VST's - Reason discussion

[groggy1]

Forgot about this thread, so sorry for the late response. Anyway, I see a few people's problem with Using Rewire is they want to keep all the midi in Reason's sequencer.

Well.... You can using the EMI. Made this video a few years ago, though I feel most people overlook it. Aside from audio input (and being able to use use Precount in Reason), it's pretty close to being Rewire master.

That's pretty cool, thanks for sharing!

I still use the audio-loopback thing because I want audio to come into Reason easily. Your method comes close to making me use ReWire, but I'm still good with audio-loopback - once you set it up, it just works *just like you have an external piece of midi hardware* (which Reason does VERY well).

But your idea is cool too...


I'm guessing when props added EMI and Audio input (making Reason a true daw), they debated quite a bit about whether it would hamper their Re marketplace. And probably held off for a while till they were sure the impact was acceptable. But man, i wish they could just give us what we want (i.e. don't make me go through hoops to do audio loopback). Once you get used to using VSTs within Reason just like they're "external hardware", it's addictive.

[QVprod]

Forgot about this thread, so sorry for the late response. Anyway, I see a few people's problem with Using Rewire is they want to keep all the midi in Reason's sequencer.

Well.... You can using the EMI. Made this video a few years ago, though I feel most people overlook it. Aside from audio input (and being able to use use Precount in Reason), it's pretty close to being Rewire master.

That's pretty cool, thanks for sharing!

I still use the audio-loopback thing because I want audio to come into Reason easily. Your method comes close to making me use ReWire, but I'm still good with audio-loopback - once you set it up, it just works *just like you have an external piece of midi hardware* (which Reason does VERY well).

But your idea is cool too...


I'm guessing when props added EMI and Audio input (making Reason a true daw), they debated quite a bit about whether it would hamper their Re marketplace. And probably held off for a while till they were sure the impact was acceptable. But man, i wish they could just give us what we want (i.e. don't make me go through hoops to do audio loopback). Once you get used to using VSTs within Reason just like they're "external hardware", it's addictive.

I don't think hat was too much of a concern for them. Even if every one liked the idea of using plugins like hardware, you would still need an elegant solution for fx, so RE would still thrive in reason for that. As previously stated though, the major downside to the loopback method is when dealing with multiple tracks or multitimbral instrument plugins as you'd have to bounce all of that in real time. But if you're only really using one external instrument then it's probably the more convenient solution.

[msbevel]

These threads usually give you two pieces of info: You need a way to get MIDI from Reason to another Daw (i.e. virtual MIDI cables), and you need a way to get audio back into Reason (Soundflower-type VIRTUAL audio card, a sound card with audio-loopback, or using audio-cables to PHYSICALLY route audio back into another sound-card input).

I've been obsessed with VSTs in Reason for years, so here's some more thoughts on it. I have PC, so I only have done this on the PC side.

Getting MIDI from one Daw to another is the EASIEST part - LoopBe1 is a great shareware program on Windows - I've used it for years, and never had a single problem. Works great on Windows10 too.

Now, about the audio - let's review the choices:
1) Virtual audio card (Mac has Soundflower, Windows has a few choices too)
2) Get a sound-card that has a MIXER that lets you route audio between DAWs
3) Physical audio cables to route audio back (remember, you're leaving the DIGITAL domain when you do this, if it's not SPDIF etc)
4) Export audio from your other DAW MANUALLY when you're ready, and import the audio-file into Reason - a lot of people like this because it makes it easy to line-up the audio perfectly latency-wise. But seems like a bit of a pain to have this manual step.
5) Use Rewire (but then you miss all the great benefits of #1-4 - which is namely that you get to use the Reason sequencer, single method of param automation, use Reason CV even for your VSTs through Reason's MIDI device)


Ok, so what's my preference? **** #2 **** If you can afford it, get an audio-card that lets you route audio internally. For PC at-least, it just makes the whole process simple. No worrying about an extra audio-driver, or getting good latency, or leaving the digital domain.

Over the years, I've had two audio-cards that supported loop-back audio: Audiophile 2496, and recently the Focusrite Saffire 6i6 (FIREWIRE). Both worked well, but obviously the 2496 is a dinosaur now. Some nice things about the Focusrite:
a) The mixer is SOOOO intuitive - it just gives you an extra audio-driver called "Daw", and that's what you output audio to in your non-Reason DAW. And then in reason, you use that driver as the INPUT for audio. It's SOOOOO nice, in that you can see the VSTs signal in the mixer itself, which makes it easier to troubleshoot in-case you don't hear audio when you first set it up. Basically, the Focusrite mixer software is amazing and intuitive.
b) LATENCY, LATENCY, LATENCY - Firewire audio-card gets me quite a low latency, and this is IMPORTANT for using VSTs in Reason. Why? Because you actually have TWO audio latencies: 1) The regular latency from Reason out to your speakers, and 2) The new latency to get audio from one Daw to another.

...And that OVERALL latency matters, ESPECIALLY if you want to just directly monitor the audio in Reason LIVE (i.e. you want to create an effects chain in Reason for your VST that you can hear while you're playing LIVE). For me, getting this working makes my workflow much better, because I don't have to limit myself creatively during the sound-creation process - I can mess around in the VST to mangle a sound, AND add effects in Reason.

So beware of any audio-card that can't get you down to ~3-4ms: Your latency will just be too high for the extra audio-routing. In-practice, this meant that I had to stay clear of *USB* audio-cards, which tend to have higher latency. But, I have heard from others on this forum that Babyface Pro has low latency and supports audio-loopback. So that seems like an option too?

One warning on Focusrite audio-cards: Only SOME of them support audio-loopback, so just double-check that the one you want supports it before you buy. E.g. Most of their Scarlett series (USB) don't have the audio-loopback feature. Not sure why.



A few other tidbits:
1) Reason lets you control how MONITORING works within Reason (see bottom of audio tab in preferences). Your choices are: Automatic, Manual, External. I've found that MANUAL is what you want if you're going to use Reason with another DAW for VSTs. Why? Because I always monitor all my VSTs LIVE in Reason until I finish a song. If you DON'T set it to manual, that means that when you have focus on a Thor instance (for example), and then play the overall song, you won't hear the audio from your other Daw.

So set it to manual. And then MANUALLY, set the audio-track in Reason that your using for DAW input to "echo/monitor". Now reason will just leave that track-setting alone, and everything will work as expected.

2) You can have MULTIPLE VSTs that you control in your other daw - just use different MIDI channels.

3) I modify my default Reason template to make setting-up a new song much easier: The template has a MIDI-out device configured to send midi to my virtual MIDI cables. And I create an audio track that is configured for the DAW audio-input. I set that audio-track to have monitoring on.

Now, every time I create a song, I have track in Reason ready to go, no extra setup needed.

4) Total recall for your song is just as easy as it is when you use Rewire: Save your reason song as MyChartToppingSong.rsn. And in your other daw, save the project as MyChartToppingSong.snr (I use Sonar). Now you have two files (a bit of a pain), but you can easily re-load your song along with all the VST settings easily. If you think about it, Rewire requires you to save two files too.

5) Parameter automation works great for VSTs: For every param you want to automate, create a Reason MIDI instrument set to the same channel as the one your playing notes on. And on this channel, record the knob-movement as you play. In your audio-host, do "MIDI-learn" to control a knob, and it'll now respond to that MIDI CC. Ok, it's a bit of a pain to have to do MIDI-learn for every knob your control, but it's not that bad. In this case, it's actually BETTER than controlling a PHYSICAL midi instrument, if you think about it! Do they have MIDI learn? (not always) So you'd have to actually play the right MIDI CC to control a particular parameter. This is MUCH easier.

6) About latency compensation: Ok, I saved this fun tidbit for last: Remember, there's latency to get audio between DAWs. If you just hit record in Reason, that latency will be recorded into your song. When I'm ready to finalize my song, I want to get that audio to line-up perfectly. In my case, I often quantize notes, so this makes sense - but it's up to you if you want to do this.

But here's the warning: There are two things you need to do to compensate for this few-milliseconds latency:
a) In reason's audio preferences tab, change the "Recording latency compensation". The value you use will depend on your own latency, but in-general it'll be a POSITIVE number. E.g. +5. How do you find the right number? Record a quantized note to a VST that's playing a simple SAW wave (with no attack in ADSR, of course). And then experiment with values on the recording latency compensation until you see it line-up PERFECTLY in the recorded audio track. You'll need to zoom in on the audio a lot to see if you have it exactly lined-up. This takes a few minutes to get right, but it's worth it, and you only have to do it once.

b) Ok, this one took me a while to figure out: When you finally want to record the VST audio into reason, you need to turn off the MONITORING in all your Reason tracks. As long as your VST track has monitoring on, it'll record with the latency. I can't remember the exact reason why this is (it was years ago that I investigated it), but it is what it is.



I'll leave you with one final thought: Once you get used to using VSTs in Reason, it's really fun and easy. And there are great-sounding VST instruments out there (Serum, Dune2, Reaktor, etc). So honestly, I'll always spend my money on these instruments rather than buy a Re instrument. But to each his own (and I do understand that Re instruments do have advantages, like working great in Combinator, a bit easier to setup param automation). But if a Re instrument is $99 or more (there are a few in this price-range), and if Serum or Spire cost $189 - Think about saving a bit more money and get the awesome VST. Ok, that's just my opinion.

But, given the above, there are other REs that I DO keep buying: Effects and Utilities. Effects, because the latency of bouncing audio OUT of reason into a DAW and back *LIVE* is too high. And I would be disappointed if I couldn't do it live.
And I buy RE utilities because they're just AWESOME, of course: You get to use them in your VST workflow!! E.g. a great RE utility is Korde sequencer, Mercury, Auto-Theory, Euclid, CV Tune. And you can use ALL of these to control your VSTs.


Ok, hope this was helpful.

I went over this and was looking at my vst Plugin (Korg Arp Odyssey) and the 2 controls don't have cc. Only way I've figured out how to do it is record the audio, but then I can't go back if I need.