Complementary/alternative DAWs to Reason (for hardware sync, audio, new creative ideas)

Want to talk about music hardware or software that doesn't include Reason?
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jayhosking
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22 Sep 2018

Hey, Reason team!

Reason will always be my baby, and its flexibility/modularity are the bee's knees. However, I've been getting into hardware, and I'm also less poor than I used to be. The combination of the two has me shopping for alternatives for Reason (or to run Reason via Rewire).

The biggest pain of all is that Reason will only send MIDI clock to one instrument. Often I'm finding myself wishing I could run multiple hardware instruments at once, synched, so I can "perform" parameters on multiple instruments. A number of other DAWs I've looked into are able to send MIDI clock out to multiple instruments just fine, so I have no idea why Reason has this limitation; I can't imagine MIDI clock is particularly taxing on the system, but maybe I'm wrong?

The next biggest pain is that I was a ProTools user for years and years before they introduced their subscription model (and before Reason was really handling audio). As such, I miss the way ProTools handled audio, especially editing, and also that I could click somewhere else on screen without an instrument falling out of "record ready" mode. I've also found audio recording to be less solid than in PT, with occasional noise printed onto the tracks. I absolutely adore some of Reason's audio features, like pitch edit (which I recently used on a drum/melodic loop, and it managed to preserve the drums and catch the melodies!), and the way I can wire up an unlimited number of REs after the audio signal in all sorts of interesting ways (compare that to PT's limited plug-in spaces).

And finally, I'm always a sucker for new workflow ideas. I just caught a new episode of SonicState https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grOACdLR3go wherein a rep showed off Ableton Live's wavetable synth. It sounds more or less like your usual wavetable synths, but it had two great workflow features: a visual, 2.5D representation of the wavetables (so you can see the whole thing at once), and an intuitive modulation routing design, where whatever parameter you last clicked on shows up in the mod matrix and is ready to go. It also had some nice sounding unison options.

I don't have any trouble finishing songs, so I'm not worried about this being some new form of GAS. I just want to be able to sync up all of my hardware to play it live, and find audio a little less frustration, and look for new inspiration from my music software. I love software that's able to be both deeply manipulable and also fast/intuitive (so no Logic for me, hah). I've also played around with a Maschine Mk3 and love it, really really love that I'm not looking at a computer screen (which I do all day), but find its audio component really lacking, since it's more meant for loops and samples.

Thoughts? ProTools with Reason? Ableton Live (with Reason? does it Rewire with Live?)? Some other DAW or combination of software? I'd love it to be a set-up that is at least as solid as Reason. I know no DAW will do everything, but maybe a combination will get me closer to my desire here? Help me spend a little money!

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.

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Ahornberg
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Location: Vienna, Austria
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23 Sep 2018

I use Bitwig as my alternative DAW because of its modulator concept. "Phase 4" is an interesting new synth.

mojo
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Joined: 12 May 2015
Location: france

23 Sep 2018

I would have say bitwig too instead of live because of it's modulator system which allow lots of experimentations (isn't it what reason users love?).

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Ahornberg
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23 Sep 2018

mojo wrote:
23 Sep 2018
I would have say bitwig too instead of live because of it's modulator system which allow lots of experimentations (isn't it what reason users love?).
Yes, and in Bitwig it's so easy to modulate modulators that modulate modulators that modulate synth parameters ad infinitum.

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jayhosking
Posts: 613
Joined: 28 Nov 2016
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23 Sep 2018

Ahornberg wrote:
23 Sep 2018
mojo wrote:
23 Sep 2018
I would have say bitwig too instead of live because of it's modulator system which allow lots of experimentations (isn't it what reason users love?).
Yes, and in Bitwig it's so easy to modulate modulators that modulate modulators that modulate synth parameters ad infinitum.
Hey, thanks for the feedback! How have you found Bitwig for audio recording/editing and VST performance? I know virtually nothing about the program. I'll look into it now.

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Ahornberg
Posts: 1904
Joined: 15 Jan 2016
Location: Vienna, Austria
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23 Sep 2018

jayhosking wrote:
23 Sep 2018
Ahornberg wrote:
23 Sep 2018

Yes, and in Bitwig it's so easy to modulate modulators that modulate modulators that modulate synth parameters ad infinitum.
Hey, thanks for the feedback! How have you found Bitwig for audio recording/editing and VST performance? I know virtually nothing about the program. I'll look into it now.
Audio editing is very flexible and intuitive in Bitwig, but Reason's timestretch/pitchshift sounds better to my ears. VST performance depends on the choosen size of the audio buffer like in Ableton Live.

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