VST's - Reason discussion

[Stranger.]

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[avasopht]

As a VST developer you need to shell out $50/mo or $999 for a JUCE licence (the GUI toolkit for VSTs) and there's only a few "features" Rack Extensions trade in exchange for forward compatibility, cross platform and CPU architecture support, oh and a kick ass testing environment, 3d ui designer and plenty of other perks.

Maybe ask the repeat offenders why they continue to make Rack Extensions and not VSTs.

[Stranger.]

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[EnochLight]

If people actually look at PH history,they will see clearly they worked in partnership with Steinberg to develop and market audio soft+hardwares. Steinberg always held the reigns,but have 'allowed' PH to progress in their own directions.(who knows what deals were struck by these guys behind doors )

Just wanted to chime in.. Propellerhead have been an independent company that has had little to do with Steinberg for almost 18 years. They developed the ReWire spec jointly back in 1998, but that's about it. It's free to license, BTW. As for developing "audio soft+hardwares", they did ReBirth (ReWire was specifically designed with that in mind just to get it into Cubase). I can't recall any other audio soft+hardwares that Propellerhead did until they released Reason (which again relied on ReWire to get into Cubase, along with any other DAW makers that licensed the tech).

Steinberg has never "held the reigns" with Propellerhead (at least not for 18 years), which is specifically why you don't see VST (a Steinberg created protocol) being used in Reason, and we got Rack Extensions instead. Just say'n!

[Stranger.]

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[normen]

Thing is,RE's aint upto the same spec of operations a VST-simple.

VST has no "operations", VST isn't even code. VST plugins use the operating system to _do_ things, thats why they are platform dependent.

[EnochLight]

and we got Rack Extensions instead. Just say'n!

Thing is,RE's aint upto the same spec of operations a VST-simple.
It's a new born development,maybe that's why companies like Korg and Roland have kinda shyed//veered away from it??

No one is debating that RE's have a metric shit ton of features missing in comparison to VST, that's for sure. But that wasn't the point. The point was, Propellerhead couldn't be more far removed from anything Steinberg, which is why you didn't get VST in Reason and we got Propellerhead's own technology instead.

As for why companies like Korg and Roland shied away, it's anyone's guess. Clearly making products (and presumably money) off of RE's doesn't work for everyone. Thankfully we have others stepping in (both big name and indie) and providing some great RE's in the meantime.

Also in the meantime, I'll be getting my Permut8, Spire, and Serum (among others) on in Studio One and bouncing tracks to Reason!

[Stranger.]

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[Stranger.]

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[normen]

Norm,some of your replies are questionable-at best.. lol doh.
Lots of Luv xXx.

VST is a C++ interface, no actual code in there. But that said, I don't exactly know what "RE's aint upto the same spec of operations a VST-simple." is actually supposed to mean, I mean I'm not a native english speaker so maybe the subtleties of your sentence went by me.

[avasopht]

VST has no "operations", VST isn't even code. VST plugins use the operating system to _do_ things, thats why they are platform dependent.

Norm,some of your replies are questionable-at best.. lol doh.
Lots of Luv xXx.

There's nothing questionable about it, as normen says, VST isn't code but an interface. You see VSTs showing displays, but that's not a feature of VSTs but the operating system. What VST is is the language for programs and plugins to communicate audio and midi events.

Naturally if you're not familiar with thin layer protocols then it is easy to fall fowl to misconceptions on the role of what the VST specification "does".

[ScuzzyEye]

What VST is is the language for programs and plugins to communicate audio and midi events.

And it barely does that. There's a lot of work to be done to handle all the possible audio formats and channel counts, and decode the MIDI data.

[avasopht]

What VST is is the language for programs and plugins to communicate audio and midi events.

And it barely does that. There's a lot of work to be done to handle all the possible audio formats and channel counts, and decode the MIDI data.

A subtle reminder that sometimes *less is more (or how market / brand dominance can shoehorn a technology)

*: actually more likely worse is better

[EnochLight]

Also in the meantime, I'll be getting my Permut8, Spire, and Serum (among others) on in Studio One and bouncing tracks to Reason!

^That right there is my point- YOUR going elsewhere.
Do you not want that in ason,or are you happy to keep Rewiring?

I don't ReWire, actually. But to answer your question, I would rather have them as Rack Extensions so they fit right in Reason's rack like any other native device, among other perks (1-click sync all updates/licensing, etc).

[platzangst]

Let me just interject a bit of a digression here - because a lot of this thread, once you break it down to its essentials, is basically one set of Reason users trying to convince another set of Reason users (and vice versa) about their respective positions. If you say, for example, that "the Reason users who do not want VST support don't have to use it!", you aren't actually addressing the root cause of there being no VST support in Reason - which is a decision by the developers (Props). (There's other user-based arguments besides that one, that was just the handiest and most obvious example.) And while it's rumored that PH folks look in here from time to time, I think we can safely assume that their involvement here is minimal at best.

I say this not necessarily to stifle the discussion, just to give a little reminder that no matter how good your argument might be, and even if you convince someone else in this thread, it's not likely to have any effect at all on VST inclusion in Reason. Anyone who wishes to seriously campaign for that should be taking it directly to the Props (good luck), and be prepared to make a really good case that shows how adding VSTs would benefit Props more (not only financially but aesthetically) than keeping on with their current plans (again, good luck).

[groggy1]

Let me just interject a bit of a digression here - because a lot of this thread, once you break it down to its essentials, is basically one set of Reason users trying to convince another set of Reason users (and vice versa) about their respective positions. If you say, for example, that "the Reason users who do not want VST support don't have to use it!", you aren't actually addressing the root cause of there being no VST support in Reason - which is a decision by the developers (Props). (There's other user-based arguments besides that one, that was just the handiest and most obvious example.) And while it's rumored that PH folks look in here from time to time, I think we can safely assume that their involvement here is minimal at best.

I say this not necessarily to stifle the discussion, just to give a little reminder that no matter how good your argument might be, and even if you convince someone else in this thread, it's not likely to have any effect at all on VST inclusion in Reason. Anyone who wishes to seriously campaign for that should be taking it directly to the Props (good luck), and be prepared to make a really good case that shows how adding VSTs would benefit Props more (not only financially but aesthetically) than keeping on with their current plans (again, good luck).

On your point that there are two camps: I wonder if (for the most part) the folks that want VST support use Reason as their primary DAW, and the folks that don't want VST use Reason in conjunction with another DAW. Is there a high correlation?

To your other point (that VST discussions on this forum won't swap Props to natively support VST or ReWire-Master), that's probably true. But, just a reminder that Reason *does* support VST today (with another DAW, midi-loopback, and audio-loopback), it's just a pain to setup. As more people learn how to do this, and start doing it, maybe Props will take notice. I'd love to help every single person on this forum that WANTs to control VSTs from within Reason achieve it (and for those that don't want it, that's fine too).

Thanks for the good discussion.

[platzangst]

On your point that there are two camps: I wonder if (for the most part) the folks that want VST support use Reason as their primary DAW, and the folks that don't want VST use Reason in conjunction with another DAW. Is there a high correlation?

I don't think I would break it down quite like that.

For example, I would not mind having better VST support in Reason. On the old Propellerhead User Forum my very first post was to suggest the creation of a Reason-compatible VST host, to keep potential buggy VSTs "sandboxed" away from Reason so that a VST crash would not also crash Reason.

But when I say I "want" VST support, that does not mean I want it at any cost. If having VST support meant that Reason was at risk of having more crashes, I'd rather not. If having VST support means that I would have to look at squished VST graphics or deal with some scrollbars in a Rack space, I'd think that would be pretty lame. If having VSTs means that VSTs in Reason don't have the same level of connectivity and cross-control in the Rack, through CV and such, then, meh, why bother?

I couldn't prove it, but I suspect that few people actually do not want any VST support in Reason at all, ever - what they want is to not have VST shoehorned into Reason at the expense of other things they like about Reason. The divide is less about "want VST/don't want VST" than it is about "want VST/don't mess up Reason".

As far as how people use it: I use Reason as my primary DAW. If I do something with a VST instrument or effect, I use Reaper or Sound Forge as my host, and then output what I do as an audio file, to be pasted into Reason. Not quite as slick as having everything all playing at once, but it works well enough for me.

[gak]

Well. I'll say it again. We "could" have vst's, and then propellerheads would have to hire 600 more people to test stuff to be compatible w/o crashing, super bugs, etc.

It's not in their plan. Considering how good so man RE's are, I've gotten over it.

The exception is guitar amp sims We need more!

[hadmyrackextended]

Great discussion...

Can I take this in a different direction a moment, as I notice people say " korg, uHe, etc etc, have moved away from RE's ?
What does this actually mean and is there any other developers that have shot the format down?

The reason I ask is because I do actually plan to invest in some more RE's and I don't want to spend a fair wack of money and find out in a years time the whole platform is dead. Is it something that Props are fully committed to or are developers dropping like flies?

[normen]

Great discussion...

Can I take this in a different direction a moment, as I notice people say " korg, uHe, etc etc, have moved away from RE's ?
What does this actually mean and is there any other developers that have shot the format down?

The reason I ask is because I do actually plan to invest in some more RE's and I don't want to spend a fair wack of money and find out in a years time the whole platform is dead. Is it something that Props are fully committed to or are developers dropping like flies?

a) Except for U-He all of that is speculation - and for them its more of a personal matter actually.
b) Even if the developers don't support the REs anymore, the Props can and will continue to support them for future OSs etc. basically everywhere Reason works the REs will work - "forever". Thats one of the beauties of REs, while VST/AU plugins dependent on the platform and actual OS version REs are not.

[hadmyrackextended]

ok, thanks mate. So no reason not to spend a few quid then;)

[platzangst]

The reason I ask is because I do actually plan to invest in some more RE's and I don't want to spend a fair wack of money and find out in a years time the whole platform is dead.

To add to what normen said:

When REs were first announced, one of the developers contributing to the first wave of REs was Sugar Bytes. Now, SB's output in the VST world is notably a lot of multi-function effects, but the RE format couldn't do something like Turnado, which was out at the time, so SB tried putting out a lot of individual effects, and... they weren't received too well, for various reasons.

Sugar Bytes hasn't done anything in the RE format for quite some time now. The last thing they did, without much fanfare, was to combine the SB REs into a sale bundle. Nobody really knows if they've abandoned the RE format forever, or if they're just waiting for the RE standard to advance far enough for them to create an RE more in line with their VST output, but either way, there's been no new REs from them, and I can't remember seeing any updates to the REs I have.

Despite all that, the SB REs that I own still function. We've gone from Reason 6.5 to 8, and we may go to 9 this year, and I fully expect any song I made with a SB RE to open without any problems, and work just as well as they did in 6.5. I have a few REs that are not being sold any more. You can't get them in the Prop Shop, either because the developer died and his company folded, or the RE was intended as a limited-time offer. But, having bought them, I still can have them in my Rack at any time. For me, they are effectively eternal - they'll be available as long as Rack Extensions continue to be part of Reason.

[Ahornberg]

The reason I ask is because I do actually plan to invest in some more RE's and I don't want to spend a fair wack of money and find out in a years time the whole platform is dead.

To add to what normen said:

When REs were first announced, one of the developers contributing to the first wave of REs was Sugar Bytes. Now, SB's output in the VST world is notably a lot of multi-function effects, but the RE format couldn't do something like Turnado, which was out at the time, so SB tried putting out a lot of individual effects, and... they weren't received too well, for various reasons.

Sugar Bytes hasn't done anything in the RE format for quite some time now. The last thing they did, without much fanfare, was to combine the SB REs into a sale bundle. Nobody really knows if they've abandoned the RE format forever, or if they're just waiting for the RE standard to advance far enough for them to create an RE more in line with their VST output, but either way, there's been no new REs from them, and I can't remember seeing any updates to the REs I have.

Despite all that, the SB REs that I own still function. We've gone from Reason 6.5 to 8, and we may go to 9 this year, and I fully expect any song I made with a SB RE to open without any problems, and work just as well as they did in 6.5. I have a few REs that are not being sold any more. You can't get them in the Prop Shop, either because the developer died and his company folded, or the RE was intended as a limited-time offer. But, having bought them, I still can have them in my Rack at any time. For me, they are effectively eternal - they'll be available as long as Rack Extensions continue to be part of Reason.

Can you move these REs to a new Reason installation on a new computer?

[Stranger.]

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[EnochLight]

Can you move these REs to a new Reason installation on a new computer?

Yes, and it's very easy to do so.