the fx window. And you can customize the menus - to a point.
What it lacks is a coherent design from the ground up that other DAW's have (vector graphics, cleaned up menu's, some UI/UX changes). But I'm not sure if that's ever going to change so these are the patches.
So I guess you're right in some way! Reaper isn't a DAW for the looks (surely!) but for everything else, it pretty much is top-of-the-line! You either learn to live with it or you find another DAW (because designing everything from the ground up is most likely NEVER going to happen). 🤔
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Live simply so that others can simply live
I dunno about you but after looking at Reaper since v1 I've felt a creeping suspicion grow.. the feeling that it might just be horribly ugly and no matter what anyone does with it in terms of customisation, it simply never reaches escape velocity from it's own inerrant look.
We've all got used to it - but just about any other DAW is a relief to the eyes after looking at Reaper for weeks.
Reaper's graphics use the Win32 API and the theme-ability of its many elements varies from none to partial. That's always been the case, and like everything else completely openly shared, so there's no need for your suspicion to creep.
Could I ask you to tread slightly more gently with the 'all theming is pointless' vibe if you choose to do it here in the theming forum please? There are people here doing lots of free work for joy and creative satisfaction, and there's nothing to be gained but plenty to be lost from saying they shouldn't bother.
Reaper needs some attention to make it look coherent and good, but the flexibility is worth it. I am a hobbyist and I have the full versions of (and occasionally use) Bitwig, Cubase, Live, Luna, FL, Ardour and Reason.
Bitwig looks neat, but after a while you get tired of that look. Cubase.....uh ugly and can't be made of anything. Live...mmmm... with the right theme reasonable, but you can make Reaper look better. Luna is beautiful, but limited. FL... some elements okay, but very personal whether you like the style, I don't in any case. Ardour..... no comment. Reason, looks great with the hardware style, but the workflow will not appeal to everyone. In short, with a little effort I think (personally) that I can make Reaper look just as good if not better than most other Daws. In terms of workflow I think Reaper is head and shoulders above the rest (but that is very personal of course). And that for sometimes 1/10 of the price you pay for other DAWs.
The only "critical" point that remains for me in terms of appearance is indeed somewhat the coherence, but you can also largely solve that with something like Windowblinds or something else.
And as WT says, the enthusiasm and dedication that many themers throw themselves into making beautiful, strange, ugly, funny, tight themes is already inspiring to me.
I have to admit that I sometimes make a "trip" to the other DAWs that I have (indeed to sometimes be in a different environment or to use the unique possibilities of that DAW... and then especially Reason and Bitwig)..... but I always return to my trusted and beautiful Reaper environment ;o)!
(PS....my favorite themes....Default 7 (ANTI THEME EDITION), CSIX and ReaperTips)
Last edited by Touristkiller; 08-09-2024 at 07:14 AM.
i use a theme. i think Reaper looks great anyway. There's just no way to make it look like any of those other dumbed-down DAWs without nuking a ton of functionality. Shrug.
You want a spaceship that can go anywhere, you get to deal with all the buttons and menus. You want to go to one or two destinations only, forever, get one of the others.
There are plenty of nice clean themes, plus there's the Theme Tweaker. There's really no excuse to not set it up how you like it. It's too easy to do so.
Few things are certain and permanent in this world, like: death, taxes, water wet, and "Reaper so ugly, doesn't look pro 😭 I want pretty DAW" threads.
🤣
There you go, a screenshot of SAW Studio to put things in perspective 😜
Last edited by DerMetzgermeister; 08-09-2024 at 12:06 PM.
I think the fact that there's such a huge and continual themeing community says it all.
If Reaper had a pleasing, consistant GUI then there'd be no need for theming as with most other DAW's.
I'd persoanlly forego themeing for a 'better', consistent, usable GUI any day.
I own Logic, Cubase and Studio One and they all have a 'better' overall GUI and holistic 'feel' about them than Reaper , and I'm saying that as someone who's bought every version since V1 as I really want to support the ideology.
I still use Reaper but TBH if I open any one of the other mentioned programs I own I sigh and think 'Ahhhh that feels better' regardless of sometimes a loss of functionality.
As REAPER evolves, it becomes more and more flexible. Not only for theming but most recently for user tweaking. This is both amazing but also concerning.
All of this flexibility comes at the cost of organic/cohesive interface design. And it has come so far that it's actively hurting the user experience.
I have had my concerns about this direction since REAPER 6, but REAPER 7 settled them. I honestly think it's going too far.
And I hate to say it, as someone who super loves theming and customization, I kinda agree with:
Quote:
Originally Posted by norbury brook
If Reaper had a pleasing, consistant GUI then there'd be no need for theming as with most other DAW's.
I'd persoanlly forego themeing for a 'better', consistent, usable GUI any day.
I made a whole video about this. At the end, I share some examples and how I feel about the current state and direction.
This sentiment is always surprising to me because outside of the Win32 issues (which are for sure gross) I think the default 6 and 7 themes look fantastic. Other daws look overly cluttered and mostly terrible by comparison.
Any other DAW has any theming capability at all besides some color change?
Honest question.
Not that I've found.
I speak to a lot of people in the pro audio world and the one thing that gets mentioned everytime when you mention Reaper is, how ugly the GUI is.
Reaper doesn't need any more features to apeal to the pro audio world. It's a robust code base and is incredibly stable. It would be nice at this point to perhaps think about the GUI side and perhaps start working on a new GUI that's 21c with vectors etc and a look at how to make the program more 'holistic'.
I can open Cubase or Studio One on my 7950x machine with my lovely 4K monitor and everything is perfect, reaper on the other hand, I have to work out what's the best compromise between the system Scaling and reaper's scalling and even then some things aren't easy to see or they're too big at 200% .
Cubase and Studio One seem to have no trouble with this ....
this is just one simple basic example of the GUI problems.
My comments aren't about 'knocking' reaper, they're intended to help make it a better DAW. As i said, I've been here since V1
All of this flexibility comes at the cost of organic/cohesive interface design.
No it doesn't. That's literally not how it works.
That might be so, but I have to agree with Alez156 that the direction the Default theme has been taking since v6 has been increasing in flexibility and decreasing in cohesion.
I love customization to death, outside of theming, that's why I switched to and stick with Reaper. But I'd gladly sacrifice the flexibility we've gained from v6 and on in the name of cohesion, and above all, alignment.
That said, none of this is to diminish the sheer amount of work you do in all of this.
I'd gladly sacrifice the flexibility we've gained from v6 and on in the name of cohesion, and above all, alignment.
These things are not related, in any way. I don't really follow the formation of the misunderstanding, but I assure you that it is a misunderstanding.
In any case, if you like an old theme, then use it. All themes, going back to the very beginning, are fully feature complete in even the very latest version of Reaper. The newer default themes are indeed much more adaptable to the many more uses, users, industries and situations Reaper now finds itself in and from which theme FRs are derived. This is intentional and should be expected to continue as the direction of travel. Preferences, options, customizability ...these are the Reaper way.
If this is going to mutate into a thread about the default theme, could it be a new thread? If its going to mutate into a thread of feature requests for theming, could it be a new thread (and in the FR forum probably)? As I say, having a thread about how all themes are bad, here in the place where the theme makers are, feels like a sad thing.
Few things are certain and permanent in this world, like: death, taxes, water wet, and "Reaper so ugly, doesn't look pro 😭 I want pretty DAW" threads.
🤣
There you go, a screenshot of SAW Studio to put things in perspective 😜
Fingers crossed you are working on a SAW Studio Reaper theme; It's lovely. I'm a big woodgrain fan. I also love the variety of fonts!
Can't remember since which version I started using REAPER, but it was around 2013-2014 at my uni years. Almost 10 years and it's still my main DAW.
As much as I dislike some stuff (mostly visuals), it makes it impossible for me to switch to another DAW because of all the features and the active and wholesome community it has.
But yeah, as others stated, we understand there are some limitations the software has (especially for Windows OS) that makes it look like a software from Windows XP (because of the GUI) era and not as modern and appealing for a lot of people.
Yesterday I tried a plugin for REAPER called Playtime which is REAPER's version of Session View that Ableton has. And the developer made the plugin look so nice and modern which kinda made me wonder how nice a re-design of REAPER (and stock plugins) would look to make certain GUI stuff look modern if it was possible.
Yesterday I tried a plugin for REAPER called Playtime which is REAPER's version of Session View that Ableton has. And the developer made the plugin look so nice and modern which kinda made me wonder how nice a re-design of REAPER (and stock plugins) would look to make certain GUI stuff look modern if it was possible.
Same here!
Playtime has an inspiring design!
And yes, Reaper definitely needs some reworking of UX, windows (or the ability to theming) And I can also say that this will definitely not happen.
What is the dispute about - in order to change the appearance, we need to configure in "Reaper preferences", a little bit in "theme tweak/configuration window" and finally in "theme_adjuster.lua"
this is nightmare for new users!
Oh yeah, I forgot one more thing to change "Advanced UI/ System setting" hidden deep in "Reaper preferences"
For a logical UX, it should be in one place! But developers and users are already used to it.
I completely forgot, to change the theme you need to go into another menu!
I've also been wondering if this feel of "dated", "badly designed", "confusing looking" is mostly coming from us old users - would love to know how people just starting out feel about the menus, the design choices, the Windows window look etc. and if they are actually bothered by them (if you're coming from a previous DAW, you're already exprecting things). I wonder if Cockos actually has ever done any inquiry on this and what the feedback was? I assume all the rich menus might be confusing to newcomers but look-wise and usability-wise...I'm not sure. I do remember people who have compained that their students found Reaper confusing but their own view might be influencing that a lot...
Just thinking out loud.
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Live simply so that others can simply live
I understand your curiosity Pink Wool. I myself have worked in Reason for years and as I said before I often use other DAWs. What I REALLY find the power of reaper is that, after some initial investment, it can be molded so that you have exactly the workflow you want. Almost every DAW has something unique in both appearance and functionality, but Reaper can do almost everything. Only it costs some initial investment. And as I said before......(but this will always remain a personal point and you will never achieve that everyone is satisfied). You can make Reaper look great and inspiring. No Static appearance or only changing some color schemes but deep customizability of the entire appearance.
In that respect I have to agree with WT (even though I don't always agree with him ;o) ) that these are sometimes endless discussions that ultimately lead nowhere.
Nothing wrong with the DAW in the left corner ;o)
Function Reaper = Reaper
If else Return
End
Last edited by Touristkiller; 08-11-2024 at 01:25 PM.
Just wanted to add that yeah, theming is amazing! Makes Reaper the best out there!
Would I still want Reaper to go full vector graphics and "modern" design (I'll avoid saying flat! )? Yes! I don't think these things exclude each other.
Is that the topic? Do all the modding abilities hurt Reaper's defaults? Is Reaper too customizable? I personally don't see it that way. Should something be done about the defaults? Well, that was my question. How do newcomers feel about the default theme, menus, scripts etc.? I remember my friend, who hadn't really used DAW's before on their own, couldn't really care less how Reaper looked when I installed it on their computer! Made me rethink my "obsessions"!
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Live simply so that others can simply live
As i said before there's a reason all other daw's don't have themeing.
Most people just want to get on with their work and have a consistant/Holistic GUI on a variety of monitor resolutions etc.
Most of you are commenting as long term Reaper users who obviously love to tweak things, most people I come across don't want to tweak and use scripts and theme ajusters. As i Said abouve the number 1 thing I hear when mentioning Reaper in any Audio/DAw/computer circle is the GUI, that's just a fact , it's not an opinion.
So there is an issue that either can be addressed or not.
Reaper(2006) is now quite a mature DAW compared to Studio One(2009) and Bitwig(2014) for example, and look how far they've come in regards to how many people use the programs in a much shorter time. I see Studio One being used in a lot of pro studios and you tube influencers these days.
I'm sure this is partly to do with their ease of use for a new user due to the GUI/Workflow.
All DAW's take from each other, it's the way it's always been, surely reaper can look at the best bit's of other DAW's and take on board things like Vector graphics or off loading to the GPU.
i also think that designing by commitee is a bad idea, I equate it to mixing by commitee. let one person or a small team follow an idea through without watering it down.
Reaper is not going to remove theming, and if it did you wouldn't gain anything. But sure, if that's what you want to discuss then I'll move this to the FR forum.
I don't think anyone wants to remove any of REAPER's current features (themes etc.). I think everyone wants a better default configuration.
I tried REAPER a couple times many years ago and then uninstalled it because it was way too ugly and I didn't like the default mouse modifiers.
The only reason I tried it a 3rd time (which was the charm) was because it was frequently hailed as an amazing DAW in forums and blog posts and such. I had to see why it was considered so powerful.
I found out pretty quickly. I was first impressed by batch conversion. Then I just kept getting more impressed as I discovered what was possible. Long story short, I went from impressed to addicted.
I think the root of the issue here is that without more attractive defaults, people miss out on discovering the gem that is REAPER. Attractive defaults would be a great place to start addressing this issue. A great place to end would be vector graphics and a play cursor that's not choppy.
Don't take it from me. Read comments on The Reapertips Theme (thanks b0se and Alez156). People will let you know they wouldn't have otherwise been using REAPER today.
I'm personally very happy with REAPER as it is, but that's because I poured an unholy number of hours into making it mine. Most people can't/won't do that.
Well, for me, Reaper is great. But if I had a wish fulfilled it would be parameter controls with resizable, different styles of knobs and a track FX chain just like Blue Cat Patchwork, with multiple parallel chaining built right in. Until this happens, I make do with third-party and scripted functions.
It's nice to have several themes to choose from while working as I get tired of the same thing constantly.
Apart from appearance... a wise man once said...
"This isn't a sales pitch. I really believe that Reaper is hands down the best composing and editing DAW out there. It's just different enough from the others, that a lot of people try it and just go back to their previous DAW. The learning curve is surprisingly steep for such a simple program.
But the beauty of it is that once you get past that initial step, you're golden. It's fast. Simple. And you're hooked. I know I am. Editing in any other DAW (not mentioning names) is brutal for me now.
Reaper's graphics use the Win32 API and the theme-ability of its many elements varies from none to partial. That's always been the case, and like everything else completely openly shared, so there's no need for your suspicion to creep.
Could I ask you to tread slightly more gently with the 'all theming is pointless' vibe if you choose to do it here in the theming forum please? There are people here doing lots of free work for joy and creative satisfaction, and there's nothing to be gained but plenty to be lost from saying they shouldn't bother.
I didn't say it's pointless for people to create themes, just that it ends up being another mud pie to look at. That's my opinion, I think Reaper has always looked terrible not matter which theme I switch to.
I think that Reaper succeeds as being the finest DAW despite it's god awful presentation. Imagine it's popularity and uptake if it didn't have a face like a plasterers radio!
Also, this thread was not a FR, it was commentary on Reapers GUI. But quickly tossing it into the FR quicksand seems like a decent way to make it quietly dissappear.
i just don't get all the moaning. It's software. It looks fine. We all use loads of software that looks vastly worse. Some better too, i'm sure. But everything is there, nothing is too difficult to find, and if it is, you can make your own toolbar. You can change the widths and alignments really easily now. You can change the colors to literally anything, almost anywhere.
The only gripe i have about looks is the default plugins, but you know... they're still absolutely, perfectly useable.
Do something more productive than whining about how software looks. Like... make music?
i just don't get all the moaning. It's software. It looks fine. We all use loads of software that looks vastly worse. Some better too, i'm sure. But everything is there, nothing is too difficult to find, and if it is, you can make your own toolbar. You can change the widths and alignments really easily now. You can change the colors to literally anything, almost anywhere.
The only gripe i have about looks is the default plugins, but you know... they're still absolutely, perfectly useable.
Do something more productive than whining about how software looks. Like... make music?
It is software, but it is also an experience. There are degrees to moaning... like moaning about the user experience, and then moaning about users moaning about the user experience. When did whining and making music become mutually exclusive?
Theme - complete change?
Reaper isn't a DAW for the looks (surely!) but for everything else, it pretty much is top-of-the-line! You either learn to live with it or you find another DAW (because designing everything from the ground up is most likely NEVER going to happen). 🤔
Linear Mode
