Reaper or Logic Pro

So, I love the way logic works, but editing in it is really annoying, especially if you aren't editing to bars and beats, say for podcasts or sound design. If two regions on a track overlap, any audio between those two regions is muted. I've tried to explain to David Earl why this is a problem for VoiceOver users, but he refuses to do anything about it. Reaper doesn't have this problem. What I do love about logic though is the simplicity of it, and the midi features you get. You get something called smart quantise. It intelogently quantises and doesn't mess up things like drum rolls. Also, the built in stuff is pretty good.

In 2021, from a blind user perspective, there isn't a single reason not to use a windows machine for music production.
At the cost of installing extra drivers the first time you use an audio interface, you earn access to sibiac, ocr and other stuff that will make your workflow better and much more enjoyiable.
Not only Reaper is cheaper, more powerful, customizable, easiest to use, and more accessible from a blind user perspective, but a Mac would be more expensive, and, as we discussed on other topics, Voiceover is not improving its performance with the new m1 powered Mac devices, so basically you are paying a lot of money for a machine that is less responsive.
In other words: use reaper, it's cheaper, multiplatform and more accessible. Works prety well on a Mac for the same price. And, if you are serious about your music production, stay on windows.

Hi ya, I've been using Reaper heavily for years on Windows now, and if you are willing to put in the time needed to learn how to use Reaper, it is fantastic.
I'm not sure what issues you are having with audio, but if you have a decent audio interface, you are golden. No need to break the bank either, I use a 2 input Behringer I got for $120, and I've never had a problem with it.
I also do a lot of MIDI work, and Reaper works great. To the comment earlier about smart quantizing, not sure what advantage PL really has there, since Reaper has tons of parameters for quantizing, but I admit ignorance with logic.
I highly suggest you join the Reapers without Peepers email list, one of the best groups of any kind I have ever been a member of, they are incredibly helpful.
Also, there is an incredible community of blind Reaper users and programmers producing scripts and low level coding for Reaper that makes it almost 100 percent accessible, this is with windows or mac.
I've tried production on a Mac with Voiceover, and it drove me mad. I agree that out of the box, the Mac is better with audio, but having to jump through all of Voiceover's finger gymnastics is a deal breaker for me. And again, with a dedicated audio interface, you lose nothing.
Going from windows to mac, you realize how much time you are wasting doing the Voiceover dance.
I am no windows fan boy, I don't care what hardware or software I use, as long as it gets the job done, and I know a lot of folks use Reaper on Mac, but for me personally, Windows with Reaper is the way to go.
Good luck, hope to see you on the list.

First let me say that, much as I love my iPhone and its accessibility, I have never used a Mac and come from the world of Windows.

I was nervous to take the jump from Sonar to Reaper, but finally did about a year ago and I'll never look back. Reaper did have a stigma about being a bit difficult to learn and use years ago. However, these days Reaper is very accessible and works well both on Mac's and Windows.

One big advantage of using Reaper is that the (free) Osara plug-in makes Reaper very accessible for those using a screen reader. Reaper gives programmers access to their API so that an open source program like Osara can customize the experience for those using a screen reader.

One thing I have never liked about the Mac's is the inability to write scripts (as with NVDA and JAWS) to customize the experience for blind people and make their work more efficient. Just because a program might be "accessible" doesn't mean that it is necessarily efficient and productive to use for a blind user. If one has to use a thousand keystroeks just to get to a button and activate it, that isn't a good work flow.

Also, you can try Reaper for free for 60 days and the cost is only about $60 if you decide to purchase. You almost can't go wrong. There is a very active group of Reaper users who use both Mac and Windows systems. Just search for the "Reapers Without Peepers" (RWP) group and introduce yourself. They keep the "Accessible Reaper Wiki" that has lots of info about getting started, along with pointers to free demos, plug-ins, instruments, etc. on their Dropbox folder.

We recently aired an episode of Eyes On Success in which we interviewed the lead developer of Osara and the person who manages the Reapers Without Peepers e-mail forum. Just go to:
www.EyesOnSuccess.net
and enter the word "reaper" into the search field to find that episode.

Hope that helps. good luck.

--Pete

The best DAW for you depends on your intended use. If you want the basics, I'm sure Reaper can deliver, not that I know. I did research it. As I recall, it looked like Reaper was a one time deal. Is it continuing to be updated? If not, you might not want to invest in it. At what point will it become obsolete? This is a concern you will never have with Logic Pro or with Pro Tools.

As for uses, if your ultimate goal is to build into something professional, I have doubts whether Reaper can get you there, let alone keep you there. Are there a lot of professional Reaper blind users? I do know there are quite a few Logic Pro and Pro Tools professional users who are blind, and I feel pretty certain there always will be, well, so long as civilization lasts, anyway.

I can't speak to the features offered by Reaper. I use Logic Pro. I deliberately turned my back on Windows before I made that choice. If Windows was a car, you'd be forced to stop every five miles, remove the motor from the engine compartment, put it back in, restart your car, and resume driving. I don't care for that kind of workflow.

But about features, consider this. Logic Pro is like an enormous semi filled to the brim with shoeboxes, and every shoebox is filled to the brim with baseball cards, and every baseball card is a complex, professional level ability the DAW possesses. Does Reaper have more than a single shoebox?

In the end, I think your choice comes down to this: if you want to do music as a hobby, use Reaper. If you wan a professional DAW, stick with one of the two industry leaders, the ones used by the large majority of audio engineers..

I'm a Mac guy, and have Reaper, Pro Tools, and Logic. All work well, and it's really up to you, depending on what you want! Pro Tools isn't cheap, but audio editing, and even midi is a breeze, even off-grid. With Logic, you get a ton of instruments and beat making capabilities, and the built-in stuff is fantastic! Reaper's cheaper, but isn't near as feature rich as Logic right out of the box. If you wanna do midi, my choice is Logic. For audio, Reaper's far easier. As for the guy who said Voiceover lagged on the M1, that's not the case for me! It's quite snappy, but you meed to use the Alex voice, or the real old voices like Fred to really crank on it.

I do use both simultaneously. Logic, for music making and midi stuff, Reaper for audio processing and post production. Thats under MacOs.

Regarding the conversation of Logic VS Reaper I think others here have already said the most important points, both are great for different reasons. Logic has a ton of really good built-in plugins and effects so it's a much nicer starting point for music production, while Reaper is lighter on resources and is much better for audio editing and mastering. The 2 also have very different workflows - I personally love that in Reaper everything is 1 or 2 keystrokes away while logic requires learning the UI layout and more interacting/item chooser searching, but there are people that prefer logic over Reaper just for this reason.

I'd like to talk about how Reaper handles on Mac VS Windows though. I've used Reaper on Windows for a few years, but then also started to use the Mac version after getting the M1 air last year, and I gotta say I didn't realize just how underwhelming the state of Windows Audio is before really getting into this Mac, and this was with a good desktop CPU (Core I7-6700) and an ASIO capable interface. I can consistently get much lower buffer sizes, run more CPU intensive plugins and I don't experience any audio dropouts. NVDA also has a habit of getting in the way more than help. Loading certain large dialogs, like the one to add an effect, NVDA would lag out for a few seconds before recovering. The standard windows open/save dialogs meanwhile have about a 1/5 chance to freeze NVDA completely. Plugins that are based on the more accessible Juce versions work a lot better on Mac, partially because VoiceOver is much more suited to navigating very complex interfaces thanks to how controls are grouped together. Komplete Kontrol, which is often used to access Kontakt libraries or plugins, also works a lot better on Mac, with the self voicing being much more responsive than on Windows.

Regarding OCR, it's true that there is no Sibiac or LDL for Mac, so if you use any plugins that these ad-ons support you might benefit from it, though keep in mind these solutions are rather frail and depend on specific screen resolutions and plugin versions - for instance the addictive drums overlay broke this morning due to a major update going by what I read on a mailing list. However, the Mac OS OCR works much better than either the Microsoft OCR uses or Omnipage used by JAWS. I found multiple pieces of software where Windows OCR was useless that I was Able to get past easily on Mac- IE the plugin alliance installers or the Org software center.

@Bruce Harrell, sibelius is fully accessible now days, I mean yes it has a quite has learning curve, but its usable by the blind, I use it myself, both on mac and windows, and know other blind sibelius composers as well. As far as protools, at least for me its way easier than logic and reaper, have tried both and haven't been able to get the hang of them at all. I wouldn't say that customer support avid wize sucks, I have so far, good experiences myself. Protools is pricy yes, but again, I've found that editing audio and doing midi on protools is a breeze, I don't need to switch between two daws to do one thing on one and another on another, because x daw is better at this and x daw is better at this other thing. Its worth saying this though, protools and logic are the top tools in the sighted world as said, so we should learn to use at least one of said tools, which is a matter of choice. Btw protools isn't that pricy, if you go for a subscription.
If you'll want to use windows though, logic is not a option.

I thought I'd Chime in here as someone who has used and completed multiple projects in everything from Sonar, Samplitude, Reaper (on Windows And Mac), Pro Tools and Logic for both my own musical projects as well as for others. I wasn't going back and forth between each DAW, but was using them each as my sole DAW for daily work at a time. I switched to each for multiple reasons at one point in time or another for workflow over the years, the details of which I'll skip here for brevity but it started with Sonar in about 2000.
All the currently accessible DAWs (Samplitude on Windows, Reaper on Mac and Windows, Pro Tools and Logic on the Mac are all very capable DAWS for professional work in 2021. While they all have strengths and annoyances or weaknesses if you'd like to call them that, They all are pretty comparable.
These days I live in Logic and still use Reaper very regularly, however these days Reaper is mostly for editing videos for https://logic.band the website and Youtube channel I run that teaches Logic, MacOS and Voiceover. (btw if you sign up for the email list on https://logic.band you will get a free getting started with Logic Course).
The Pros of Logic. If you are a songwriter or composer, Logic could be an excellent home for you as that is its strength. It comes with a wealth of software instruments from piano's, Bass, synths, Drums (both electronic and Acoustic as well as doing multi out for the stock acoustic kits are fully accessible), among others. And if you are into sound design, there are plenty of synths to get lost in designing your own sound all day. If you are the type that wants to get to work quickly however, the library has a ton of patches organized by instruments, which are full signal chains to get you started with good sounds so you can get creating quickly.
The stock plug-ins and effects are excellent and can rival paid options, especially the delays and reverbs.
Conversely Reaper at times feels like something designed by technical people for technical people. The plug-ins while excellent, aren't the most intuitive or easy to use at first for a new person. Like anything they can be learned and used well, but the lack of intuitiveness when first learning can be a bit off-putting. Also Reaper doesn't come with much in the way of sounds, so one will need to acquire a library of 3rd party sounds before getting to work. For the average person or musician just wanting to get Ideas down without first searching out sounds or configuring things, Logic may be a better fit.
The cons of Logic - editing can be a bit annoying, especially if you are used to how another daw works previously (trust me I'd know, I've used them all as stated prior), but like any other skill it can be learned and done efficiently. Though I won't promise that you won't invent a few creative strings of curse words along the way.
As for the issue with overlapping audio, I just put the overlapping regions ( what reaper calls items), on seperate tracks. Problem solved.
Also if you are coming from Windows, I will say my general advice is to get familiar with the Mac and VoiceOver first. VoiceOver is a different paradigm and will require building some new muscle memory after years of holding down the down arrow and pressing tab to navigate Windows. However, it can be efficient and isn't as cumbersome as it first seems. You really don't have to interact as much as others may have you believe, VO+J is its best kept secret and Keyboard Commanders are a power user hack few blind users barely scratch the surface of, if they even use at all. Unfortunately I have not yet seen a really good resource for getting people up to speed on VoiceOver (it's possible one exists that I haven't seen yet), but I am working on that too. Additionally, the Youtube channel has a VoiceOver and MacOS playlist that is a work in progress and is still being updated.
If you do decide to try the Mac, I believe you'll also see why a lot of pros prefer it for its stability with audio interfaces etc. I have a cheap Behringer interface, that while requiring drivers on Windows doesn't on the Mac, and is more rock solid on Mac OS, maintaining super low latency for things like recording guitar with out ever causing any issues.
Windows has come along way and there are plenty of professionals who use it as well and it can be quite stable. However less needs to be done to make a Mac perform well when setting things up.
In the end I won't tell you this will be an easy journey if you switch to the Mac, but I believe it will be a fun and rewarding experience if you are willing to take on the challenge. I'd highly suggest getting an M1 Mac, (as I am seeing improved performance there with both VoiceOver and Logic in the little experience I have had with it so far.
If you decide to stay on Windows, I hope you are able to get your audio issues sorted out and you are able to get work done and make some music.
If interested here are some links to useful stuff
Producing a song in Logic. - This tutorial goes from creating a project to recording some basic tracks using both audio and MIDI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTgvLa8JfAo&t=3s
This page on Logic.band has a list of Youtube Playlists among other resources.
https://logic.band/resources/
Best of Luck with Whichever way you decide to go
And Happy Recording!

Hello, so here's the deal. I've been a logic user for years and reaper for a couple and here's what I'll say to all of this. Whatever feels right for whatever you wanna do, it really doesn't matter as long as you can get the job done. For me, I use logic for making all my beats and have done engineering on it and also mixing but reaper, I'll use if I'm editing audio just because I hate the way logic is when editing audio and I just can't seem to do it fast enough. I can edit an hours worth of Pease of audio in some what 10 minutes because I'm able to navigate proficiently then logic. I also use reaper to do mastering engineering also but these are just some examples. I'd love to use reaper to make beats in as well but ah, well, I don't have a numpad on this keyboard to do midi work for editing if I need to and it's lots, especially if I'm making hi-hats. Unless I can change midi editor shortcut keys, that would be fine or if there's another layout that I have no idea about.

In the Keyboard Maestro there's a long thread with several examples of someone using Keyboard Maestro to swiftly do a multitude of tasks.

http://forum.keyboardmaestro.com

Hey Jenna and all,

Last year, I took part in a collective effort to present an unbiased comparison of the accessibility you'll encounter in four DAWs (Reaper, Logic, Pro Tools and Samplitude). The presentation is audio recordings of 10 everyday tasks being performed in each DAW. Each task is its own file, and each file is chapterized so you can skip straight to the start of each DAW segment if your player supports chapters.
To be clear about my biases from the start, I presented the Reaper segments, I admin most of the community spaces focused on its accessibility, I contribute to OSARA (the most widely adopted accessibility extension) and I sweat to keep its accessibility moving forward week in, week out like it's my life's work.
Here comes a link to the presentation, listen through this and decide what's gonna suit you best for yourself. Pay close attention to how the presenters are navigating and the feedback they're getting as they do what they're doing, go with whichever option seems closest to clicking with how you think. That way, you'll set yourself up for the shortest journey toward getting the software to feel intuitive, and more importantly, the shortest journey toward getting back to thinking about what you're using the software to create. Nobody does their best work when they're squandering grey matter trying to remember where the next button they need lives.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/27ev5t1pql363by/DAW%20comparison%20presentation.zip?dl=1

If you decide to keep pushing on with Reaper once you've heard that and you want someone to help kick your Windows rig into shape, I'd gladly meet up, remote in, walk you through some tweaks and check you've got everything configured the best it can be. Declaring intent upfront again, I teach one-on-one for an hourly rate here, but I'm happy to give a free hour of time to anyone who needs help with zero obligation to hire me going forward. It keeps me connected with new folks coming into the community spaces, helps inform what topics we need to cover next with our community resources, and yeah ok, it doesn't hurt that I'm top of mind if a newbie decides they need a good teacher. :)

Hope something in there is helpful. I don't post on AppleVis much, but will try to keep an eye on this thread for a while.

Hello. Super happy you got Logic and everything is working. Feel free to contact me on Applevis and I can help you out if you get stuck. I also use Logic. :-)

Hi Guys,

Not sure if this is the right thread to ask my question, but it was already on top and I hesitated to create a new forum post just to make one single yes/no inquiry...

Due to my 2016 base model Mac, I have to uninstall and reinstall Logic around once a week when I need to use it to enhance Voiceovers. My Final Cut projects take up most of my storage space, and I prioritize rendering my videos before I turn to editing my audio. Do any of you know if VoiceOver will delay more significantly if I run Logic from an External Hard Drive? Or would it take just as much time to reinstall the program/move my video projects. I only need to do minor editing by Logic standards. If or when I actually used Logic to create music, I would certainly find a more long-term solution.

Thanks in advance for your input! Logic is currently being installed as I type this. It would be so great if I could just move it to my Hard Drive and never do this again! 🥲

PS Jenna, glad you're having a great experience!

Leave Logic installed on the internal drive, and just keep all your projects on an external drive. I did things this way for years.

Hi, thanks for your reply. Did you run the packaged instruments, synths, effects, and loops locally or did you save them on your external hard drive?