Alright, I’m setting some basic levels here. Ah, ok where’s the option to setup track visibility in the mixer? I guess I have to check the menu. Nope. The mixer changes the OS Level menu. So in OS X, when you open the mixer, you can’t access any of the other Reaper menu options. You have to close the mixer, use the menu, re-open the mixer.

Mixer does not respond to cmd-`. That’s nice. Rather than the reflexive cmd-`, I have to remember to hit cmd-m, which is not even remotely a comfortable shortcut to use.

Keep forgetting what I am doing when having to think of how to change away from the mixer. Hit cmd-` and nothing happens. Look for menu, nothing there. By time I switch my thought process back to troubleshooting mode, whatever I was doing before is totally gone. Back to the mixer again so maybe I can remember what I was doing! (and forget again)

Right. I’m sure this is just as simple as getting used to things…

Can’t dock windows in to mixer view, so it’s always necessary to mess with the mixer window using non-standard shortcuts. There’s multiple windows I’ve found that I’d like to have docked in the mixer rather than floating windows (track manager, routing, fx browser, a transport, grouping matrix). Nope. You have to screw around with floating windows to use these otherwise useful features.

Fx selection window is garbage. At least 4 clicks and usually some scrolling to find a plug-in. Floating window to possibly trigger the boundary effect (forgetting things when you change contexts). Favorites at the bottom, below a bunch of useless format-type categories.

Massive right-click menus everywhere. Multi-layer right-click menus where it’s easy to mis-mouse and end up having to re-read and backtrack. Different menu for different items all over.

Mouse disappears when using pan knobs then re-appears on top of the knob. That means you frequently have to lift your mouse to re-set it to a place on the mousepad that correlates with the cursor position on the screen. You frequently end up with the cursor in the same position, but your mouse way high on the pad. Sucks, bad ergonomics. When your mouse moves, the cursor should move too.

Scroll wheel doesn’t work on faders or knobs. Maybe there’s an option to change that? Why would that even need to be an option.

Adding FX always requires a pop-up window? Huh? No right-click menu with nicely organized categories? How strange… basically the only time I would want a right-click menu, and it’s not there!

Clicking plug-in slots in the mixer is unreliable. I usually have to click around 4-10 times before the window finally opens. Sometimes it’s the plug-in, sometimes its the FX manager. Roll the dice boys.

Clicking a meter in the mixer doesn’t select the track, well except sometimes it does.

Ok, I need to look up something on the forum. Oh hey there’s a… nope, just people making fun of a guy for asking for a feature. What about this thre… nope, people defending how it works already (feature was added anyway!). Perhaps I can figure it out in this thread whe… people making fun of someone again. Even gearslutz is better than this.

You know what? Screw this. I would call Reaper a badly designed program, but that’s giving it too much credit. It doesn’t feel like there was any attempt at ‘design’ at all. Just a bunch of features tack-welded on on a whim. With the absolute basic task of trying to mix a 15 track drum recording, I’ve encountered nothing but issues that even a cursory design overview would have marked as need fixing.

Reaper is not for me. It only took a day.

(DP ist König! Es lebe der König!)

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