Reaper is $60 US, and so very affordable. I haven’t used Audition, but I have used Studio One, Garage Band, Ableton Live, Audacity and Reaper, and Reaper is the one I stick with.
Here are several reasons why this Booth Junkie loves Reaper:
It is immensely customizable. If there is anything you don’t like about the interface you can probably change it. Want different hotkeys? Go for it. Want meters on the right instead of the bottom? No Problem Want to change which buttons appear as your common functions? Cool with them. Want to get rid of the “bars and measures” grid? Yuup. On it goes. Watch the “Reaper for Radio” playlist by Jeff Emtman - particularly the last video in the playlist for examples.
Templates. I don’t know about Audition, But Reaper has some amazing time saving templates. There is a project template so every project starts up with the exact settings you like. Each VST has presets you can save and default, so once you get your compressor and gate and EQ set to match your voice and studio you can save them as defaults. It also has Chains that you can set that set up all your preferred VSTs with the defaults, in the order that you want them.
Its affordable. at $60US it’s hard to beat that price!
It’s fast. with the UI, Hotkeys, defaults, templates, chains etc… I can work fast. I audition a LOT on voices.com, and there time is absolutely of the essence. The faster you can get recording, and mastering the earlier you get in the list and the better chances you have of getting selected. Here is my workflow:
Open reaper, new project– this prompts me to save, and opens a blank project template with my preferred UI. No snapping, no bars and measures, Minimal buttons on my common buttons list.
Ctrl-T – I have this set to create a track, insert my mic from my interface and Auto-arm it for recording. It inserts my preferred FX at this time, and arms them.
Record – Do your thing.
Auto-punch – Anything I need to re-record, I highlight, Right click the record button and select auto punch. Click the cursor a few seconds before to get my lead in, and it will re-record as a new take just in that section.
Ripple Edit - Click one of the few buttons I have on my UI - Ripple edit. Listen to my track, hit “S” (a hotkey I mapped) to split the track whenever I want to remove something. The track automatically rejoins after I remove the bad section.
FX Chain - It was inserted when I armed the track, I only have to make minor tweaks, not set up the whole thing.
Render – Once I’ve edited and listened back, I bounce the final to disk. If it’s voices.com I bounce to MP3, everyone else gets WAV.
I’m done, and I can submit. I can get an 30 sec audition completed within 3 or 4 minutes, which is critical when there are 100 other VA’s doing the exact same thing at the exact same time, competing against me.