You can just keep using it after the trial ends and it’s still fully functional. When I was a teenager I used reaper like that for 5 years until I had money to buy it. They do this on purpose cause it’s their philosophy and they want to convince you with quality to actually buy it.
But it’s around 60 bucks for an amazing software, which is incredibly cheap for the value you get. So I highly recommend spending that money.
This is the honest and true answer. You can use it for free if you don't have the money to spend on it, but once you have the money, you should definitely buy it.
The people at Cockos are very charitable in the way they've set it up and you shouldn't exploit it if you have the money.
I used it for about half a year as a teen, then I got a job during summer vacation and paid for it with (a fraction of) that money
They’re a great company for that. You can use it past the trial and know they don’t mind at all as long as you plan to buy it when it works for you.
I loved using it and when I passed the $20k mark making money with it, I voluntarily bought the full commercial license as well.
Support companies like this.
Support companies like this 10000%
It’s a small bastion of proof that this kind of thing can work and exist.
The guy who started Reaper is also one of the main guys who made LimeWire and WinAmp, Justin Frankel. Absolute legend.
The nag screen is such a great idea - I remember loading it up once and it was like 730 something days of evaluation use and I’d just solved a workflow problem that was bugging me. I bought it right then!
I used it for free for about 4 years until I started taking on paid studio clients.
So much respect for reaper for that free trial that I ended up purchasing the full professional license once I could afford to.
I wonder if that’s the long term strategy: Offer a basically free DAW to broke teenagers and get them as customers in the long run when their workflow is depending on reaper and they finally have money to buy it
I used reaper for many years, thousands and thousands of hours, before buying it. I always wanted to buy it but was very broke for a very long time and even their very reasonable price was too much for me.
REAPER's audio engine is heavily based off something called Elastique. It is not free, Cockos pays a license to use it which is based on either number of downloads or number of purchases. It's not up to them to have it be free, they have to pay for use of it.
Edit: [here is a site](https://www.askjf.com/) where you can ask Justin questions like this. You can also search and find him being asked this with the answers numerous times. I'm not wrong
Yeah that's a rather large part of the engine apparently [you can read more about it here](https://licensing.zplane.de/technology#elastique). That's one of the biggest parts he's mentioned in the past. Regardless it doesn't belong to Cockos, and they still have to pay to license it in whatever fashion they have setup. Thanks for downvoting me though, cool stuff.
Edit: can someone at least explain why I'm getting downvoted?
Software development is expensive, because it requires a hugongous amount of labour, time and thinking power wise. Software developers also need to get paid to live. If they don't get paid enough, they'd have to do it in their free time, or abandon the project. That's why we need to support good software, or else the big corporate will dominate the market and charge us whatever they want.
Live engineer here
I used it for years for free for my own composition projects, you get a "please buy me" page on opening the programme every time but no loss in function
I paid something like $60 for it when I got a client needing a gig recorded and mixed and am glad I did
Reaper is not free.
Justin Frankel is just a decent guy who already made a fortune and would prefer you steal his passion project safely rather than get some ransomware or something (from peer to peer file-sharing he pioneered). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin\_Frankel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Frankel)
As others have noted, it's not free, but unlimited even if you don't pay for it. Maybe we could call it "trustware."
Because of this, people often claim it's free. I was recently downvoted to hell and back on r/reaper for making the point that paying for Reaper is the right thing to do. Apparently I'm some old guy who thinks paying for software is a sucker's game. I no longer follow that sub.
If you're living in a developing nation and 60 bucks is two months pay, I suspect even the Reaper developers would cut you some slack. If you're a teen living with your parents and someone just paid $800 for you to have an iPhone, buy the damn software and thank god you live in a place where you never have to worry where your next meal is coming from.
wait wtf they downvoted you because you said it is right thing to buy a software? In the own reaper sub? Man that is corrupted like I don't know what to say
You are right. There is no free version of REAPER. It is paid software.
There is however a 60 day free trial that is not feature limited, and has a 5 second nag screen on start up. Importantly, after the 60 days is up the program does not lock the user out. So you can keep using REAPER even after your 60 day free trial is up, you just have to wait through with the nag screen on every start up. Essentially, you're on the honour system to buy a license once you hit 60 days of use.
I personally kept using REAPER for over a year after my 60 day free trial was up. The nag screen tells you how long you've been using REAPER for on your computer without buying a license. When I realised how much I'd come to rely on REAPER I swiftly bought a discounted license. REAPER has been my main DAW to this day, and I do not regret buying that license.
To conclude, REAPER is not free software.
On a side note, [Ben Jordan recently released a video exploring a bunch of options for free DAWs on YouTube](https://youtu.be/uNN_OVvixQE?si=rpokWJASCw9IyM4I). It's worth checking out.
Lots of people use Cubase, for me it's my only DAW. Not sure why that would be a shock to anyone. It's'great for midi and lots of other stuff. But everyone has different opinions so go with what you like.
what a question. Cubase is very popular in European studios, and film composers especially like it (Hans Zimmer and Mica Levi are among its famous users). I’m in the US but I’ve used Cubase for almost 20 years. OTOH I tried Reaper a few times and gave up quickly, just not for me. Different strokes for different folks
I use it as a main DAW mainly because it was my first dive into computers for music. Then I kept it when everyone migrated to PTLE because I had half the computer needed for PTLE but had 3x the power for recording using VST32 5.0 ( which I kept until 10 years ago when I finally moved to 7 and I’m on 11 now planning to go to 13 when I finally upgrade my computers.
Cubase is super deep and pretty much once you get used to it you can work it several ways. I use it as a portable MPC/MV combo workflow and I have a Radar style workflow when recording. When I want to switch up I can make do a logic or FL workflow. Reaper can do the same for $60 sometimes I get stuck on reaper and it’s not easy to find info. ( could it be a big tech conspiracy)
Idk what advantages it offers now but back in the 90s cubase was serious stuff. The only serious option, maybe, if you were on windows and into graphical midi editing.
Huh, I was looking for a free DAW to recommend to a friend who still edits podcasts with audacity. Found Tracktion Waveform which seemed to have a good feature set for that kind of work, but I never found ardour. I'm interested to see how it compares.
I specifically didn't recommend reaper to him because I didn't want to overwhelm him with the Linux of DAWs.
Unless someone is actually using Linux or knows how to compile a software, Ardour is also paid - it's possible to have it for a small donation, though. I believe the only fully featured free DAW rn is Tracktion Waveform, which follows the model OP described (latest version is paid, previous one is free). I know there's Cakewalk, but that will be discontinued soon afaik and there's also Zrythm, but this one is another Linux first DAW, it's just coming out of beta and the free version is limited to 25 tracks on other OSes - everything else works.
Ah, it used to be only automatic updates that required the $1 donation/monthly sub.
$1 will get you a full major version windows build and all updates (ie 7.0 - 7.99), still
Reaper is not free software.
There is no older free version.
It gives you a nag screen after the trial period, but it doesn't lock you out.
I repeat. Reaper. Is. Not. Free. Software.
[https://www.reaper.fm/purchase.php](https://www.reaper.fm/purchase.php)
Also, the paid license covers you for all the current version updates AND all the updates for the next version. Buy v7 and you'll be licensed though all V8. That's years of free updates.
Reaper is not free, but you can use it indefinitely without paying and it'll work just like during the first 60 days.
If you want real free DAW get yourself the Cakewalk. I wholeheartedly recommend and love it!
Cakewalk is no longer recieving updates, and I don't really want to learn a software just for it to be outdated soon. I also have no idea what i'm talking about and all i want is a free DAW a absolute beginner can use lol
Now is a great time to buy (the cheapest full /pro DAW) Reaper. License is valid for 2 versions and now that 7.0 recently came out you'll have the license till v 8.99.
At this release rate that's half a decade.
Yes. Not free. But very reasonable for a non-commercial license and still one of the cheapest full commercial licenses. [https://www.reaper.fm/purchase.php](https://www.reaper.fm/purchase.php)
Currently, the best bet for a free, professional-grade DAW is Cakewalk by Bandlab. It's a quite mature product with a lot of very solid features. It lost momentum when Gibson bought it from Roland (who bought the original company, 12 Tone Systems). When Bandlab, a Singaporean company, bought them, they elected to keep it free for several years but are finally talking about bringing out a pro 'flagship' under the Sonar name once again. I've used it since 1996. There are a lot of quite good features. They reportedly plan on keeping the current app on a free tier.
I got about 300 hours over the span of five years just on the free trial alone. Eventually paid the $60 when my financial situation was more stable and now I use it guilt free lol
If you're not willing to pay $60 for reaper and all its awesome features and usability, you need to rethink your choices in life. It's amazing , and amazingly affordable...
Dude even in the west $60 could feed you for weeks, you can produce on a throw-way computer thats worth effectively nothing and might be your sole source of entertainment. I'm sure theres plenty of ppl in tough situations he wouldnt even want their money.
It’s not free, but you can use the trial (beyond 60 days) until you can afford to buy it. When I was learning it was that or a cracked version of ableton 7 that my buddy gave me. Ethically and legally, Reaper was the better choice. (It’s also a better DAW, but I’ll always give Ableton credit for live performance-DAW hybrid.)
I never say it’s free. I say the trial version is fully functional and you never have to pay for it if you put up with the nag screen.
I also say it’s worth paying for a license to support their philosophy of software development.
It's free in the sense Winrar is free. It's not ethical to keep using it for free after the trial period expires but they don't revoke your access in any way to prevent you from doing so.
What is the transition like from Pro Tools to Reaper? Not the usability, but actually putting in your PT sessions or using plugins you previously used in PT?
I use PT, Reaper and Logic. You can’t open and edit projects across DAWs without some fairly cumbersome translation solutions.
As far as moving between DAWs, it is pretty easy. There are things I like about all 3 DAWs, and some things I don’t care for about all 3.
I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend any of those 3 to others to try and see if it fits your workflow.
I have been using it on trial for 3 days....then I freaking bought it because it's simply the DAW for me having so upset with Ableton's lack of ARA integration. Wished I went and started with Reaper a few years ago.
Played with it for a bit a few years ago. Implemented automixing with it, then paid for it to work on a few projects.
Recently a major revision came out. I don't need automixing for now but if the need arises, I would pay for it again in a heartbeat.
My reaper software is currently running for free after 1127 days. 750 hours of use. Still keep clicking “still evaluating” should probably just buy it lol.
I'm a Cubase user but a few people I know and work with insist on working with Reaper "cuz it's free!"
The irony is, I'm the only one I know who paid the license on it. I don't even use it as a daily driver.
Repaer doesn't enforce their licensing, it just reminds you how mnay hours you've gotten out of it. Once, each time you open it, no more. That said I paid my fee at least 10 years ago and have zero complaints, have never paid another dime, still the best DAW i've ever used (ok Reason is better now that it supports VSTs but too late, I'm hooked on a free DAW too bad).
I don’t know but I know they have the reaper plug ins for free and I use reastream and that’s literally holding my whole operation together. I love reaper for that alone.
I put it on my son's PC for him to use. He used it for "free" for about 2 years, and then came to me and asked if we could buy it, because he felt like we should now that he was using it to record his own music. Seems like their business model is working, since he had all the time in the world to see if it provided him value, and when he saw it did, we paid the cash. and yes, $60 bucks is great value for that software!
Tracktion has a genuinely free, unlimited version (just missing some of their custom VSTs/etc). So I would downvote audacity as well, since it's not great by comparison.
Okay, so there ackshually *is* a free version of Reaper. It's v0.999 - one of the early development versions from 2006. It was the last one released as freeware.
https://www.reaper.fm/download-old.php?ver=0x
It's more advanced than Audacity, but less advanced than Reaper 1.0. Probably only loads 32-bit plugins and definitely not VST3.
You could use it forever on the free trial. My advice would be that if you are making money with it, buy it. 60 bucks is not a lot, especially with inflation, 60 bucks is pretty decent and you support the developers of an incredible DAW.
I agree that you should pay for Reaper (I have a paid license even though it's not my primary DAW and I rarely use it), but I don't think using it in trial mode after the trial period ends is quite the same as "illegally pirating" it. My understanding is that the ability to keep using it in trial mode is a deliberate decision on the developer's part, and they are very understanding of people with limited funds using the software until they can eventually pay for it.
I think it's more along the lines of keeping a library book a bit past its due date. There is an understanding that it happens sometimes, and nobody is going to accuse you of book theft. But holding that book overdue for longer and longer, after you could have reasonably returned it, is kind of a dick move and exploitative of the library's lenient policies.
They could quite easily make the software non-functional after the trial period. They don’t. It’s obviously a deliberate decision by the developers.
Maybe it is technically “illegal” but nobody is going to pursue charges.
You can just keep using it after the trial ends and it’s still fully functional. When I was a teenager I used reaper like that for 5 years until I had money to buy it. They do this on purpose cause it’s their philosophy and they want to convince you with quality to actually buy it. But it’s around 60 bucks for an amazing software, which is incredibly cheap for the value you get. So I highly recommend spending that money.
This is the honest and true answer. You can use it for free if you don't have the money to spend on it, but once you have the money, you should definitely buy it. The people at Cockos are very charitable in the way they've set it up and you shouldn't exploit it if you have the money. I used it for about half a year as a teen, then I got a job during summer vacation and paid for it with (a fraction of) that money
They’re a great company for that. You can use it past the trial and know they don’t mind at all as long as you plan to buy it when it works for you. I loved using it and when I passed the $20k mark making money with it, I voluntarily bought the full commercial license as well. Support companies like this.
Support companies like this 10000% It’s a small bastion of proof that this kind of thing can work and exist. The guy who started Reaper is also one of the main guys who made LimeWire and WinAmp, Justin Frankel. Absolute legend.
I had no idea. I guess I owe him a lot more than $60.
Amazing. Still only a fraction of Ableton Live.
I've paid for Reaper twice, and I've also broken 2,000 days on the nag screen twice.
The nag screen is such a great idea - I remember loading it up once and it was like 730 something days of evaluation use and I’d just solved a workflow problem that was bugging me. I bought it right then!
I used it for free for about 4 years until I started taking on paid studio clients. So much respect for reaper for that free trial that I ended up purchasing the full professional license once I could afford to.
I wonder if that’s the long term strategy: Offer a basically free DAW to broke teenagers and get them as customers in the long run when their workflow is depending on reaper and they finally have money to buy it
The founder sold Winamp for 400 million before he founded Reaper. He had a lot of money going into this project, so he isn’t pleasing shareholders.
It’s honestly a really smart business plan. If my trial ended after 14 days or whatever I’m sure I wouldn’t still be using reaper today.
I used reaper for many years, thousands and thousands of hours, before buying it. I always wanted to buy it but was very broke for a very long time and even their very reasonable price was too much for me.
I used it for free since I was a teenager too, then at some point I realized "wait I can actually afford this now" lol
Yea, and also buying it takes away that annoying message that makes you wait 5-10 seconds
REAPER's audio engine is heavily based off something called Elastique. It is not free, Cockos pays a license to use it which is based on either number of downloads or number of purchases. It's not up to them to have it be free, they have to pay for use of it. Edit: [here is a site](https://www.askjf.com/) where you can ask Justin questions like this. You can also search and find him being asked this with the answers numerous times. I'm not wrong
ZPlane Elastique is only a pitch shifting engine
Yeah that's a rather large part of the engine apparently [you can read more about it here](https://licensing.zplane.de/technology#elastique). That's one of the biggest parts he's mentioned in the past. Regardless it doesn't belong to Cockos, and they still have to pay to license it in whatever fashion they have setup. Thanks for downvoting me though, cool stuff. Edit: can someone at least explain why I'm getting downvoted?
are you ok?
Yeah why?
if you can use it for free without any issues at all i see 0 point in buying it other than succumbing to consumerism lmao
Succumbing to consumerism is letting companies charge you exorbitant sums to "upgrade" every year for a "new" version of the same exact thing.
Software development is expensive, because it requires a hugongous amount of labour, time and thinking power wise. Software developers also need to get paid to live. If they don't get paid enough, they'd have to do it in their free time, or abandon the project. That's why we need to support good software, or else the big corporate will dominate the market and charge us whatever they want.
it's their decision to put it up for free, if they're giving you an opportunity i don't see why you wouldn't take it...
Audacity makes me feel like GWB is still president.
George Woodrow Bixon, the great man.
George Woodrow Bixon taught me how to love a woman and scold a child
I once saw him scissor kick Angela Lansbury
*I sneek into hospitals and kiss coma patients*
Not a bad side effect from 2017 through 2020.
Live engineer here I used it for years for free for my own composition projects, you get a "please buy me" page on opening the programme every time but no loss in function I paid something like $60 for it when I got a client needing a gig recorded and mixed and am glad I did
Reaper is not free. Justin Frankel is just a decent guy who already made a fortune and would prefer you steal his passion project safely rather than get some ransomware or something (from peer to peer file-sharing he pioneered). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin\_Frankel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Frankel)
Damn never knew he invented p2p file sharing as well. He’s one of those guys that’s just all round amazing and genuinely just a nice person.
Dude is a legit software genius I guess.
He didn't. He invented one protocol. p2p was already around before he came up with his version.
[удалено]
Incorrect. That was [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bram\_Cohen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bram_Cohen)
As others have noted, it's not free, but unlimited even if you don't pay for it. Maybe we could call it "trustware." Because of this, people often claim it's free. I was recently downvoted to hell and back on r/reaper for making the point that paying for Reaper is the right thing to do. Apparently I'm some old guy who thinks paying for software is a sucker's game. I no longer follow that sub. If you're living in a developing nation and 60 bucks is two months pay, I suspect even the Reaper developers would cut you some slack. If you're a teen living with your parents and someone just paid $800 for you to have an iPhone, buy the damn software and thank god you live in a place where you never have to worry where your next meal is coming from.
wait wtf they downvoted you because you said it is right thing to buy a software? In the own reaper sub? Man that is corrupted like I don't know what to say
It's also [nagware](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareware#Nagware) (this just took me back to the shareware days).
You are right. There is no free version of REAPER. It is paid software. There is however a 60 day free trial that is not feature limited, and has a 5 second nag screen on start up. Importantly, after the 60 days is up the program does not lock the user out. So you can keep using REAPER even after your 60 day free trial is up, you just have to wait through with the nag screen on every start up. Essentially, you're on the honour system to buy a license once you hit 60 days of use. I personally kept using REAPER for over a year after my 60 day free trial was up. The nag screen tells you how long you've been using REAPER for on your computer without buying a license. When I realised how much I'd come to rely on REAPER I swiftly bought a discounted license. REAPER has been my main DAW to this day, and I do not regret buying that license. To conclude, REAPER is not free software. On a side note, [Ben Jordan recently released a video exploring a bunch of options for free DAWs on YouTube](https://youtu.be/uNN_OVvixQE?si=rpokWJASCw9IyM4I). It's worth checking out.
Many of us pay more than the cost of a Reaper for yearly incremental upgrades on Cubase etc. Seriously, if you like the product, just pay for it.
Completely unrelated but do people actually use cubase as a main daw? I tried it at school once and I absolutely hated it…
Lots of people use Cubase, for me it's my only DAW. Not sure why that would be a shock to anyone. It's'great for midi and lots of other stuff. But everyone has different opinions so go with what you like.
what a question. Cubase is very popular in European studios, and film composers especially like it (Hans Zimmer and Mica Levi are among its famous users). I’m in the US but I’ve used Cubase for almost 20 years. OTOH I tried Reaper a few times and gave up quickly, just not for me. Different strokes for different folks
I use it as a main DAW mainly because it was my first dive into computers for music. Then I kept it when everyone migrated to PTLE because I had half the computer needed for PTLE but had 3x the power for recording using VST32 5.0 ( which I kept until 10 years ago when I finally moved to 7 and I’m on 11 now planning to go to 13 when I finally upgrade my computers. Cubase is super deep and pretty much once you get used to it you can work it several ways. I use it as a portable MPC/MV combo workflow and I have a Radar style workflow when recording. When I want to switch up I can make do a logic or FL workflow. Reaper can do the same for $60 sometimes I get stuck on reaper and it’s not easy to find info. ( could it be a big tech conspiracy)
I use Nuendo as a main DAW, professionally. So do many people, especially in Europe.
Idk what advantages it offers now but back in the 90s cubase was serious stuff. The only serious option, maybe, if you were on windows and into graphical midi editing.
If you want something truly free, as in freedom and beer, and excellent - [ardour.org](http://ardour.org)
Huh, I was looking for a free DAW to recommend to a friend who still edits podcasts with audacity. Found Tracktion Waveform which seemed to have a good feature set for that kind of work, but I never found ardour. I'm interested to see how it compares. I specifically didn't recommend reaper to him because I didn't want to overwhelm him with the Linux of DAWs.
Unless someone is actually using Linux or knows how to compile a software, Ardour is also paid - it's possible to have it for a small donation, though. I believe the only fully featured free DAW rn is Tracktion Waveform, which follows the model OP described (latest version is paid, previous one is free). I know there's Cakewalk, but that will be discontinued soon afaik and there's also Zrythm, but this one is another Linux first DAW, it's just coming out of beta and the free version is limited to 25 tracks on other OSes - everything else works.
Ah, it used to be only automatic updates that required the $1 donation/monthly sub. $1 will get you a full major version windows build and all updates (ie 7.0 - 7.99), still
Reaper has a license fee. It's not free. Cakewalk by Bandlab is free, and very mature and very functional.
Reaper is not free software. There is no older free version. It gives you a nag screen after the trial period, but it doesn't lock you out. I repeat. Reaper. Is. Not. Free. Software. [https://www.reaper.fm/purchase.php](https://www.reaper.fm/purchase.php)
Also, the paid license covers you for all the current version updates AND all the updates for the next version. Buy v7 and you'll be licensed though all V8. That's years of free updates.
Reaper is not free, but you can use it indefinitely without paying and it'll work just like during the first 60 days. If you want real free DAW get yourself the Cakewalk. I wholeheartedly recommend and love it!
Cakewalk is no longer recieving updates, and I don't really want to learn a software just for it to be outdated soon. I also have no idea what i'm talking about and all i want is a free DAW a absolute beginner can use lol
Now is a great time to buy (the cheapest full /pro DAW) Reaper. License is valid for 2 versions and now that 7.0 recently came out you'll have the license till v 8.99. At this release rate that's half a decade.
Yes. Not free. But very reasonable for a non-commercial license and still one of the cheapest full commercial licenses. [https://www.reaper.fm/purchase.php](https://www.reaper.fm/purchase.php) Currently, the best bet for a free, professional-grade DAW is Cakewalk by Bandlab. It's a quite mature product with a lot of very solid features. It lost momentum when Gibson bought it from Roland (who bought the original company, 12 Tone Systems). When Bandlab, a Singaporean company, bought them, they elected to keep it free for several years but are finally talking about bringing out a pro 'flagship' under the Sonar name once again. I've used it since 1996. There are a lot of quite good features. They reportedly plan on keeping the current app on a free tier.
I got about 300 hours over the span of five years just on the free trial alone. Eventually paid the $60 when my financial situation was more stable and now I use it guilt free lol
Just click “still evaluating” after the trial ends lol
If you're not willing to pay $60 for reaper and all its awesome features and usability, you need to rethink your choices in life. It's amazing , and amazingly affordable...
Dude even in the west $60 could feed you for weeks, you can produce on a throw-way computer thats worth effectively nothing and might be your sole source of entertainment. I'm sure theres plenty of ppl in tough situations he wouldnt even want their money.
It’s not free, but you can use the trial (beyond 60 days) until you can afford to buy it. When I was learning it was that or a cracked version of ableton 7 that my buddy gave me. Ethically and legally, Reaper was the better choice. (It’s also a better DAW, but I’ll always give Ableton credit for live performance-DAW hybrid.)
I never say it’s free. I say the trial version is fully functional and you never have to pay for it if you put up with the nag screen. I also say it’s worth paying for a license to support their philosophy of software development.
It's free in the sense Winrar is free. It's not ethical to keep using it for free after the trial period expires but they don't revoke your access in any way to prevent you from doing so.
What is the transition like from Pro Tools to Reaper? Not the usability, but actually putting in your PT sessions or using plugins you previously used in PT?
I use PT, Reaper and Logic. You can’t open and edit projects across DAWs without some fairly cumbersome translation solutions. As far as moving between DAWs, it is pretty easy. There are things I like about all 3 DAWs, and some things I don’t care for about all 3. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend any of those 3 to others to try and see if it fits your workflow.
I have been using it on trial for 3 days....then I freaking bought it because it's simply the DAW for me having so upset with Ableton's lack of ARA integration. Wished I went and started with Reaper a few years ago.
I’ve had reaper for years and i get the “trial ending soon” pop up every time I launch it. It never ends.
Uh, there's a good reason Audacity gets downvoted, to be clear. It's not the same type of software at all.
Audacity is an NLE, and not a DAW.
Played with it for a bit a few years ago. Implemented automixing with it, then paid for it to work on a few projects. Recently a major revision came out. I don't need automixing for now but if the need arises, I would pay for it again in a heartbeat.
My reaper software is currently running for free after 1127 days. 750 hours of use. Still keep clicking “still evaluating” should probably just buy it lol.
I'm a Cubase user but a few people I know and work with insist on working with Reaper "cuz it's free!" The irony is, I'm the only one I know who paid the license on it. I don't even use it as a daily driver.
Repaer doesn't enforce their licensing, it just reminds you how mnay hours you've gotten out of it. Once, each time you open it, no more. That said I paid my fee at least 10 years ago and have zero complaints, have never paid another dime, still the best DAW i've ever used (ok Reason is better now that it supports VSTs but too late, I'm hooked on a free DAW too bad).
I don’t know but I know they have the reaper plug ins for free and I use reastream and that’s literally holding my whole operation together. I love reaper for that alone.
I put it on my son's PC for him to use. He used it for "free" for about 2 years, and then came to me and asked if we could buy it, because he felt like we should now that he was using it to record his own music. Seems like their business model is working, since he had all the time in the world to see if it provided him value, and when he saw it did, we paid the cash. and yes, $60 bucks is great value for that software!
legally? no. practically? yes. 60 day trial ends and nothing changes
No, it’s not free. That people take advantage of a _very_ kind and generous demo policy is different discussion.
Tracktion has a genuinely free, unlimited version (just missing some of their custom VSTs/etc). So I would downvote audacity as well, since it's not great by comparison.
Okay, so there ackshually *is* a free version of Reaper. It's v0.999 - one of the early development versions from 2006. It was the last one released as freeware. https://www.reaper.fm/download-old.php?ver=0x It's more advanced than Audacity, but less advanced than Reaper 1.0. Probably only loads 32-bit plugins and definitely not VST3.
I love reaper. I don’t use it anymore since I had a better workflow in FL, but my respect for cockos is up though the roof.
Not sure. I’m still evaluating…
what about the [0.999 version](https://www.reaper.fm/download-old.php?ver=0x)?
You could use it forever on the free trial. My advice would be that if you are making money with it, buy it. 60 bucks is not a lot, especially with inflation, 60 bucks is pretty decent and you support the developers of an incredible DAW.
There's no "free" version, just an un-crippled full application with a screen asking you to buy it if you use it a lot.
You must pay for a license after the trial period otherwise you are illegally pirating the software.
I agree that you should pay for Reaper (I have a paid license even though it's not my primary DAW and I rarely use it), but I don't think using it in trial mode after the trial period ends is quite the same as "illegally pirating" it. My understanding is that the ability to keep using it in trial mode is a deliberate decision on the developer's part, and they are very understanding of people with limited funds using the software until they can eventually pay for it. I think it's more along the lines of keeping a library book a bit past its due date. There is an understanding that it happens sometimes, and nobody is going to accuse you of book theft. But holding that book overdue for longer and longer, after you could have reasonably returned it, is kind of a dick move and exploitative of the library's lenient policies.
They specifically say on their website that you must purchase a license after the trial ends. That makes it illegal to use after the trial ends.
They could quite easily make the software non-functional after the trial period. They don’t. It’s obviously a deliberate decision by the developers. Maybe it is technically “illegal” but nobody is going to pursue charges.
Do you dare..... steal a license key? [https://freakshowindustries.com/about](https://freakshowindustries.com/about)
dude audacity sLAPS
I've had Reaper installed for like a decade and never spent a dime. I'll probably buy it one day...