A new project: multi-track audio editing (2005) | Hacker News Reader

A new project: multi-track audio editing (2005)

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89 pointspmarin47 comments

Wow.

The title looks like a link to a toy project. But this is actually the origins of REAPER!!!

My favorite DAW. Feature rich, original, not bloated, cross platform and reasonably affordable. Pretty inspiring to see its early stages and how it is very successful now. Despite the current version looking way cooler, some early UI elements still recognizable.

Yeah, took me a while to figure that out. Interesting to see that it took 15 years to get where he is today.

I've never tried reaper, how does it compare to DAWs like abelton live, waveform pro (the old Mackie Traction) and bitwig (which is the go to commercial DAW for Linux users)

It's really excellent - I previously used Cubase and Ableton.

Interesting. How are the included effects and instruments?

Is there a single version or different tiers like abelton, where you get almost no instruments with the cheapest tiers?

Reaper has a plethora of built-in effects and you can script your own in JS or Python or EEL2. You'd have to use third-party synthesizers though.

That said, the GUIs of said effects are basic, but I personally still find them useful.

There is no difference between the evaluation, non-commercial and commercial tiers.

I'd say, give it a try, the days when Reaper was a niche DAW are way in the past. Especially if you like the idea of being able to customize every corner of your DAW, Reaper is the no-brainer choice.

Nitpick: the JSFX audio effects you're referring to are scripted in EEL2. Reaper itself can be scripted with Python, Lua and EEL2 (see http://reaper.fm/sdk/reascript/reascript.php). It also has a C plugin API.

Unfortunately you’ve just hit upon one of the biggest arguments used against Reaper — it has a pretty limited set of good effects and only a couple “instruments” like a very barebones synth that I would never use.

But that’s not why Reaper users love Reaper. It’s in its performance, flexibility, customization, etc. In another league as far as these things go. But you get almost nothing for free as far as instruments.

I’m fine with this and wished it weren’t a deterrent for folks like it often is. The best effects and instruments are not baked into any DAW, they’re the ones you have as VSTs that are portable to whatever DAW you want.

Reaper is a fraction of the cost of Ableton. The only other “tier” is that for just $60 they’ll sell you Reaper with a personal use license only. No limitations or changes in the software itself.

RE: Ableton -- does Reaper have anything like the clips-triggering interface that people interested in DAW-as-loop-instrument often use Ableton Live for?

No nothing like that in my experience, it’s more traditional linear.

Funny thing, I've seen comments saying Caustic is ‘Reaper for phones’. Can't say why, though.

I actually had to Google search just to confirm it is not a coincidence.

Unfortunately, I can't say much about other DAWs as Reaper was pretty much what my budget allowed, and that was my first (and last) paid full featured DAW. There were not much free alternatives at the time. LMMS wasn't very stable, and hard to figure out (it might be better now). What I previously used was Synthfont (much cheaper freemium and more minimal and unlike common DAWs, but gets my job done) + Sekaiju opensource MIDI editor. My workflow was to use a scoring program (MuseScore), export the MIDI, tweak the MIDI in the DAW and use third party instruments/effects.

But I remember that the Reaper downloads were less than 20MB. It didn't bundle with many VSTs or samples, but I preferred that as I felt other DAWs are bundling a lot of stuff that you probably won't need to justify higher prices. Especially since my main genre back then was orchestral music and most bundled sounds appear to be for dance music. Almost all sounds I used are third party VSTs and samples (I did use Reaper's reverb). I never noticed any lag on my 2008 Thinkpad or my 2013 MacBook Air.

I'm not an active user now, since I spend more time coding (which may have killed my "right brain"...).

Just to add. New versions often showcase cool useful features, hence made me say it is original (sorry this might sound subjective without trying other paid DAWs).

"Interesting to see that it took 15 years to get where he is today."

If I had started it in 2000 it would've taken 20 years to get to where it is (OK fine, would be) today...

Well, live and bitwig are both made partially by the same people so you could basically talk about them workflow wise as the same. They are a bit more oriented towards live performances than other DAWs which is evident by the clip view which is used to trigger and schedule clips (samples, midi or effects automation).

Reaper is much more traditional as in it has a playlist where you can drag midi patterns and audio clips around in the main time line and throw stuff on the effect rack. It's very comparable to other DAWs like Cubase, Logic and Studio One for example. Main difference in those are basically some very specific functionality and how they're used in that DAW and what effects and plugins the software comes bundled with.

Reaper is especially geared towards tracking audio into the DAW and handles multitrack recording better and more robustly than my own personal choice of DAW, FL Studio, does.

Reaper also comes with a VST bundle called ReaPlugs which is actually free to download and use with any other DAW as well and one of the plugins provided is a JS interpreter where you can create your own scripted audio effects.

Long story short, it's a real proper good DAW that ticks all the boxes and is just as good (if not better) than any other DAW as long as your needs align with what Reaper has to offer. At it's price, it's the best value and despite its price, its not cheaping out on features.

I recently finally installed a DAW called Caustic 3 on my Android phone, which move I was putting off for quite a while, for lame reasons. I now consider that time to be my wasted years. The app is worth its toy price just in shock and awe at how well it works on a phone. It has limitations, but—pshaw!—it's still a ‘workstation’ quite able to punch up to the big boys, only on the phone—meaning I don't have to prop myself up at the table.

The demo is fully functional apart from saving files or exporting the song—but it saves the project automatically between sessions.

It's mostly for electronic music, with nine synths available apart from the sample-based one. However, with the sample-synth you can record some audio or load a soundfont, or throw samples into the beatbox. There's even an audio editor. But I'm guessing that phone memory might pose a problem for using long audio tracks.

The app is made entirely by one guy. Afaik SDL is used for the GUI and input, which leads to not only it being available on iOS too, but also on Windows and Mac (and working in Wine)—where it's completely free.

This vid shows the gist of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q86OrU-E7RU (and other ones in the channel explain the rest).

IIRC, caustic was developed by a former game dev, and as such he worked hard to make it efficient and look good on all kinda of devices.

For a while it was the most expensive app I had on my phone, and I bought it only to support the developer.

There was an iOS port last time I checked, but maybe he decided to pull it?

I guess my writing is a bit convoluted: the app is indeed on iOS, nothing is pulled.

It looks nice but from a quick skim through the video I didn't see anything special that sets it apart from other DAW's. Would you care to elaborate on why it's so special?

Well, for starters afaik ‘other DAWs’ is not a large category on phones, at least on Android. And with how producers love monitors of 30" or more, I'd guess that it's not a realistic option. But no, this toy-looking app, whose knobs practically invite me to fiddle with them, is laid out great for a small screen. (Though not for very fat fingers.)

I've come to think that I'll need to pirate FL Studio Mobile just to take a gawk at how its interface feels in practice and to compare, then throw it away. Still, I've seen opinions that Caustic beats FL.

Yeah, I thought Caustic was better to use and sounded better than FL Studio Mobile, in my limited testing!

From skimming that video, I don't think that's a DAW, in the normal sense? Can you use it to track guitars, vocals etc?

I don't know if there's a term specifically for DAWs made mostly for production of electronic music. Caustic is not a ‘multitrack recorder’, no. As I mentioned above, you could try laying out tracks in it, but it would be awkward. Now, short recorded samples—that is very possible, the app even has a vocoder.

Caustic does perform well, it's probably the best Android music making app I've seen in terms of both performance and features.

That said, compared to what is available on iOS, it's pretty basic (sorry to turn this into iOS vs Android, not my intention but just putting some info out there for people interested in this area).

On iPhone and iPad, there are fully fledged DAWs (Cubasis, Auria, Garageband) with many of the features of desktop ones if that's your thing (personally I find this kind of software better suited to mouse, keyboard and large screen); there are "groovebox" apps in a similar space to Caustic but with much more powerful sound engines (e.g. Korg Gadget); and a huge ecosystem of amazing plugin synths and effects which can be wired together using hosts such as AUM (or one of the aforementioned DAWs).

While music making on iOS does have limitations compared to desktop (e.g. due to iOS restrictions) and can be frustrating sometimes, if you can find a workflow that works for you, it's incredibly fun and for me provides a great experience somewhere in between "jamming" with physical hardware (a touch screen is preferable to a mouse when tweaking knobs etc), and the flexibility and convenience of using a computer. If anyone is interested in mobile music making, iOS is the platform to go for - a base model iPad will open up a whole world of cheap, fun, awesome-sounding music making.

The audio development situation on Android has improved somewhat since they introduced a new API called Oboe, and low latency audio is now possible on modern devices, but there is so much variation from device to device, and in general you can't do anywhere near as much processing compared to even an old iOS device without encountering crackling etc, so it's unlikely IMO that Android will catch up to iOS for music making any time soon (source: I do cross-platform mobile music app development).

Mostly this is because iOS is built on top of the foundations of MacOS, which has a long history of pro audio use; and also because the iOS device landscape is much more tightly controlled; but also Apple have made quite a lot of effort to provide foundations for a music making ecosystem on iOS (e.g. Inter-app Audio and AUv3).

Thanks for this detailed reply. It so happens that I just bought an iPad for the purpose of jamming and learning how to use synths, so I'm very excited to try out some of the apps you mentioned.

Can you recommend where to start? I.e a particular app that lets you compose, jam, and tweak sounds, or a sampler, or just a particular tutorial.

Yeah absolutely! I was actually just thinking I should write a blog post or something about this topic some time, as I often find myself trying to explain how to get started with mobile music making to people… perhaps this comment can be v0.1 of that post ;)

To some extent, I’d say it depends on what kind of music you want to make, and how you want to approach making it. I’d recommend different starting points to someone who wanted to primarily “arrange” songs in a somewhat traditional fashion, perhaps recording in some live instruments and adding some synths and effects and drum loops etc.; vs. someone wanting to make electronic/experimental music in a more freeform “jamming” approach; vs. someone primarily interested in playing synths live with a keyboard. Personally I’m more interested in the electronic jamming approach, but I’ll try to comment on the approaches too, I’m just not an expert there.

If you’re interested in arranging songs and perhaps recording some live instruments, you probably want something similar to a “DAW” (Desktop Audio Workstation, terminology for desktop software such as Cubase or Logic). Software like this presents your song as a timeline, usually with time on the x axis and multiple tracks of recorded audio or MIDI notes on the y axis, so you can see the overall arrangement and easily create e.g. a verse/chorus structure (this kind of thing: https://www.audiotechnology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2...).

This will let you record in audio from a microphone (you can use the one on the device, or you can connect an existing audio interface via USB with the right adapter, or you can buy specialist iOS microphones), edit it, add effects to it etc., and then let you add in other tracks with synths etc. with notes usually arranged in blocks on a “piano roll” (https://sevish.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/19-edo-c-maj.p... then you can structure your song by moving these blocks around and editing them.

Garageband is actually a great starting point here – it’s free with every iOS device, and has a load of built-in synths, loops and effects, and is pretty easy to use. If you want to get more serious, I think Cubasis and Auria are the two main contenders on iOS. Personally, I have to say I find this kind of software a bit fiddly to use on an iPad, especially if you don’t have a pencil. It’s the kind of thing that to me benefits from having a mouse for more accurate editing and a big screen. That said, a lot of people do happily make music like this on an iPad, and if you do want to go this route, you can use a lot of the other awesome plugin synths and effects available for the iPad inside your chosen app, so it’s pretty flexible.

If you’re interested in something a little less traditional and more electronic focussed, but pretty straightforward to use, I think “groovebox” type apps are great. These apps typically contain a bunch of synths and effects, and let you create multiple tracks with loops on them, sometimes using a piano roll, sometimes using a “step sequencer” (where you have 16 steps you can turn on or off, each step representing 1/4 of a beat). The main difference between these and the more “DAW-like” apps, is that they tend not to have such a traditional way of arranging songs on a timeline - it’s often more about playing it somewhat live. They also tend to be closed ecosystems, in that you can only use the synths and effects provided with the app. The advantage here is that they tend to be cohesively designed, and immediately gratifying.

For me, the best app on iOS for this is Korg Gadget. It comes with a big selection of synths and effects, all of which sound great and strike a nice balance between simplicity and still being able to tweak the sounds in interesting ways. There are also a bunch more synths/effects you can buy in app, but there is plenty to get started with in the basic version. It’s pretty easy to use, and it sounds great. It’s not that cheap though, although they do sometimes have sales on it, and there is a free “LE” version you can download to try it out.

Some other apps that might be of interest in this area include Auxy (which is simpler than Gadget, very elegantly designed, but a little bit basic for me - but free to try), Ampify Groovebox (probably a bit easier to use than Gadget, but more limited, again you can try it out for free), and NanoStudio 2 (which is maybe a bit closer to a DAW than a groovebox, it’s somewhere in between). If you’re interested in hip hop style music making (which is more sample based), you might find Akai iMPC Pro or Beatmaker 3 interesting - these are more focussed on a classic sampler-type workflow.

Finally, there’s the more free-form approach of using individual synth and effect apps. There are tonnes of these, including from some of the big names in the music industry (Korg, Eventide, Moog). You can use the apps on their own, if you just want to play with one sound at a time (e.g. hooking up a keyboard and playing with other instruments, or running a guitar through an effect), but where it gets really interesting for me is that Apple added a technology called “Audio Units” (more commonly referred to as AUv3) to iOS a few years ago, which allows synths and effects supporting this standard to be used as plugins inside other apps.

This means that you can hook up e.g. a synth by Moog to an effect by Eventide, and then add a drum machine by Korg on another track, etc. You can do this inside most of the DAW apps I already mentioned (and in Nanosutdio, I believe), so you can use these plugins to arrange songs traditionally; but another kind of workflow has emerged on iOS which is much more freeform, primarily using an app called AUM. AUM can host Audio Unit apps, but has no concept of a traditional timeline. Instead, it can host Audio Units which generate MIDI note data instead of sound, then route this note data to synths, which are then routed through effects. You can then just “jam” in real time and record the results – it’s a workflow much more analogous to using hardware sequencers and synths, and is something quite unique that has emerged as a popular way to make music on iOS.

I actually recorded a video recently for someone showing a quick jam session in AUM to explain the concept better, so check that out if you are interested, it should explain it better than I can in words :) https://www.dropbox.com/s/6xq0fw37k4lx8km/AUM.mp4?dl=0. If you are interested in this way of working, hit me up for recommendations on specific apps and effects.

One last thing to mention is the weird and wonderful apps that don’t quite fit in any of these categories. The fairly low barrier to entry to iOS development, the nature of the touch screen, and the low price point of most apps has created a really exciting scene of developers creating some really crazy apps. Some of these are just nice uses of the touch screen, some of them are fun toys, some of them are crazy modular synthesis systems. A few apps to check out if this intrigues you: Figure is a really fun way to make simple electronic loops. Samplr is one of my favourite touch screen experiences for playing with samples. Drambo is an insanely flexible modular synth/sequencer (there’s also MiRack, which is a port of a desktop app called VCV Rack, if you are interested in modular). Fractal Bits is a weird and wonderful glitch synth. There are so many great apps out there, the only problem is it’s addictive! There’s a good forum at forum.audiob.us if you want to delve deeper.

Sorry, this post is rather long - I hope it doesn’t break any etiquette rules here.

TL;DR: Garageband is free, great way to get started with fairly traditional music making on iOS. Gadget is king of the groove boxes but its worth checking out a few apps as they tend to have free "lite" versions. If you want to get into the world of freeform music making, AUM is the place to start. Have fun and feel free to ask questions here or via Twitter/whatever!

This is great, your long answer is much appreciated!

Definitely a lot to digest, so I look forward to trying out some apps and workflows. I'm happy to connect via twitter, and if you need a beta tester for any eventual blogpost, then I'm more than glad to help out.

I think a focus on just one style makes sense. For me it's definitely more in the groovebox category, even if there is still multiple aspects to it. I think there are always the 2 topics of "how do I make nice sounds" and "how do I build that up into good tunes/patterns/songs". Maybe drums could even be considered a separate topic.

Personally I also want to get to grips with FM synths. For the composition part I have to say I tried and failed at trackers (renoise), which made me conclude I needed something more visually intuitive, and tacticle when it comes to manipulating the parameters. I'm eager to see how well a touchscreen works for the latter.

By the way, if you know of any place to hire good online tutors, I would like to know about it!

Got ya. I think Gadget sounds ideal for you, it’s really visual and quite straightforward to use, but has loads of different synths (including a phase modulation one, which is similar to FM). Maybe check out Gadget LE and see how you get on with it!

Oh, and no idea about tutors but the Audiobus forum seems pretty friendly so I’m sure people would welcome questions. There are probably tonnes of tutorials on YouTube too.

Good stuff, -- Please do a blog post or few.

On top of tomduncalf's excellent answer, I'd recommend reading through the Audiobus forums [1] which, rather than being Audiobus specific, have just become the place where iOS music makers and devs hang out. And as someone who makes music entirely on an iPad with no external hardware, I'd recommend Nanostudio 2 [2] - it has some limitations (like no audio tracks, and some automation restrictions) but it's my favourite iOS DAW by a very long way. For jamming, AUM can't be beat, it's an incredible piece of software, but Endlesss [3] is also worth checking out - remote, collaborative jamming with friends and strangers - genuinely a game changer in my opinion. There's a really beautiful album [4] out, all created inside Endlesss by a band who met and formed through the app.

[1] https://forum.audiob.us [2] https://www.blipinteractive.co.uk/nanostudio2/ [3] https://endlesss.fm [4] https://theveltrontransmissions.com

Yeah, good shout about Endless! Had the pleasure of playing with a pre-release of their desktop version and it’s very cool.

Must dive more into NanoStudio! Used it a bit when I got it then forgot all about it, lol

Yeah, as an Android user I have to sign with envy now and again when looking at iOS media apps—namely for drawing, aside from music.

I'm told that Audiobus helped with composing quite a bit. On Android, Audiobus would be choked at birth, what with Google's newfound enthusiasm at tightening the screws with permissions.

Yeah, the ability to easily connect different apps together has revolutionised music making on iOS, see my other comment discussing AUM etc.

I was actually very surprised that Audiobus v1 was possible and was approved by Apple, I'm not sure how the IPC exactly worked but I wasn't aware you could do that on iOS! Apple have since embraced this way of working with the Inter-App Audio and AUv3 standards, which is great for the ecosystem :)

I digitized my studio a few months ago and settled on Reaper (running on kubuntu 20.04). I'm pretty happy with it, though Linux support is "beta" and support is forum based (there's a couple bugs that I'm just living with because nobody's engaged on them in forum posts).

I probably could have gotten away with Ardour for my needs (recording, editing, mastering) - however, I can run Reaper at lower latencies (via Jack configuration) than Ardour. Mixbus seemed promising, but requires more latency still. Bitwig is cool, and I'd happily pay for it, but their midi implementation on linux is pretty weird, and I don't have the patience to fiddle around to make it work. I haven't used Ableton, so I can't comment on comparison; there is a plugin for Reaper which gives it a live performance mode apparently along the lines of Ableton's, but it's mac/windows only.

Anyway, Reaper is extremely featureful, and is only around a 15MB download. Good midi implementation, customizable, good range of bundled effects (and ability to write your own in javascript). There's an audio engineer who posts tutorials on youtube under the name "Reaper Mania" - check out the recent ones to get a sampling of capability / workflow.

Justin Frankel of Winamp and Gnutella, before he went on to make Reaper.

Awesome "historic" documentary. I just recently got into playing around with electronic music production, and went for Ableton as my DAW of choice for now. Reaper was a serious contender though, and I understand it's the weapon of choice for quite some semi-professionals and even pros.

Very interesting to see how it started like a toy project.

As a professional podcast producer I’ve been experimenting with moving my workflow to ios and have been absolutely smitten with this thing: https://apps.apple.com/dk/app/multitrack-daw/id329322101?l=d...

It has that “slower-workflow” but “you cant fuck up by misclicking” vibe, that i miss from older UIs. Moving slower allows your mind to wander while working which can unlock some real creative thoughts.

... and it’s 13,9 MB.

If you want to see how it looks today: https://www.reaper.fm

I just switched from logic to reaper a few months ago. It's an incredible piece of software that does everything and more that I need from a DAW while also being able to load all my plugins etc.

It's lighting fast and completely customizable too. Oh! And the video tutorials with Kenny Gioia are incredible.

The only criticisms I'd level at it are that it's initial configuration is not that user friendly. You also lose a lot of software synths and stuff that you'll need to buy if you are migrating from logic (I already used Native Instruments stuff so it wasnt a big deal for me).

For $60 it's hard to beat. Way better than pro tools imo.

I bought Reaper a few months ago and use it on an old MacBook where it performs quickly and flawlessly. Very happy to see the journey it has made!

I've been having fun playing with Soundtrap. It runs in the browser, allowing you to access your projects on any device. I'm not sure if it can meet the needs of professionals, but for someone just starting out with music it has been great.

https://www.soundtrap.com/

Is there a connection to the article?

I appreciate Reaper very much although I'm religiously married to Cubase since it was a single floppy disk. This is quite something to dig up an origin story of a DAW.

Same. I love Reaper, its no-nonsense approach, how unbloated and customizable it is. Truly great software. I paid for a copy out of respect and encouragement, but I never use it. I've tried, but it's just not going to happen anytime soon.

Cubase is kind of a house of cards with lots of weird technical debt from back when there were Atari ST's in every recording studio, but it works and the Cubase keyboard shortcuts and workflow are just so ingrained in me that switching is not worth it -- when you're writing and recording music the shortest path from idea to execution is always the best. I can't afford to let my tools get in the way of that. This is also why I still use Cubase 5 instead of a newer version -- because I know exactly how it works, there are no surprises, and it does everything I need.

Reaper has extensive support for customizing keyboard shortcuts. I think there's even a Cubase skin theme.

It's not just shortcuts. It's the whole package. I know one swimming pool, I know the sharks and the little fish. Another pool - different sharks, different fish... By the time i got to know them, I forgot what i was doing in the pool in the first place

I just recently upgraded to the latest from cubase 5. It's actually great!

Haven't touched cubase since the DRM madness began.

I know it has its fans, but it's not for me. I refuse to let one application completely take over my computer like that.

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