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Ask Justin Frankel
No reasonable question unanswered since 2009!

Suggested topics: programming, music, sleep, coffee, etc.

Note: please do not ask questions about REAPER features, bugs or scheduling, use the forums instead.


Name: Ask: Human (enter yes):
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Question: I'm not referring to REAPER, but your other stuffs, it seems you like giving out free software more than paid ones, and I respect that, but why? You want to help humanity? Also, how you feel about people selling JSFX plugins?
Asked by Question (154.161.244.x) on November 3 2025, 9:26am
Reply on November 3 2025, 3:12pm:
    I just like making software, and making it free is less work than making it paid ;) I'm cool with people selling their JSFX if they want to, as long as they wrote it all (if they based on it another person's work, then less so).
1 Comment...
Question: Have you listened to Boards of Canada? I think Satellite Anthem Icarus is a killer track!
Asked by Mr.mister (216.196.91.x) on November 3 2025, 12:30am
Reply on November 3 2025, 3:11pm:
    Not enough, I really should give them another go!
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Question: Your daw often makes others look poor in comparison, how do you sleep at night knowing this??
Asked by Someguy (216.196.91.x) on November 2 2025, 4:42pm
Reply on November 2 2025, 11:16pm:
    sneaky sneaky making a compliment a question like that... it's not one of the things that keeps me up at night, that's a separate list hah (boo).
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Question: Would the ratio of sold commercial vs discounted licenses a good statistical indicator for how many musicians actually can make a living from music?
Asked by sunblister (77.179.207.x) on November 1 2025, 5:59pm
Reply on November 1 2025, 6:50pm (edited at November 1 2025, 6:51pm):
    only if employees of large corporations count as musicians, and people who record music for fun at home are actually trying to make a living from it rather than because they enjoy it?
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Question: A place both wonderful and strange? Isn't it the womb of a woman? lol
Asked by Hmm🤔 (197.251.240.x) on November 1 2025, 10:51am
Reply on November 1 2025, 1:51pm:
    if you say so but that's not what we had in mind I don't think
2 Comments...
Question: Does Steinberg open-sourcing VST3 interest you at all? Does it open any kind of doors for future plans?
Asked by Aaron (71.150.210.x) on October 31 2025, 7:30pm
Reply on November 1 2025, 1:51pm:
    not really, but it simplifies development of open source plug-ins. they should do the same for VST2.
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Question: Could you explain the rationale behind making every output and input channel a dedicated variable within JSFX/EEL2, instead of using a single output/input variable? Wouldn’t an array-based make the handling of arbitrary channel counts more convenient, or is there a performance penalty associated with this approach?
Asked by capitalg (92.117.17.x) on October 31 2025, 11:03am
Reply on November 1 2025, 1:50pm:
    you can use spl(x) for this purpose, but it is a little slower
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Question: I've heard the "reaper sounds bad" thing a looot in many places, FB, Reddit, Instagram.. maybe this has something to do with the default playback and render lower resample modes? why not make r8 default?
Asked by alex (187.213.143.x) on October 29 2025, 9:23pm
Reply on October 30 2025, 1:48am:
    the default modes sound totally fine, I wouldn't read into it too much.
4 Comments...
Question: Hello, in our area, some people think Reaper has poor sound quality and is not as good as other mainstream DAWs. Should I argue fiercely with them? Because they have not conducted any objective tests and are only basing their opinions on theory, which can also be understood as being in the realm of metaphysics or vague speculation. Do you think it makes sense to argue fiercely with them about this topic?
Asked by cats (221.215.214.x) on October 28 2025, 5:05am
Reply on October 28 2025, 12:34pm:
    It's rarely worth arguing with people on the internet. Maybe just state the facts with instructions on how to test, but don't try to convince anybody beyond that? Otherwise it's a waste of time :/
4 Comments...
Question: Hi, in the twenty years since Reaper was founded, has there been a commercial company that has tried to buy Reaper from you, and if so, what price they would offer
Asked by nicola (167.234.251.x) on October 27 2025, 12:55pm
Reply on October 27 2025, 2:01pm (edited at October 27 2025, 2:02pm):
    Not really! Random emails from private equity but not sure that counts. We've made our lack of desire for such things pretty well known.
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Question: hey, what's your biggest regret in life / or work?
Asked by not jf (2.147.52.x) on October 27 2025, 7:17am
Reply on October 27 2025, 2:01pm:
    Hah I wish I had spent my 20s trail running and flossing my teeth, but I guess those are pretty minor regrets ;) There are other things (which I wouldn't want to talk about here) I wish I had been more aware of to deal with/help with, but that's life and who can say whether it would've mattered.
2 Comments...
Question: Hi Justin, I wonder how you keep all the project/solution files in sync when working with multiple versions of Visual Studio. Do you use a tool to generate them or is it done manually?
Asked by juni (89.182.202.x) on October 26 2025, 10:08pm
Reply on October 27 2025, 1:59pm (edited at October 28 2025, 11:14pm):
    This is something I've been putting off dealing with for years. We do it all manually now; we have 2 VC versions (2005 .vcproj, and 2013/2022 vcxproj for armEC), 2 Xcode versions (intel vs universal builds), and a makefile (linux/macOS dev). So adding new files is a bit of a pain, as a result some of our .cpp files are way too long. I suppose I could write a script to automate a lot of it, since most of it (other than Xcode) is done via text editors most of the time anyway.

    Update Oct 28: ok I made such a script (in php), phew, about 3 or 4 hours of work. Will have to add a ton of files to make it pay off.
1 Comment...
Question: I've been told that Reaper can import non-audio files like .txt.exe.doc to show waveforms. Is this true?
Asked by toby (167.234.251.x) on October 26 2025, 11:43am
Reply on October 26 2025, 2:12pm:
    it can support raw formats, but there wouldn't be any meaningful waveforms in .txt/.exe/.doc
1 Comment...
Question: How does what we don't know make us stronger? Doesn't ignorance makes the human race limited and weak?
Asked by Human (102.176.65.x) on October 25 2025, 2:14pm
Reply on October 25 2025, 2:53pm:
    It's being facetious
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Question: Hi, do you still run plain alsa ? Do you manage to configure it so that other apps can use it at the same time as reaper or do you not care about that?
Asked by kond (31.37.8.x) on October 25 2025, 1:39pm
Reply on October 25 2025, 2:53pm:
    Yes, and usually I don't want other apps using my device.
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Question: Just curious... How many lines of code does REAPER currently have?
Asked by Javier (195.235.163.x) on October 25 2025, 1:09pm
Reply on October 25 2025, 2:54pm:
    Somewhere around a million, including various libraries, give or take.
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Question: What do you think about this. gamingonlinux.com/2025/10/many-dev...
Asked by nicici (167.234.251.x) on October 25 2025, 12:46pm
Reply on October 25 2025, 2:56pm:
    Not sure why, but whatever, can't say I really care? Open source forking is a good thing yeah?
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Question: Just courious...
Asked by Javier (195.235.163.x) on October 24 2025, 11:18am
Reply on October 24 2025, 5:32pm:
    need a question
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Question: Have you ever improved the sound quality of Reaper, especially for versions 5.0, 6.0, and 7.0? Is the sound quality getting better and better? Or during the software updates, have there been any optimizations made to the sound quality? A considerable number of people here believe that the newer the version, the better the sound quality. Do you think this is a psychological effect?
Asked by nico (221.215.214.x) on October 23 2025, 5:00am
Reply on October 23 2025, 11:41am:
    yes and no -- in general the underlying quality when mixing unresampled, non-timestretched files hasn't changed. BUT, we have fixed various quality-related bugs that could occur in (generally rare) instances, improved the quality of the resampling support, added/updated timestretch engines, improved pan law curves, fixed bugs in ReaPlugs, etc. So in some instances, yes, but in most cases, if you load a project in 7.0 and 4.0, and it doesn't use features that don't exist in 4.0, then they should render to the same thing (or nearly so).
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Question: Hi, this formula creates a sine wave in JSFX, lfo = sin(phase * 2 * PI), where PI = 3.14159265359. Can you tell me what formula would create the "Parametric" waveform in REAPER's automation item? I'm trying to create that waveform in a modulation plugin. Thanks.
Asked by parametric (102.176.65.x) on October 22 2025, 6:55am
Reply on October 22 2025, 12:16pm:
    It would be a pain to do in JSFX, each section is a 'fast start'/'fast end' curve, which is a cubic curve... so you'd need to do something like (untested):
    
    function lfo(phase) (
      phase = (phase - floor(phase)) * 4; // phase is 0..4
      phase < 1 ?  1 - (1 - phase)*(1 - phase)*(1 - phase) : // 0..1
      phase < 2 ?  1 - (phase - 1)*(phase - 1)*(phase - 1) : // 1..0
      phase < 3 ? -1 + (3 - phase)*(3 - phase)*(3 - phase) : // 0..-1
                  -1 + (phase - 3)*(phase - 3)*(phase - 3) ; // -1..0
    );
    
    
    (hope it works!)
5 Comments...
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