Everyone who makes music needs a computer program for recording and editing. A full-featured music application that handles recorded sound, midi and VST-plugins is called a DAW – Digital Audio Workbench. 
Protools, Cubase and Logic are popular DAWs. Out of these I’ve only tried Cubase, and I think it is really, really bad. In spite of 25 years of computer experience and a Master’s degree in computer science it took me three days to get Cubase to play midi files and another day to get VST instruments like Drumkit from Hell working. att funka tog ytterligare en dag. Every other time I started it some setting was broken, and in spite of ASIO-support recording was always laggy.
Luckily there are alternatives, I found Reaper. It’s a full-featured DAW with ASIO and VST support. Getting started is dead simple, if you’ve used something like the freeware program Audacity you will have made your first recording within 10 minutes (three steps: select your sound interface, add a track, arm the track and press record).
Some of Reaper’s benefits:
- Resource-efficient, works well on my aged laptop.
- Can be run as a portable app (for instance from a USB stick, no installation required)
- Full support for VST
- Full support for ASIO
- Lots of VSTs included, both effects and virtual instruments
- Cheap! Reaper is just $40 for private use and $150 for a commercial license.
I’m considering putting together a simple getting-started guide to convince more people about this fantastic application’s awesomeness. Stay tuned!
