REAPER has now released version 3.01, and there are some nice changes to it. There is so much new about it, it's hard to know where to start. REAPER's website (http://www.reaper.fm) also has been given a very slick overhaul that now screams "I am a serious contender!". They also appear to have raised the prices slightly (now $225 for full commercial and $60 for discounted) and gotten away from the previously confusing "commercial" vs. "non-commercial" terminology. Basically, if you use it for yourself only, as a business with less than $20K annual income, or are a educational or non-profit, you qualify for discounted pricing. And they still adamantly refuse to engage in any strange copy protection schemes. It's the honor system, folks!
My favorite new features are probably the addition of Automation lanes and the ability to have multiple MIDI items in the editor at the same time. However, there's a lot of other goodness packed into version 3. I'll try to give my take on some of the features here. The full feature list for version 3 is at http://www.reaper.fm/whatsnew-300.txt.
Automation Lanes
Automation lanes are a really nice feature that already exist in a lot of other major DAWs, so seeing REAPER add them is a great step forward to full equality. In prior versions, you could see your automation lines as overlays over the track itself. If you were trying to automate a lot of parameters on the same track, it got rather messy and I was always either having to memorize exactly where I was shifting other parameters, or when I displayed multiple lines at the same time (for reference) I was always grabbing the wrong line (i.e. changing the wrong setting). Now with Automation lanes, the automation parameter lines appear as separate sub-track "lanes" that you can display, hide, or bypass on an individual basis. With all of the parameter-heavy VSTs and VSTis out there, this is a great thing.
Edit Multiple MIDI Items
It's sometimes hard to keep track of what is going on between different MIDI tracks. Previously, to edit multiple MIDI tracks, you had to open separate MIDI windows and fiddle with the window sizes so you could get everything on screen at the same time. As of version 3, you now have options in the "Options" menu of the MIDI window named "Reuse MIDI editor for multiple items" and "Reuse MIDI editor for multiple items, keeping items as secondary". The first will just reuse the window. No big surprise there. The second one - wow. It will shade the notes and parameter settings (like velocity) for any items in the window that are not currently active. The really nice thing about this is that all MIDI items are shown in proper time-context. In other words, all notes are exactly where they should be in relation to one another. This is great for trying to harmonize different synths together - you can actually see what you're doing without a lot of trial and error. You can switch between which MIDI item is active in the window by either using the "Filter" button in the top left, or by simply clicking on a note from the item you want to edit. The clicking on a note can be problematic in a couple of ways - you can't directly write a note over the top of another MIDI item's note, since it will select that track instead of putting down a note - and you can't always see the other item's notes if the current track overlaps. But really, these are spatial issues, not UI issues. I'm loving it!
Multiple Tabbed Projects
Another exciting improvement is the ability to have multiple projects loaded at the same time. This is handled beautifully by the addition of a simple tab control at the top of the screen. Obviously, this adds load on your system as you add more simultaneous projects, but the flexibility this allows is so much better than the prior one-at-a-time design.
A Lot More...
There are so many improvements, many behind the scenes performance upgrades, it is an exhausting list to read. There are a lot of MIDI enhancements (MIDI sysex is now fully supported, for example). Ther are also quite a few general performance enhancements to make REAPER play nicer with some potentially unruly plug-ins. And a lot of memory management improvements. Bottom line: you need this upgrade. If you're not a current REAPER user, now is the perfect time to jump in and try it out. The trial version is NOT time limited or crippled in any way. You've got nothing to lose, and version 3 continues the trend of growing stronger and more powerful with each release.
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