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Reaper: the $60 DAW That Does Nearly Everything, Once You Set It Up

An unlimited-feature evaluation, a 20MB installer, a fully scriptable interface — and a default look that puts people off before they find out any of that.

6 min read

Reaper is the DAW that people recommend in a slightly apologetic tone and then never stop using. It costs $60 for a personal/small-business licence, the installer is about 20MB, it runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and the evaluation version is fully functional with no feature limits and no nag beyond a splash screen.

Its reputation problem is entirely the first hour. Out of the box it looks grey and unfamiliar, and it does not hand you a template and a loop browser. Thirty minutes of setup fixes that permanently.

Skills Factory’s thirteen-minute tour — enough to be productive.

Install and the six settings to change first

Download from reaper.fm. Then open Options → Preferences and do these:

1. Audio device. Audio → Device. On Windows choose ASIO if your interface has a driver, WASAPI otherwise — not DirectSound. On macOS it is CoreAudio and there is nothing to decide. Set the block size to 256 samples to start; lower it later if you need lower latency for live playing.

2. Turn on auto-crossfades and a sensible default. Project → Media Item Defaults. If you are editing dialogue or long recordings, auto-crossfade on item edges saves you from clicks forever.

3. Set a media path. Project → Media. By default Reaper can record into the same folder as the project, which is what you want — check that “copy imported media to project directory” is on so a project folder is self-contained.

4. Theme. Reaper’s default theme is functional and plain. The built-in alternatives are under Options → Themes, and the community ones (search for “Reaper theme”; several excellent free ones exist) make it look like a modern DAW. This single change accounts for most of the first-impression problem.

5. Enable the FX browser’s VST paths. Plug-ins → VST, add your plugin folders, and hit Re-scan. Reaper will not find your plugins unless you tell it where they are.

6. Editing Behavior → Mouse Modifiers — don’t change anything yet, but know this page exists. Every mouse gesture in Reaper is remappable here, and it is the reason power users are so fast.

The mental model: everything is a track, every track is a bus

This is the thing that makes Reaper different, and it is worth getting straight before you build anything.

In most DAWs, audio tracks, MIDI tracks, instrument tracks, buses and folders are different kinds of object with different capabilities. In Reaper they are all the same object.

A track can:

  • hold audio items and MIDI items simultaneously
  • host instruments and effects in the same chain
  • have any number of channels (not just mono/stereo — up to 128)
  • contain other tracks (a folder), which automatically makes it a bus
  • send to and receive from any other track

Consequences worth knowing immediately:

A folder track is a bus. Drag tracks under another track and indent them; the parent sums them. There is no separate “create bus” step.

Routing is a matrix. View → Routing Matrix shows every track against every track; click a cell to create a send. For anything beyond a simple mix — parallel compression, multiple reverb buses, a separate monitor mix, multichannel output — this is far faster than hunting through per-track menus.

Channel counts above two are normal. Right-click a track’s channel count and set it to 4, 8, 16. This is why Reaper is the standard tool for ambisonics, surround and multichannel installation audio: an 8-channel or 16-channel track is not a special mode, it is just a number.

The ten things to learn, in order

  1. Ctrl/Cmd-T — new track. Ctrl-Shift-T opens track templates.
  2. Record arm the button on the track, pick your input from the track’s input selector, press R.
  3. S splits items at the edit cursor. This is the edit you will do most.
  4. Drag item edges to trim; drag the top corners for fades; drag the top middle for item volume.
  5. Ctrl-drag duplicates an item. Alt-drag moves without snapping.
  6. The FX button on a track opens the chain. Reaper’s own ReaPlugs (ReaEQ, ReaComp, ReaGate, ReaVerbate, ReaXcomp) are plain-looking and genuinely good — ReaEQ and ReaXcomp in particular are professional tools.
  7. Ctrl-Alt-click a parameter in any plugin to create an automation envelope for it. Press Alt on a track’s envelope button to see all envelopes.
  8. Double-click a MIDI item to open the piano roll. Reaper’s MIDI editor is capable and unloved; it will do the job.
  9. Ctrl-Alt-R renders. Learn the render dialogue early — it is the best in any DAW, with queued renders, stems, regions and multiple formats in one pass.
  10. ? opens the actions list. Search it by name for anything. This is how you discover features.

The actions list is the real feature

Press ? and search. Every single thing Reaper can do is an action with a searchable name, and every action can be bound to a key, a MIDI message, an OSC message or a toolbar button.

This matters more than it sounds for three reasons:

You can build your own workflow. If you do a particular five-step edit constantly, record it as a custom action (a macro) and bind it to one key.

It is scriptable. Reaper exposes its entire API to Lua, EEL and Python. A script is a text file you drop in a folder and it appears in the actions list. ReaPack is the community package manager for these, and the ecosystem — SWS Extensions, ReaImGui-based tools, hundreds of scripts — is the single biggest practical advantage Reaper has.

It responds to OSC and MIDI on any action. Which is why Reaper turns up in installations and theatre: you can drive the whole application from a Max patch, a QLab cue, a Raspberry Pi, or a show control system, without plugins.

Why installation and sound-design people choose it

  • Arbitrary channel counts for ambisonic and multichannel work, with no special mode
  • Scriptable and OSC-controllable, so it can be part of a system rather than the centre of one
  • Handles very long files and very many tracks without complaint — it is the standard tool for long-form field recording and dialogue editing for a reason
  • Runs on Linux, which matters for permanent installations
  • Portable install, so you can run it from a USB drive on a venue machine
  • $60, which is the difference between licensing one machine and licensing the three in the installation

What it is genuinely worse at

Beat-making and loop-based production. There is no session view, no clip launching, and the stock loop/sample browsing is weak. If your workflow is Ableton’s, Reaper will feel like fighting.

Stock instruments. There are essentially none. Reaper ships effects, not synths. Budget for plugins — though the free ecosystem (Vital, Surge XT, Decent Sampler) is excellent now.

Notation. Don’t.

The out-of-box aesthetic, already covered. Fix it in five minutes and stop thinking about it.

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