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Audacity has made some it's-about-time-they-finally-did-that improvements...

When you consider that Reaper and Cakewalk are free, what advantage does Audacity have to keep anyone from jumping over to those platforms? I haven't really used it except as a kid to record with a PC mic, is there something I'm missing?

harrisonreed wrote: ↑Sun Nov 14, 2021 2:51 pm When you consider that Reaper and Cakewalk are free, what advantage does Audacity have to keep anyone from jumping over to those platforms? I haven't really used it except as a kid to record with a PC mic, is there something I'm missing?

When you consider that Audacity is free what advantage do Reaper and Cakewalk have to keep anyone from jumping over to that platform? I haven't really used Cakewalk except when it was a commercial product and it turned out to be inadequate for my purposes. Is there something I'm missing?

If you are fine with what you are using, keep using it!

My mention of Audacity news here is not a suggestion that anyone needs to jump.

robcat2075 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 2:27 pm

harrisonreed wrote: ↑Sun Nov 14, 2021 2:51 pm When you consider that Reaper and Cakewalk are free, what advantage does Audacity have to keep anyone from jumping over to those platforms? I haven't really used it except as a kid to record with a PC mic, is there something I'm missing?

When you consider that Audacity is free what advantage do Reaper and Cakewalk have to keep anyone from jumping over to that platform? I haven't really used Cakewalk except when it was a commercial product and it turned out to be inadequate for my purposes. Is there something I'm missing?

If you are fine with what you are using, keep using it!

My mention of Audacity news here is not a suggestion that anyone needs to jump.

Reaper comes with about 300 plugins, built in tempo mapping, ARA plugin integration, 32/64 bit plugin bridging, the ability to switch items' timebase between beat and time (this means that you can decide whether stretching the grid stretches items with the grid, or changes the grid around items without stretching them), and can even edit video (syncing audio to video during audio editing).

Audacity doesn't do any of that, or much of anything at all. I replied because your first post mentioned the "it's about time they finally did that" updates, so I thought you would want to know about a different option that you wouldn't have had to wait 20 years to gain the ability to drag audio clips around if you jumped ship for it.

I was genuinely trying to give you a good idea, not trying to be mean.

Then let me ask the opposite question.

I don't do anything fancy with Audacity. I record a performance and edit it into pieces, record a practice session for instant playback, once in a while do a multitrack.

Clearly Reaper has more features, but would it be worth the effort to get past the learning curve?

I did look into it some years back when I was trying to get a decent midi piano sound for a performance, but back then people told me the latency would be too much, I'd need to move to Ableton Live for live performance, and that isn't free.

I used audacity for years before finally getting reaper. It's just an easier all around way to simply edit audio without being a full fledged "workstation." I'll still use it if I want to apply a simple thing to a file, like compression or noise suppression.

Reaper is definitely better at the big boy stuff, which is why I have it now.

timothy42b wrote: ↑Thu Nov 25, 2021 6:54 am Then let me ask the opposite question.

I don't do anything fancy with Audacity. I record a performance and edit it into pieces, record a practice session for instant playback, once in a while do a multitrack.

Clearly Reaper has more features, but would it be worth the effort to get past the learning curve?

I did look into it some years back when I was trying to get a decent midi piano sound for a performance, but back then people told me the latency would be too much, I'd need to move to Ableton Live for live performance, and that isn't free.

Sure, it's still easier if you take ten or so minutes to set up a template for the work you want to do. Say you only want to edit a podcast, or even simpler, you only want to hit a record button when the program loads and record burps or whatever -- you can create a template that does that. It can be as simple, or as insanely complex as you need it to be. And you always had the ability to drag items around, slice/dice and do ripple editing without having to switch to some other mode. Crossfades are built in and intuitive. Watching the Audacity video, with the mode switching etc, actually seems like Audicity is more difficult to do simple edits with, even with the new update.

If you can click on a timeline, arm a track, and find the record button, then you can use Reaper.

And if you ever wanted to do more than that, then there is nothing stopping you from adding effects chains onto a track, learning to do takes/punches, learning tempo mapping, or whatever else you dreamed of.

The latency on my setup is 12ms, and that's with a 10gb sound library and RAM insensitive plugins running, fwiw. My computer is not great.