Announcing Reason 13

[parma]

#bringbackblue

[ReasonUser]

Still no open beta available? Reason 13 will come out in less than 30 days. What exactly do you want to test in 30 days, does a open beta still make sense?

After the version 12 debacle, I’m surprised they announced a release date at all. Why risk repeating the same mistake? Just do the open beta and release it when it’s ready.

[bxbrkrz]

#bringbackblue

Only if we can switch on the fly with other skins, without a Reason restart...
Or introducing...

RS 13 SkinBuilder+. Your Infinite Rainbow Making Copilot. It's OK To Feel Blue

[jaeproduced]

Still no open beta available? Reason 13 will come out in less than 30 days. What exactly do you want to test in 30 days, does a open beta still make sense?

After the version 12 debacle, I’m surprised they announced a release date at all. Why risk repeating the same mistake? Just do the open beta and release it when it’s ready.

I agree I wouldn't have even release any Reason 13 announcement until the Superbooth24 conference last week just because the anticipation now is so high for the beta testing it's like the failed roadmap you would think they learned their lesson...smh

[scotward57]

So weird to be reading updates on this thread. I just bought a used copy of Kurt "Peff" Kurasaki's Power Tools for Reason 2.5. Why? Mainly for the nostalgia, but also a reminder of what it was like in the early 2000s. Reason was seen as cutting edge and there was an incredible amount of excitement within the growing Reason community. Back then, other DAWs felt and looked like spreadsheets compared to Reason. The hardware rack paradigm was unique, exciting!! But also Reason was the software studio that just worked! How many of you remember the 90s trying to make music on a PC? Crash, crash, crash! No real DSP power for the average PC user. But Reason brought real music production capabilities to the masses and made it fun and exciting!

Maybe it's lame to point fingers and yell "Appreciate what you have!!" but it's so strange to see so much complaining about the silliest of things. People actually threatening to quit Reason because of a color scheme?!?! Are you kidding me? Reason v12 and soon v13 is way more powerful/capable than what could have been imagined 20-25 years ago. Man I just don't get it!

Power to the Peff! It's fun going back to the days of just having Redrum, Dr. Rex, NN-XT, NN-19, Subtractor, Maelstrom, the fake Mackie mixer, the spiders, BV 512, Scream 4 and RV 7000 and those half rack effect devices. Not even a Combinator yet! But back then, none of those devices weren't seen as limited but just the beginnings of infinite possibilities. Maybe it was naive. But it was a lot more fun back then!

[mimidancer]

So weird to be reading updates on this thread. I just bought a used copy of Kurt "Peff" Kurasaki's Power Tools for Reason 2.5. Why? Mainly for the nostalgia, but also a reminder of what it was like in the early 2000s. Reason was seen as cutting edge and there was an incredible amount of excitement within the growing Reason community. Back then, other DAWs felt and looked like spreadsheets compared to Reason. The hardware rack paradigm was unique, exciting!! But also Reason was the software studio that just worked! How many of you remember the 90s trying to make music on a PC? Crash, crash, crash! No real DSP power for the average PC user. But Reason brought real music production capabilities to the masses and made it fun and exciting!

Maybe it's lame to point fingers and yell "Appreciate what you have!!" but it's so strange to see so much complaining about the silliest of things. People actually threatening to quit Reason because of a color scheme?!?! Are you kidding me? Reason v12 and soon v13 is way more powerful/capable than what could have been imagined 20-25 years ago. Man I just don't get it!

Power to the Peff! It's fun going back to the days of just having Redrum, Dr. Rex, NN-XT, NN-19, Subtractor, Maelstrom, the fake Mackie mixer, the spiders, BV 512, Scream 4 and RV 7000 and those half rack effect devices. Not even a Combinator yet! But back then, none of those devices weren't seen as limited but just the beginnings of infinite possibilities. Maybe it was naive. But it was a lot more fun back then!

I still see infinite possibilities.

[Quarmat]

[...]back then, none of those devices weren't seen as limited but just the beginnings of infinite possibilities. Maybe it was naive. But it was a lot more fun back then!

I still see infinite possibilities.

so endless that I sometimes feel overwhelmed.

Seriously, I agree with mimidancer: Reason is damn powerful.

Given the nature of the medium we write in I assume the majority of members are 40yo+.
Therefore we have all experienced the transition from hardware to softsynth. For me it's still revolutionary the idea that I can sit down at my computer, click ‘new document’ and after a few or many hours, have a file that is a done, finished, mixed, mastered song.

Gen Zs who use DAWs take -rightly- this for granted, just as we take the telephone or the TV for granted. But that does not change the point of the matter. To make awesome music you need much, much less than what R12 Soon to be 13 offers. What counts is the idea, the attitude, a minimum of instrumentation and craftsmanship.

All these complaints sound like retirees whining that they have changed the number of the bus stop.

Can Reason improve? Hell yes it can. Is Reason broken, non-functional, unusable? Not at all.

RS has shown a willingness to invest in the standalone-DAW aspect of its software. And that's enough for me to realise that those who feared Reason would be reduced to a rack to be used as an RRP inside another DAW have -thankfully- got it wrong.

More can be done, and probably will be done: these improvements in the sequencer and browser are a RS' investment in Reason as DAW, and investments are carefully considered. More will follow.

Now close the browser and open Reason and make some damn music for goodness sake?

[luckygreen]

So weird to be reading updates on this thread. I just bought a used copy of Kurt "Peff" Kurasaki's Power Tools for Reason 2.5. Why? Mainly for the nostalgia, but also a reminder of what it was like in the early 2000s. Reason was seen as cutting edge and there was an incredible amount of excitement within the growing Reason community. Back then, other DAWs felt and looked like spreadsheets compared to Reason. The hardware rack paradigm was unique, exciting!! But also Reason was the software studio that just worked! How many of you remember the 90s trying to make music on a PC? Crash, crash, crash! No real DSP power for the average PC user. But Reason brought real music production capabilities to the masses and made it fun and exciting!

Maybe it's lame to point fingers and yell "Appreciate what you have!!" but it's so strange to see so much complaining about the silliest of things. People actually threatening to quit Reason because of a color scheme?!?! Are you kidding me? Reason v12 and soon v13 is way more powerful/capable than what could have been imagined 20-25 years ago. Man I just don't get it!

Power to the Peff! It's fun going back to the days of just having Redrum, Dr. Rex, NN-XT, NN-19, Subtractor, Maelstrom, the fake Mackie mixer, the spiders, BV 512, Scream 4 and RV 7000 and those half rack effect devices. Not even a Combinator yet! But back then, none of those devices weren't seen as limited but just the beginnings of infinite possibilities. Maybe it was naive. But it was a lot more fun back then!

This is one romantic way of looking at Reason that I like. I have fun with projects where only Reason 1 or up to 2.5 devices are allowed, pretending Reason was one big instrument, a creative tool with limited complexity. But if you look at Reason as being a full grown digital audio workstation, the requirements are different.

Maybe try to ask someone higher up the hierarchy at Reason Studios, maybe Mattias, how they want Reason to be recognised. I bet they would answer that Reason should be seen as a fully-fledged DAW with all the features needed to comfortably produce music. Because Reason is a business with new features every major update that Reason Studios demand money for. That's ok, that's their business.

But if that is the case, then they need to be criticised for the way they are handling things like implementing basic features like eye-friendlly color-themes respectively the lack thereof.

[dusan.cani]

What happens if you click on the second clip showed in this screenshot ? Will it be displayed from the beginning of the editing window ? And if you open it in full height window mode and then you will return back to default view, would be scroll position always preserved ? If so, then I take my words back and I am glad that at least one major workflow issue is gone.

You've literally taken a screenshot from a video where the answer to you questions are being explained at the very second of where that screenshot is taken.

There is no demonstration, explanation or confirmation that second clip will be displayed from the beginning of the editing window if it's not in auto-zoom mode. It was only mentioned that clip will maintain the zoom if clip is opened by single click and double click will stretch the clip to whole window (I understand it as auto-zoom).

scroll.PNG (76.31 KiB) Viewed 1626 times

[dusan.cani]

I've been thinking: How does multilane editing work in R13? The lanes/tracks used to be where the tool panel is now.

This is good and very important question. It's no longer possible to directly switch between the tracks from editing view. Also functions like MUTE, SOLO, etc. are no directly accessible because that track area is replaced by tools functions now. This is very bad UI/UX decision which discards the previous editing workflow for full height window view.

switch.PNG (68.14 KiB) Viewed 1581 times

[chimp_spanner]

So weird to be reading updates on this thread. I just bought a used copy of Kurt "Peff" Kurasaki's Power Tools for Reason 2.5. Why? Mainly for the nostalgia, but also a reminder of what it was like in the early 2000s. Reason was seen as cutting edge and there was an incredible amount of excitement within the growing Reason community. Back then, other DAWs felt and looked like spreadsheets compared to Reason. The hardware rack paradigm was unique, exciting!! But also Reason was the software studio that just worked! How many of you remember the 90s trying to make music on a PC? Crash, crash, crash! No real DSP power for the average PC user. But Reason brought real music production capabilities to the masses and made it fun and exciting!

Maybe it's lame to point fingers and yell "Appreciate what you have!!" but it's so strange to see so much complaining about the silliest of things. People actually threatening to quit Reason because of a color scheme?!?! Are you kidding me? Reason v12 and soon v13 is way more powerful/capable than what could have been imagined 20-25 years ago. Man I just don't get it!

Power to the Peff! It's fun going back to the days of just having Redrum, Dr. Rex, NN-XT, NN-19, Subtractor, Maelstrom, the fake Mackie mixer, the spiders, BV 512, Scream 4 and RV 7000 and those half rack effect devices. Not even a Combinator yet! But back then, none of those devices weren't seen as limited but just the beginnings of infinite possibilities. Maybe it was naive. But it was a lot more fun back then!

As someone who started their musical journey on an Atari ST with Cubase 2 and a General MIDI sound module, I do have an immense appreciation for what we do have right now. If I ever moan it's only ever because I do genuinely love the software and want it to be SO good that other people love it too. I try often, and hard, to make a home in Cubase, Live, Logic. But I just have more fun in Reason. And I get work done in it. There's music and sound design on TV, in games, in films, that I did in Reason. All my favourite personal compositions are 100% Reason. I will always stand by it as a very capable piece of music making software. Wouldn't use it if it wasn't!

Of course...I reserve the right to politely grumble that it's 2024/v13 and we can't collapse all dev tabs with option+click, or hear long notes without triggering their note-on event, or hear notes when we nudge them with the arrow keys I don't care about Reason showing me which notes are in a scale or clip launching or AI or even video. I'm all about those boring-ass, largely invisible QoL improvements that reduce friction. Things that I would argue would benefit close to, if not 100% of users.

But then I'm also aware *every* DAW has weird omissions like that. I'm just getting into Logic and you can't search for an AU. Live still can't show search results from all subfolders when looking for a sample, making my Splice directory unusable. Can't one DAW just be 100% perfect? Is that too much to ask

[RobBarnett]

I agree with ChimpSpanner its the small QoL features that would make a big difference.

I also agree that colour scheme changes are meh! who cares.

However, I would point out that RS are providing a product and a service so its natural for folks to compare with similar service providers or products. After all we can get the same job done with a horse and cart, a moped, a 1.2 litre Ford Fiesta or a Tesla model Y - its natural progress.

I would ask folks who state Its powerful enough and better than we had in the 80's or days of tape, are you not upgrading then?

[bxbrkrz]

When you are young you don't have to know that the small QoL some of us have been asking for for years were basic stuff already implemented in the Atari's Pro 24 sequencer.
Also some of the people who don't 'complain' about the small QoL anymore have moved on. RRP for the win. You don't need to hope and wait for any major big updates for Reason. From that perspective it would not matter if you only have one theme in Reason. You already have hundreds you can flip around at anytime.

We care because we love

[chimp_spanner]

I agree with ChimpSpanner its the small QoL features that would make a big difference.

I also agree that colour scheme changes are meh! who cares.

However, I would point out that RS are providing a product and a service so its natural for folks to compare with similar service providers or products. After all we can get the same job done with a horse and cart, a moped, a 1.2 litre Ford Fiesta or a Tesla model Y - its natural progress.

I would ask folks who state Its powerful enough and better than we had in the 80's or days of tape, are you not upgrading then?

I personally really like the look of the new dark theme. I've only ever used dark in Reason up to now anyway. Blue never quite did it for me, but that's obviously entirely subjective!

As to your question though I mean, that's a tough one to answer. In an age of DAWs with all kinds of features like Live's generative/modifier stuff, Cubase's MIDI tool set and vari audio, Logic's pattern sequencer, FL's piano roll (hate it myself but I'm told it's great lol) I would describe Reason's sequencer as...meat and potatoes, with the side-note that Players do fill in a lot of gaps to some extent. I'd still disagree with anyone that says it's straight up not fit for purpose. You can record, edit and quantize MIDI notes. Record, warp, edit, comp and pitch correct audio. That is enough to make music. Plus the things Reason can do better than other DAWs, or that other DAWs can't (automation is fantastic imo, Player integration is sick, total audio and cv routing flexibility, etc.). But obviously I'd love the experience to be better. If only in the smallest of ways!

If Live had Reason's pitch edit, I'd say it's the next logical place for me to try and work. But I'd probably use RRP and a handful of VSTs for effects and instruments almost exclusively. Never got on with the stock instruments. They all look the same. Small, boring and informationally dense.

[selig]

You've literally taken a screenshot from a video where the answer to you questions are being explained at the very second of where that screenshot is taken.

There is no demonstration, explanation or confirmation that second clip will be displayed from the beginning of the editing window if it's not in auto-zoom mode. It was only mentioned that clip will maintain the zoom if clip is opened by single click and double click will stretch the clip to whole window (I understand it as auto-zoom).


scroll.PNG

Not sure I’m following, but double clicking on different clip while the edit window is open should center/zoom each clip, single clicking will move to the clip without adjusting zoom. So in both cases the clip editor should scroll so the clip starts at the far left of the window.

Side note: I still don’t get why clips are separate in the edit view - you should be able to edit across clips in the edit view IMO, so you can edit what you hear. As it is now, to move between clips on a track you have to double click on a note outside of the current clip (or anywhere in the none-selected clip) to get access to the other clip, then click again to make a selection, THEN do what you wanted to do in the first place…

[ab459]

but also a reminder of what it was like in the early 2000s. Reason was seen as cutting edge and there was an incredible amount of excitement within the growing Reason community. Back then, other DAWs felt and looked like spreadsheets compared to Reason. The hardware rack paradigm was unique, exciting!! But also Reason was the software studio that just worked! How many of you remember the 90s trying to make music on a PC? Crash, crash, crash! No real DSP power for the average PC user. But Reason brought real music production capabilities to the masses and made it fun and exciting

Yes similar thoughts was for me recently. I remember first time when i get and run R2.5, after enormously boring Cakewalk and Cubase of those times, it was like completely another deal, some sound quest or enthralling tool where sketches were born in hundreds lol. And I believe that the reason for this was the stunning visuals that captivate every newcomer (alongside with minimalistic \ not overdosen understandable sequencer part, and REX engine ofcourse). It was an exact hit on the target at that time.

[039166d]

I'm very Excited for reason 13, but I will be mainly using it as a plugin on BitWig. If only Reason had MPE support, maybe then, maybe I could use Reason DAW to play around.... but with an Osmose, Roli and all the new MPE stuff going on, I just wish I could MPE into Reason!

Maybe its not far in the future!

[jklok]

It looks like a cool update that takes everything in the right direction. The Ripley makes me drool quite a bit. Workflow updates are always challenging with age. I was happy on 9.2 for a while and saw the updates to 10 and 11 go by. Then when there was an offer to upgrade to 12 I went for it and have been so excited about it, the amount of power available on a humble Mac Mini M1 is breathtaking.

What would I like to see for the future? The addition of helper tools are great. Maybe a native OTT style reason compressor. It seems that using the current one introduces many artifacts. More players of any sort would be great,. Thinking that's where AI would come to life inside Reason?

So far keeping on 12 and thinking it's the best DAW ever, and that the future looks bright. Cheers!

[Bes]

i;m excited for reason 12

[michael.jaye]

#bringbackblue

Here you go:

https://images.app.goo.gl/2RZs4VW3wdMPs4b19

[Liimusic]

So the new browser is only for presets, rexfiles and samples? Device like effects, instruments and vst are only in the left browser visible? Is that correct?

[chimp_spanner]

So the new browser is only for presets, rexfiles and samples? Device like effects, instruments and vst are only in the left browser visible? Is that correct?

That is correct yeah.

[PhillipOrdonez]

So the new browser is only for presets, rexfiles and samples? Device like effects, instruments and vst are only in the left browser visible? Is that correct?

That is correct yeah.

Can we still search for devices on the left browser?

[RobC]

Wait up guys! I barely used R12 due to my slow ass studio renovation. D:

Also, shit! We think of the same effect processor ideas, and they created what I wanted. : D Well, not exactly, but close. Okay then! My REs will be cooler and sell better! x P Kidding! : )

Anyways, keep it coming!

[jlgrimes]

So weird to be reading updates on this thread. I just bought a used copy of Kurt "Peff" Kurasaki's Power Tools for Reason 2.5. Why? Mainly for the nostalgia, but also a reminder of what it was like in the early 2000s. Reason was seen as cutting edge and there was an incredible amount of excitement within the growing Reason community. Back then, other DAWs felt and looked like spreadsheets compared to Reason. The hardware rack paradigm was unique, exciting!! But also Reason was the software studio that just worked! How many of you remember the 90s trying to make music on a PC? Crash, crash, crash! No real DSP power for the average PC user. But Reason brought real music production capabilities to the masses and made it fun and exciting!

Maybe it's lame to point fingers and yell "Appreciate what you have!!" but it's so strange to see so much complaining about the silliest of things. People actually threatening to quit Reason because of a color scheme?!?! Are you kidding me? Reason v12 and soon v13 is way more powerful/capable than what could have been imagined 20-25 years ago. Man I just don't get it!

Power to the Peff! It's fun going back to the days of just having Redrum, Dr. Rex, NN-XT, NN-19, Subtractor, Maelstrom, the fake Mackie mixer, the spiders, BV 512, Scream 4 and RV 7000 and those half rack effect devices. Not even a Combinator yet! But back then, none of those devices weren't seen as limited but just the beginnings of infinite possibilities. Maybe it was naive. But it was a lot more fun back then!

While I dont remember the crashfest of the 90s, sequencers were more hardware based as far as working with synths (or at least the simple setup I had).


For simple one synth setups, they were pretty powerful and efficient for making music. The problem was when using more and more modules managing these rigs could be tedious. Reason solved alot of that being pretty much totally recallable. It was great being able to load up songs and they loaded up exactly how they sounded when you made the track, vs having to change sounds and adjust levels. This was somewhat doable in the 90s with Program Changes, which worked actually pretty well for midi synths with built in presets and you were just a preset browser, but if needing to make a custom Instrument Definition library things got tedious and you still had to deal with adjusting levels and things to sound exactly right.

But I do remember the crashfest of the 00s in the early VST years. I think that was the biggest reason Props decided against VSTs. Reason was the most stable thing you could buy back then. For some DAWs major releases meant a whole new series of bugs you had to deal with. I always knew whenever a DAW was completely bugging out I could come back to Reason and compose without the fear of crashing.

That said in the 10s things got more stable and efficient on the VST side. Alot of workarounds such as Track Freeze became standard on most DAWs allowing you to use CPU hogs when you needed them, easily convert to audio and keep working (and being able to unfreeze if you needed to change something). That was a pretty great concept on the VST side of things. Other DAWs while not becoming crash free became alot more stable. I think this is where Reason kind of got lost as it became a full fledged DAW and struggled to keep up with the rapid pace of advancement in other DAWs. It seems like Reason was really trying to keep up in the early and mid 10s, but around the late 10s and early 20s got into a more Instrument/Rack focused concept, which I think alienated some users who did enjoy the DAW and/or sequencer but just wanted some simple improvements in many cases as by then they had most of the synths they needed (or at least felt that way).