Anyone Used Reaper on a Mac?

Hi,
I've consistently had problems getting good conversions to .WAVs and .MP3s from Garageband (the problem is that the songs sound great in GB, but awful when 'mastered' to .WAV or .MP3. I have never had this problem in the past when mastering songs to all manner of media using various different kinds of multitrackers).

So, rather than spending any more time fooling around with Garageband (which I love), I thought that I might try to use Reaper as my DAW, and wanted to ask anyone who might be using Reaper with their Macs some specific questions:

1. Is it possible to export directly to .WAV or .MP3 directly from Reaper (i.e., without going through iTunes)?

2. Does Reaper have the ability to burn directly to a CD without going through a conversion process (i.e., without converting files to .WAV or .MP3, CDA or another format)? I guess I'm asking whether or not Reaper has this kind of functionality, and if it does, whether or not it can do this kind of thing in one operation or whether it requires the Mac to take care of burning a CD.

3. Are there any specific advantages/disadvantages of using Reaper on a Mac that people could talk about?

Thanks,
GVDV.

jackerin said:

I'm guessing one or more tracks are clipping, Garageband normalizes the loudest points to be at 0db, so if you have anything going over that (ie. the track volume clips to red) you'll not be getting in the mixdown what you hear in the GB playback.

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Hi jackerin,
Thanks for the reply, but I have tried many, many things to address the problems I have had with mediocre sounding exports from GarageBand (including looking at 'clipping', normalization, bitrate, and a few other things).

Hence my questions being about Reaper.

Have you had any experience with Reaper, and if so, can you comment on any of the questions that I asked?

Thanks,
GVDV.

musio said:

Should be nothing wrong in the conversion from GB. Exporting in any programme 'should' result in what you hear when you playback in the sequencer, GB or reaper.

I agree with the 2nd poster. Don't clip the output, take of all normalisation, maybe put a limiter on the master bus.

If you can't get it right in GB, reaper might well be opening another can of worms

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As I said in my reply to Jackerin,
"I have tried many, many things to address the problems I have had with mediocre sounding exports from GarageBand (including looking at 'clipping', normalization, bitrate, and a few other things).

Hence my questions being about Reaper.

Have you had any experience with Reaper, and if so, can you comment on any of the questions that I asked?"

As is obvious from my original post, this is a thread about using Reaper on a Mac, therefore, please respond if you have any experience of that and if you have any comments about the questions I asked.

Thanks.