http://www.cockos.com/licecap/

I said a very audible "holy shit, this is that guy?" when the link to jesussonic took me to Cockos.

I first learned of it from a young QA at a company I previously worked at, and I am so grateful I met him and was able to learn from him.

[0] http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

But if you do, for the love of God make it as short as possible. When I'm browsing through the tickets using some stock web browser, and the anigif runs for five minutes before reaching the point, it is such a pain to have to grab the gif and either dig out a tool than can track through an anigif, or have to cast it into some other format and then track through that. Then, I'm stuck either doing that every time, or attaching another file to the ticket; the same animation, but in a format that we can track through so I don't have to watch the entire five minutes.

Anecdotically, I have been producing electronic music as a hobby for many years now, and while I own much more expensive programs (e.g. Ableton Live Suite which cost a staggering AU $999) I find REAPER to be an extremely enjoyable piece of software and I have found myself using it often.

The term "DAW" has too many uses, and it can be confusing. REAPER is a Pro Tools competitor (and a good one). Ableton can be used for multitrack recording of live musicians, but I don't know of any studios that use it for that, unless their focus is on electronic production with some live music added on top. And, REAPER can be used for electronic productions and loop-based composition and live performance (and there's even a UI for REAPER that makes it act more like Ableton), but it's not its raison d'être.

If you're composing and performing predominantly electronic music in-the-box, then Ableton or others might be a better choice. But, if you're recording live musicians, REAPER is amazing. There can be some useful interoperation between them, as well. Live can plug into REAPER, so you can sync up your Live performance with your REAPER tracks, and produce a hybrid work. REAPER may be stronger for mastering, as well, depending on how you like to work.

Traditional recording engineers, who learned in a studio with tape and hardware mixers and patch bays, will be quickly comfortable with REAPER. The same can not be said of Ableton Live (or FL Studio, etc.). But, musicians who grew up on synths, sequencers and beat machines with sequencers (like 303, 808, etc.), may find the Ableton approach more intuitive. Both are high quality tools doing a very good job in their niche. REAPER just happens to be so good at such a low price that it stands out as exceptional and worth praise, IMHO.

But, it isn't obscure. The GUI is clear and simple and well-documented. And, I didn't find the learning curve steep at all; it was almost instant. I mean, I literally don't remember a period of "learning to use REAPER", I only remember starting to use it, and having it Just Work. I went to school for audio recording, and have worked off and on professionally as an engineer, so I suppose that may have shortened the learning process. Which is why I say it's a tool for engineers who want to work with a traditional recording studio environment. REAPER is exactly that. If REAPER has a learning curve, it is merely the process of learning how to record in a multitrack studio workflow.

REAPER is much more limited than Pro Tools or Nuendo out of the box, but it's vastly more powerful overall. You can use REAPER without learning it, but you'll miss out on most of what it has to offer.

But, again, I use other tools for my MIDI sequencing and composition tasks. The MIDI and sequencing and loop-based composition side of REAPER is weak. But, the multitrack recording capability is quite strong, IMHO, and very easy to use. Maybe with extensions and going deep on scripting and such you can make it work well for those other tasks, and perhaps that's where our communication is breaking down. For me, REAPER is a super reliable, super fast and efficient, multitrack recording DAW that works exactly the way I expect a multitrack to work. I rarely need docs, I rarely need to fumble around looking for what I want to do.

I did note, in the distant past, that REAPER wasn't really competitive with Pro Tools for broadcast and film production work. While it had SMPTE sync, it was missing some other stuff...that I can't remember now. I guess R128 fits into that category of film/broadcast stuff that REAPER doesn't do well. It's cool that there's a set of extensions that covers some of that. But, by the time you're doing advanced stuff like that, it's always gonna require scaling a learning curve, right? I mean, Pro Tools isn't easy to use for advanced stuff (or for any stuff, really...I find Pro Tools somewhat unintuitive, when I haven't used it in a few years and sit down to poke at it again).

But, the comparison to vim or emacs only seems apt once you're doing hard things with it. I stand by my assertion that for the simple stuff, REAPER is very easy to use.

Thanks for bringing SMS to my attention! Looks cool.

I was just stating that REAPER's software quality, as I perceive it, is as high as much more expensive DAWs; I mentioned Live Suite as a comparison, purely because is the most expensive piece of music software that I own.