This is addressed to somewhat experienced users who worked with both softwares:
What made you choose one over the other on the long run?
I have been with Reaper for quite some time but considering mixing and mastering my next project in Ardour. Not sure if it’s worth putting in the time to learn it from the ground up.
Please don’t make this about free vs. paid software.
Thank you!
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I’m using Ardour on a daily basis and looked into Reaper for a while. Reaper has some very nice stuff IMO:
- the js plugins and the ease of creating those
- built in oversampling for plugins who don’t support it but should
- probably more stuff that i can’t recall right now
I think Reaper is a great DAW, however (ymmv) i find it more complicated in almost every aspect. I have used Cubase, FL Studio, Nuendo, Qtraktor, Ableton and bitwig in the past and started using Ardour a year ago. Everything was very easy to understand, the only time i had to read the manual was when I wanted to integrate a midi controller that had no bindings avaible. The Mixer is great. It’s intuitive, has a good UI and many features like pre and post fader plugins. Routing is super easy for me.
The only thing that’s a bit clunky is programming midi. At least for me.
Reaper on the other did not had such a welcoming beginner expierence for me. I looked into it a few months ago despite being very satisfied with Ardour (because of fomo i guess), and it was not that easy to set up a project in the way i wanted to. Maybe i was to much into the Ardour workflow by then, dunno. But my final verdict was “Looks nice but I pass”.
Hope this is of any help to you.
Valuable insights. Thank you.
I gave Ardour an hour today. It doesn’t come across as polished looking as Reaper but has everything layed out in a very straight forward fashion. I like that a lot. I will mix my next project there and see…
Good luck! Would really appreciate an update when you’re done.
Thank you. Will do.
I really like it! When I started out in Reaper I watched lots of tutorials because I felt overwhelmed by all the stuff you can tweak. In Ardour everything feels much more down to earth, less polished, very straight forward. I didn’t miss anything and will definitely keep working there. Maybe switch over to Reaper in a few months or so…
This track is my first result in Ardour:
Thanks for letting me know! So it’s not worth it for me to invest more time to get familiar with Reaper, is it?
Nice work, ain’t exactly my jam, but I can dig the sound. Especially when the ultra warm bass comes in… i really need a tape machine lol.
You mention that you used LSP Plugins for mixing and mastering? What’s your take on them? To me they seem very professional and well made, but I’m not confident enough to trust my judgements.
Anyway, here is a recent song from me (you can also find me on bandcamp but I haven’t got around to upload my newest stuff there): https://open.spotify.com/track/4mqpCr5l65NN1flCevEjdv
I think it comes down to how much you want to live in your DAW. If you work with MIDI too and want eye candy, Reaper probably has the edge. Plus their stock plugins are great. I also think the tutorials for Reaper are excellent! My use case is mixing & mastering only, so I don’t need a lot of what Reaper has to offer. The fact that Ardour is open software plays a big role for me too.
Regarding LSP plugins: I was blown away! Very deep, clean UI, okay documentation, LV2 and for free??? I use their stereo EQ, m/s EQ, and compressor. Plus, still being developed. They just released new plugins and fixed bugs. I am 100 % happy with them.
I’ve tried Reaper here and there and the workflow seemed a bit intimidating to work around. I’ve gotten so comfortable working in Ardour over the past few years and recent major updates have done a lot to improve things and add useful tools. Doesn’t have as polished of a feel overall compared to Reaper but its quite cohesive.
I started with ardour but got so frustrated with it randomly crashing and losing work that I gave up with it. It’s pretty solid if you don’t have this issue. Reaper is another level though imo, it can be hard to get used to but it’s so powerful with customisation, built-in plugins, and the actions that I would never go back to anything else if I wanted to use a linear daw again.
Roughly when was your Ardour experience? Maybe things have change since then? But hey, if you’re happy with Reaper, why not stick with it, right?
It was a few years ago so it could well have changed. That said, I tried it again recently when they released the clip launcher and it crashed within a couple of minutes when adding vital to a track. I think that was reported and has probably been fixed but the remaining lack of recovery doesn’t give me confidence.
I also reported the crashes and spent lots of time on IRC trying to find a solution when I was trying to use it but the ultimate response was that it was 3rd party vsts (and I believe my bug reports were never addressed) so I suspect nothing much has changed with it in that area. I never experienced the same thing in renoise, reaper or bitwig so I know which one I won’t be using.
I mainly use Bitwig and hardware now so it’s not really relevant to me but I haven’t had great experiences with ardour and I consider losing work with no recovery at all to be pretty bad.
understandable. and glad you found suitable alternatives!
