Reason 12 has arrived

[Eusantis]

I provide this link, for those who know Spanish, on how the news of the launch is commented on the Hispasonic website. There is I am Arkiva, and one of the biggest defenders of the program (from a critical perspective). It would be nice if the developers read it, to try to improve certain gaps in the program in the future.

https://www.hispasonic.com/noticias/rea ... adas/45952

[avasopht]

Running Reason 12 at 100% zoom should theoretically just display standard resolution assets. Could be wrong, though.

The same assets, but still rendered via the GPU.

I don't see why this should be a problem though, because that's how Cocoa and many GUIs render. This is the workload integrated GPUs are made for.

[PhillipOrdonez]

Thanks. Apparently everyone there writes the same things as they do here, for the most part (haven't read the whole thread). Vst3, and the fear of becoming just a plugin. It is like reading this forum but in Spanish. Feels weird I learnt something new too, I didn't know how to say workflow in Spanish

[SpeculationStudios]

Hello. I was hoping Reason Studios would surprise us with some unannounced DAW/Sequencer upgrades and maybe midi out, VST3...but I realize for those using Reason 12 as a plugin this is a good update.

My question is about the promised VST3 implementation. Mattias said they were looking to add that before the end of the year. Will that be for all Reason 12 license holders or will that only be a feature for Reason+ subscribers and everyone else will have to pay for that in Reason 13?

I ask because when Reason 11 came out, and people were griping that the DAW was being abandoned, I didn't believe it. I bought Reason 11 assuming that since the Reason plugin required a DAW to have VST3 support, surely it would be a professional embarrassment not to have their own DAW supporting VST3, and full VST support would come quickly in a point update. However, if I remember correctly all of Reason 11 updates were bug fixes and new features were for subscribers only. Reason Studios seems to be making its customers pay for full upgrades to get basic features included in other DAWs. Am I expected to consider Reason 12 a DAW? I feel like I'm being pushed to purchase Studio One, Bitwig or Ableton as a DAW to use Reason as a plugin in these other DAWs.

Since I don't have another DAW, I feel I should save the money and skip Reason 12. The new combinator is the only thing of value to me, but its not a $130 value when other DAWs can do so much more.

[EnochLight]

My question is about the promised VST3 implementation. Mattias said they were looking to add that before the end of the year. Will that be for all Reason 12 license holders or will that only be a feature for Reason+ subscribers and everyone else will have to pay for that in Reason 13?

What makes you think it would only be a paid update in Reason 13 just to get alleged VST3 support? If it is indeed added by the end of 2021 (something I would be pleasantly surprised about), it would likely be a 12.x update, not 13. We'll probably be in Reason 12.x for the next 18 months at least - probably 2023.

Now the real question is: if VST3 support is added in 12.x, then will perpetual license holders get it immediately, or will they need to get in line behind Reason+ subscribers who get new features first? I'd answer: very likely, R+ subscribers will get it first and then perpetual license holders will get it sometime down the line (for free is my best estimate). How long that takes is anyone's guess. Might be 2022 for perpetual license holders. This is all very new, so we're all waiting to see how things like this play out.

[ab459]

Wanted to ask - those RE what updated recently (with HD graphics) will they still compatible with R11 ?

[EnochLight]

Wanted to ask - those RE what updated recently (with HD graphics) will they still compatible with R11 ?

Yes. I still have Reason 11 Suite installed, and all of my RE's show up fine even though I have updated them all to hi-res and have an R+ sub.

[ab459]

Wanted to ask - those RE what updated recently (with HD graphics) will they still compatible with R11 ?

Yes. I still have Reason 11 Suite installed, and all of my RE's show up fine even though I have updated them all to hi-res and have an R+ sub.

Ok thanks.

[avasopht]

Wanted to ask - those RE what updated recently (with HD graphics) will they still compatible with R11 ?

Yes (without HD graphics, of course).

[ab459]

Wanted to ask - those RE what updated recently (with HD graphics) will they still compatible with R11 ?

Yes (without HD graphics, of course).

Yes it's understandable. Well that ok that it compatible. Frankly, i'm starts worry a bit about size of updated dll's. Just now compared, Arcus User Knobs before HD was 6mb, now almost 100mb (20 times ?). So, if imagine that all wendors update stuff to hd, and considering amount of RE's dlls at disk, it can be some problem. Maybe in the future it will be possible to compress this kind of graphics inside files somehow more?

[Creativemind]

Happy release day! Just like every release, I wrote some words: https://www.reasonstudios.com/blog/comb ... -reason-12

Hi Mattias!

Are there any updates to the Reason Rack Plug-In in the pipelines?

I'm really hoping that we get the ability to sample directly into NN-19, NN-XT, Mimic etc, that we can use vst's in Combinators one day, that the rack plug-in can be zoomed too and have a built undo history window.

[SpeculationStudios]

My question is about the promised VST3 implementation. Mattias said they were looking to add that before the end of the year. Will that be for all Reason 12 license holders or will that only be a feature for Reason+ subscribers and everyone else will have to pay for that in Reason 13?

What makes you think it would only be a paid update in Reason 13 just to get alleged VST3 support? If it is indeed added by the end of 2021 (something I would be pleasantly surprised about), it would likely be a 12.x update, not 13. We'll probably be in Reason 12.x for the next 18 months at least - probably 2023.

Now the real question is: if VST3 support is added in 12.x, then will perpetual license holders get it immediately, or will they need to get in line behind Reason+ subscribers who get new features first? I'd answer: very likely, R+ subscribers will get it first and then perpetual license holders will get it sometime down the line (for free is my best estimate). How long that takes is anyone's guess. Might be 2022 for perpetual license holders. This is all very new, so we're all waiting to see how things like this play out.

Well, I ask (and I may be wrong), because I'm not aware of any new features that were previewed to Reason+ subscribers that then became a point update for Reason 11 owners. We had to wait for Reason 12. I'm not saying that isn't fair. However, my concern is that Reason 12 point updates will mostly be for fixing bugs and not new features unless you are a subscriber. So, one might have to wait until Reason 13 for something like VST3.
Yes, it seems silly to make something like that a major update, but that's how crossfades were done. One might have thought VST3 would have been a point update for 11 since the plugin rack was introduced in 11 as a VST3-only. I could be forgetting something, but it seems like just about all of Reason 11's point updates were for bug fixes and new features remained subscription only until the new full release.

[avasopht]

Well, I ask (and I may be wrong), because I'm not aware of any new features that were previewed to Reason+ subscribers that then became a point update for Reason 11 owners. We had to wait for Reason 12. I'm not saying that isn't fair. However, my concern is that Reason 12 point updates will mostly be for fixing bugs and not new features unless you are a subscriber. So, one might have to wait until Reason 13 for something like VST3.
Yes, it seems silly to make something like that a major update, but that's how crossfades were done. One might have thought VST3 would have been a point update for 11 since the plugin rack was introduced in 11 as a VST3-only. I could be forgetting something, but it seems like just about all of Reason 11's point updates were for bug fixes and new features remained subscription only until the new full release.

There are three common types of point updates in the form of X.Y.Z

Z updates are patches (bugfixes)
Y updates feature updates which can be small (knob added) or large (VST support, Rack Extensions, Mastering Suite)
X major updates (typically new features that are not backwards compatible)

VSTs were introduced at Reason 9.5 (i.e. X=9, Y=5, Z=0).

Major features aren't usually introduced in Y updates. Typically a major update is released, development begins on the next major update. That is how software development typically works. If a team commits to releasing another major feature as a Y update, that just means that X updates have fewer features as they have limited time, so releasing a major feature as a Y update must come at a cost to the size of the X updates.

[Eusantis]

The main problem for me, and I understand that for many users of Reason in general and of this version 12 in particular, is that a year after (how long have they had), from the launch of Apple's M1 computers, Reason still does not work good with them.

Either I am very ignorant, or the Apple are the standard of the musicians, and right now the M1 are the standard of Apple computers. The logical rule of three is that if Reasonstudios doesn't fix this, it will be suicide for the brand.

With my Apple Macbook pro with 16 gigs of ram, I see that projects that do not even reach the middle of the load meter of the cpu don´t heard well, if I do not use a very high sample rate.

So is it going to take a long time to fix such a basic problem?

[ProfessaKaos]

I upgraded to R11 from 9.5 within the grace period so got R12 yesterday.
Is it to be expected that R12 uses more CPU than R11 for the exact same song? I saw huge performance improvements when going from 9.5 to 11 so it's a pity to see these gains diminished. R12 is better than R9, but still worse than R11 performance wise.

Edit: on further examination I find that while it still uses more CPU than R11 I'm happy to see that my fourth CPU core finally does something instead of just idling and that also my GPU does some graphical lifting! I didn't expect GPU graphics to be in the first stable. However I would've expected that the CPU usage would go down a little when handling over some of the graphical workload to the GPU plus also that the fourth core now does some work, but that is not what I'm seeing on a core by core basis.

Is hyperthreading enabled in R12? This is on set to on by default when R12 has been installed, in most (if not all) cases hyperthreading enabled results in higher CPU. usage.

[sublunar]

Yeah.. as someone who's still on v10, it looks like v12 is gonna be a no from me, dawg.

The only thing in the past two updates that I'm semi-exicted about is...

Audio clip crossfades...

Yes. The basic-as-f@ck-and-standard-part-of-literally-every-other-DAW-on-the-planet... audio crossfades... introduced in Reason version eleven*. That's the only thing they've put out in *checks calendar* 4 years that has me considering opening up my wallet.

*"Comp edit" is a tedious joke of an audio editor.

I love Reason. I really do. But the more serious work I do in it the more time I spend being frustrated with how tedious certain actions are. Europa is damn good and so are a handful of other newer things that caused me to justify buying v10 (after holding out from v8). But this is such a lame update. The graphics fix is just that.. a fix. Should have been a point release and not a whole version. Basic fixes shouldn't be paid updates. Combinator v2 is cool I guess but again, that should have probably come out in a point update (a long ass time ago) or at least paired with far more interesting/useful features to justify the cost of an "upgrade".

As for me, I would instantly upgrade if they paid half as much attention to the sequencer/overall functionality as they do the shiny toys that frankly we are overloaded with at this point. And if they would do something new/different/cool like introduce a *real* audio editor in to the program, that would be exciting. Like when you click on an automation and have the option to open it in the editor.. but for audio. And it pulls up menus something along the lines of Adobe Audition / Sound Forge / Wavelab with some basic but decent audio editing options. As it is, since Reason propjects store the recorded waveforms inside itself (and thus causes endless file size bloating), you have to export them to get them into a real audio editor.

If I wasn't so close to finishing so many projects in Reason, after seeing what's in/what's not in this update, I would just throw in the towel now and buy Studio One or something and just use RRP for whatever remnants of Reason I'm still attached to. Sigh.

[dvdrtldg]

I think 12 is fine. I might not have bothered for $129, but I upgraded to 11 at a discount back in May, so this is like a freebie for me. Mimic is fun, hi res is nice, the new combi is very useful with its extra controls. And if VST3 support is coming as a point update, yay for that

If I have a nitpick, it's all the choose-your-own-adventure stuff with the customisable combi skins, colours, knob styles etc. The ability to spend hours making your combinators look WAY COOL seems to be kinda playing into the hands of the "Reason is a toy" crowd. Just give me functionality that looks reasonably well designed and I'll get on with making music. Which, of course, I already have the option to do, nobody's making me dick around with pretty colours & uploadable backgrounds. I'm just saying that customisable combinators (i.e. customisable in terms of appearance, not function) strikes me as more of a gimmick than a serious selling point

[QVprod]

If I have a nitpick, it's all the choose-your-own-adventure stuff with the customisable combi skins, colours, knob styles etc. The ability to spend hours making your combinators look WAY COOL seems to be kinda playing into the hands of the "Reason is a toy" crowd. Just give me functionality that looks reasonably well designed and I'll get on with making music. Which, of course, I already have the option to do, nobody's making me dick around with pretty colours & uploadable backgrounds. I'm just saying that customisable combinators (i.e. customisable in terms of appearance, not function) strikes me as more of a gimmick than a serious selling point

Tell that to the Reaper crowd with whole skins for the program. Studio One also has a pretty significant color customizing feature. I think it's what you make it. For people selling refills, it's incredible for design. For those doing it for fun...well if they're making music for fun anyway, why not? That aside, the backdrop feature isn't an entirely new one. Remember the original combinator can load backdrops as well. I believe the main feature is the functional customizability.

[Gardinski]

Back when R+ was launching, I vaguely remember some discussion about the length of time purchasers of a perpetual license upgrade would continue to receive product updates. My brain seems to have temporarily seized up, and I can't remember if it was for 12 months or 18 months from the date of purchase/upgrade.

(Obviously, back in the old days, point updates were included for the lifespan of a given edition, but I'm sure that changed with the advent of the new system.)

Does anyone remember the details? I can't seem to find any reference to this on the sales pages. I'm on the brink of buying the upgrade, but I have about another six weeks to go on the R+ offer, so if we're limited to 12 months of updates from the date of purchase it would make more sense to hold back until the six weeks have elapsed, in order to maximise coverage. Any idea, guys?

[EnochLight]

Either I am very ignorant, or the Apple are the standard of the musicians, and right now the M1 are the standard of Apple computers. The logical rule of three is that if Reasonstudios doesn't fix this, it will be suicide for the brand.

Few things:

1. Apple's M1 platform is not "the standard" IMHO - but it is brand new. Therefore, it will take time - and lots of it - to conform to that new platform. Patience, Padawan.

2. MacOS is *NOT* the "standard of musicians". This is a misconception. Windows OS still occupies the vast majority of desktop computers, and as a result - most musicians - statistically - are on Windows. Sorry son, you're in the minority.

hahahahahahaahah.JPG (78.27 KiB) Viewed 27703 times

[dvdrtldg]

If I have a nitpick, it's all the choose-your-own-adventure stuff with the customisable combi skins, colours, knob styles etc. The ability to spend hours making your combinators look WAY COOL seems to be kinda playing into the hands of the "Reason is a toy" crowd. Just give me functionality that looks reasonably well designed and I'll get on with making music. Which, of course, I already have the option to do, nobody's making me dick around with pretty colours & uploadable backgrounds. I'm just saying that customisable combinators (i.e. customisable in terms of appearance, not function) strikes me as more of a gimmick than a serious selling point

Tell that to the Reaper crowd with whole skins for the program. Studio One also has a pretty significant color customizing feature. I think it's what you make it. For people selling refills, it's incredible for design. For those doing it for fun...well if they're making music for fun anyway, why not? That aside, the backdrop feature isn't an entirely new one. Remember the original combinator can load backdrops as well. I believe the main feature is the functional customizability.

Completely agree - I guess I'm one of those people who feel that as awesome as Reason is, it's still lacking a lot of basic features and I'd love to see them implemented ahead of the bells & whistles. Every time they roll out something that seems a bit redundant (like combi modification, as fun as it is), I think "Hey, the time spent on that could have been spent on something really useful/necessary!"

It's a small point, though. Overall I'm a happy Reason user

[PropitiousME]

Yeah.. as someone who's still on v10, it looks like v12 is gonna be a no from me, dawg.

The only thing in the past two updates that I'm semi-exicted about is...

Audio clip crossfades...

Yes. The basic-as-f@ck-and-standard-part-of-literally-every-other-DAW-on-the-planet... audio crossfades... introduced in Reason version eleven*. That's the only thing they've put out in *checks calendar* 4 years that has me considering opening up my wallet.

*"Comp edit" is a tedious joke of an audio editor.

I love Reason. I really do. But the more serious work I do in it the more time I spend being frustrated with how tedious certain actions are. Europa is damn good and so are a handful of other newer things that caused me to justify buying v10 (after holding out from v8). But this is such a lame update. The graphics fix is just that.. a fix. Should have been a point release and not a whole version. Basic fixes shouldn't be paid updates. Combinator v2 is cool I guess but again, that should have probably come out in a point update (a long ass time ago) or at least paired with far more interesting/useful features to justify the cost of an "upgrade".

As for me, I would instantly upgrade if they paid half as much attention to the sequencer/overall functionality as they do the shiny toys that frankly we are overloaded with at this point. And if they would do something new/different/cool like introduce a *real* audio editor in to the program, that would be exciting. Like when you click on an automation and have the option to open it in the editor.. but for audio. And it pulls up menus something along the lines of Adobe Audition / Sound Forge / Wavelab with some basic but decent audio editing options. As it is, since Reason propjects store the recorded waveforms inside itself (and thus causes endless file size bloating), you have to export them to get them into a real audio editor.

If I wasn't so close to finishing so many projects in Reason, after seeing what's in/what's not in this update, I would just throw in the towel now and buy Studio One or something and just use RRP for whatever remnants of Reason I'm still attached to. Sigh.

Good post, just keepin' it real. Pretty much resonates with my own sentiment. So much device bloat at this stage and such sparse love for the DAW / editing / workflow of things. They must have picked up a good chunk of capital off the RRP launch to continue leaving fundamentals on the back burner like they are IMO (RE: speculation). That or the other side of the development is just cost prohibitive in some way. Sometimes, corporate willing, *NEW* customer churn is high enough that companies stop caring about their core / long term consumer experience so long as the path of less overhead and increased margins remains viable. Money makes the world go around... even if it stems from a never ending churn of new customers through SaaS models (though I'd argue this is usually associated with a certain level of internal toxicity / culture as a result). Prob fair to say the developers put their heart and soul in what they do, so I'm sure it's not easy for them either. Nobody likes their hands tied. I like the enthusiasm over at RS, who knows. *Shrug*

Anyways, keep pushing this feedback. RS has work to do and this is what they need to read. Combinator 2 and Mimic were good updates, but things like High-Res and browser improvements don't carry water as it comes to charging your customer base. You can't flesh out a full release with cheap updates like that in this market (even if they are development intensive, sorry). I've said it elsewhere, but we'll see if they put their money where their mouth is by EOY with Reason+. Lets see how they reinvest those dollars going into Q4 2021 and Q1 2022. Doesn't seem unreasonable to expect more than a few *bug* fixes between now and then. I think most criticism on here comes from a good place even if some of it comes off abrasive at times. Keep pressing them. Just shows how passionate some people are about Reason.

I got a couple copies of Presonus Studio One Artist 4 if you want one. Would give you a base to work up from. I think the license transfer is just $25, but I'd cut it over to a valid email / Presonus account first if you want it for a rainy day. Something you could experiment with RRP on and get your juices flowing again after you catch up on those current projects in Reason. See if that isn't the way forward for you and all. You seem pretty established here, so don't really mind taking the risk on my end. Artist looks to support VST: https://www.presonus.com/products/Studi ... e-versions.

PM me if interested man.

[Carambo]

Either I am very ignorant, or the Apple are the standard of the musicians, and right now the M1 are the standard of Apple computers. The logical rule of three is that if Reasonstudios doesn't fix this, it will be suicide for the brand.

Few things:

1. Apple's M1 platform is not "the standard" IMHO - but it is brand new. Therefore, it will take time - and lots of it - to conform to that new platform. Patience, Padawan.

2. MacOS is *NOT* the "standard of musicians". This is a misconception. Windows OS still occupies the vast majority of desktop computers, and as a result - most musicians - statistically - are on Windows. Sorry son, you're in the minority.

hahahahahahaahah.JPG

The new M1 MacBook Pro range will come in few weeks and from there, there will be no other chips on Macs available, it will be the new standard, all editors have been releasing their update for M1 chips in the last 12 months and will have to speed up with this major new release of MacBook Pro. Release expected very soon.
Of course Windows has the biggest market share by far, think about all the companies in the world using windows, but for Music/Design/Video it's not the same story, I wouldn't say it's the "standard of musician" but it has a bigger market share in this segment compare to the entire market, probably 40%.

[ludz]

The new combinator and the zooming features have been along my top wishes for reason for a while; I think Reason is all about the rack and if they focused a little bit more on making that work in a smarter way I think it would be great despite the shortcomings when it comes to the timeline.
Luckily I switched to bitwig a couple years ago so I’m now using reason mostly as a plugin, but with 12 I hoped things would have been a bit different; instead, I find the way they went about these new options is a bit odd.

Not only the zooming is stepped, you also have to go click on a menu for it(!) I would have assumed one could have done something a la VCVrack, where you can just hold option/ctrl and scroll…or at the very least a hotkey combination like in a browser…this is beyond unpractical…

The combinator thing is fun…in theory…Then again it’s a bit clunky and outdated.
One can’t even simply select multiple elements by dragging the mouse over them (or maybe we can and I didn’t notice?) nor copy/pasting a selection?
The all process of creating your own combinator quickly becomes a bunch of useless clicking and dragging, it’s frustrating and time consuming for no reason.
I’d also like to be simply able to generate an infinite amount of switches, knobs and whatnot; I hit the roof pretty much immediately the first time I played around with it.
….
AND HOW ISN’T THERE AN OPTION TO MAKE BUTTONS BEHAVE IN A TOGGLE/BANG FASHION YET?! Ultimately I have a workaround for that because I have a controller that let me set the behaviour of its buttons, but that is such a basic thing…

[RoryM0]

The release of Reason 12 feels somewhat muted.