Let me introduce myself: I'm Mike, playing keyboards for about 35 years or so, with two time a pause of about 5 years. I shall not bother you guys with reasons for that pause. I play Korg Pa 800, an old but damn good workstation to me. Not in a band but at home, playing for my wife, some friends and myself. To record my own work I use a Yamaha AW1600 Digital Recorder. Old stuff, again, but to me it works fine. For doing rough edits I tend to use Audacity for editing or converting sounds or samples (which I can use back again in my Pa 800 to create my own sounds). As I told: old stuff but it works fine for me, I'm not interested in getting the newest audio-stuff all the time.
After wandering around, looking for good DAW's to use on my MacBook Air I came across Reaper. At first I was astonished, looked hard to me. I was just looking for a DAW which I can use as Midisequencer butit seems I found one. Finally. After months of downloading, trying, trashing several DAWs like Pro Tools, MuLab, Traction etcetera etcetera.
I have to admit Reaper has a steep learning curve. I have to admit I haven't used any DAW's seriously past years so
any DAW shall have a steep learning curve to me. But hey, I'm not to old to keep on learning!
After a few days I managed to finalize a song I play myself. First I've recorded everything on my AW1600 and exported those separate tracks to my MacBook. I imported these in Reaper, fiddled around, experimented with everything and at least after trying I rendered a song in Reaper. Still interested? Listen at
https://soundcloud.com/user-69195811...nd-my-way-home and don't hesitate to review it, share your thoughts and suggestions.
I like Reaper, it could be the DAW I'm looking for for a long time, but there are still wishes. Ie the UI: I know I can tweak myself a lot, I know I an find a lot of themes for Reaper but I'm still looking for a theme which mimics the mix of both my Pa 800 and my AW 1600. The window colors in light aluminum of my AW1600, including the faders of that awesome machine but with buttons and textface which are the same as on my PA 800. Somebody who can help me make that?