question for gamers DAW choice...

[capt kirk]

Why do game sound designers choose Reaper over ProTools , at about a 6 to 1 ratio? I get the wwise thing, over FMOD, but Reaper is a mystery to me.......just curious, as Im entering a project this year.....what is the function it has , that protools does not, or is it price , or ?

[The Weed]

Reaper, while not free, is very inexpensive starting at $60, and among other things is skinable, the coders respond quickly, you can run it from a USB stick, it will run on almost any computer and on Mac, Windows and Linux, and the download is ridiculously small, 15 MB on Windows, 21 to 25 MB on Mac, 11 MB on Linux versus 2.56 GB on Windows and 1.83 GB on Mac, and then there are the other installers for plug-ins and others. And Reaper is backwards compatible to Windows XP and OS X 10.5 - there's a 32 bit version.

I've been a Pro Tools user since 2001 and will be for the foreseeable future, with no plans whatsoever to look elsewhere, but if I was looking for my first DAW, I'm not sure I would be looking at Pro Tools.

As always, YMMV.

[capt kirk]

i guess if you're in the game world, why the hell would you need a stem recorder.....with a terrible database UI........they totally blew it losing wwise, lets see if they can get a win and integrate FMOD

[ToxicGandhi]

I am not into game audio myself, but on the other hand Reaper is my other primary DAW and I can definitely see how things like Render queue, ability to mark pieces of the timeline (Regions) for different assets and have Reaper render those en masse (optionally with loudness normalisation), ability to modulate or MIDI learn any parameter or to use plugins on clips (and to automate those too) or to have multiple projects open in tabs and freely switch/copy&paste between them OR insert one project into another as a proxy that gets re-rendered when you modify the underlying project and so on and so on can be considered an advantage for game audio.


I'll stop there before my fanboy genes kick in.


I used to be a Reaper evangelist when I first had to start to learn PT upon dipping my toes into the post world. Now I realize that Pro Tools & Reaper are two entirely different tools/philosophies, each with their strengths and weaknesses, and need to be approached as such.

[capt kirk]

thanks for the rational explanation....so its a set of functions , and price , that differentiate.......im not price sensitive, so thats never been an issue, but if there was a showstopping feature, id like to know about it........if Pt would integrate SoundMiner and FMOD, they could probably rule the world of gaming audio, if not at least make the transition easier for the guys....i offered to do it for free, never heard back!!!! hahaha

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by ToxicGandhi

... OR insert one project into another as a proxy that gets re-rendered when you modify the underlying project...

A workflow feature that will warm the hearts of many multimedia folks, like anybody who works in Adobe products with "Place Embedded" capabilities.

[grayter1]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

A workflow feature that will warm the hearts of many multimedia folks, like anybody who works in Adobe products with "Place Embedded" capabilities.

Reaper's Sub Projects is a thing that dreams are made of... In all seriousness, it's an incredible feature and Reaper is an excellent choice for sound design and game audio. As mentioned above, it's not quite full-on Post ready, but I do a lot of work in it and the results get pushed to Pro Tools.

tg

[Marsdy]

Originally Posted by capt kirk

Why do game sound designers choose Reaper over ProTools , at about a 6 to 1 ratio? I get the wwise thing, over FMOD, but Reaper is a mystery to me.......just curious, as Im entering a project this year.....what is the function it has , that protools does not, or is it price , or ?

It’s not price. The game industry isn’t short of money. Music budgets alone for big titles can run into the hundreds of thousands. In 2020, the game industry was bigger than the film and music industries combined. It has been doing even better during the pandemic.

[capt kirk]

its pretty clear then ,its the ability to having multiple sequences open and be able to drop em into the seq you're working on.....thats really the only 'truly' differentiating factor, that PT cannot do....correct?

[deanrichard]

Not really. There are a whole litany of reasons Reaper is a better choice. Off the top of my head: sub-projects, multiple projects open at once, a better media explorer, support for VST (seems to be a plugin for many specialized uses), spectral editing, item based FX, and better MIDI implementation. Also faster, cheaper, far more efficient, terrific community, portable installs, and constant upgrades.

Originally Posted by capt kirk

its pretty clear then ,its the ability to having multiple sequences open and be able to drop em into the seq you're working on.....thats really the only 'truly' differentiating factor, that PT cannot do....correct?