Have any RE features made it into Reason?

[RandomSkratch]

I've only been using version 8 for a few months sparingly (last version I used was 4 many moons ago) and I've only scratched the surface when it comes to RE's. I think they're definitely cool but I'm wondering if any (for example utility type RE's functionality) made it into a future base release that rendered that RE pointless to purchase (if you did the upgrade to the latest version that is)?

It's great for developers that the Props opened up these possibilities but do they avoid stepping on other devs toes when it comes to their own product? Personally I see a few RE's that have good ideas yet are somewhat...oddly executed...and I think that the Props could do a much better job with the ideas and implementing them differently. If they didn't ape features then I feel like it would be much harder to innovate because the pool of ideas is much more crowded now.

Just curious!

[electrochoc (PRX-A)]

I feel Propellerhead are going their own path, and I don't feel they step or avoid to step on developers toes... In other terms, they are doing their own business from what I can see. But, sure, if they add a new feature in Reason or develop their own Rack Extensions, they may do something other developers have tried to do, and, since Reason is their own platforms, they may well do something "better" than what an independant developer can do...

The main examples that come to my mind:

- Spectrum analyser: Before there was a spectrum analyser integrated into Reason, two developers were trying to do such devices using the Rack Extension possibilities. That gave us the RE 60 from Red Rock Sound, an adaption of a VST plug-in that looks like a vintage hardware spectrum analyser. That RE is not totally worthless thanks to its band audio outs, but it can't really rival with the new Reason's analyser... The price of RE 60 has dropped since its release. The other dev, LabOne, simply abandoned its spectrum analyser as it seems: it was never released...

- Additive synthesizer: There were no additive synthesizer for Reason before the release of Noxious, from Zvork. But, shortly after, Propellerhead released Parsec, which was, at the time, way more efficient and had a richer sound, thanks to its greater amount of oscillators... This said, with the dropped price of Noxious, and, mainly, its unique interface that shows you visually what you do with the oscillators, Noxious is still a very interesting synth... Here, Parsec was released really shortly after Noxious, indicating there was obviously no intention to hurt the developer (Parsec should have been in Propellerhead's pipeline long before Zvork released Noxious).

- Convolution reverb: Convolution reverb was not possible in Reason before Reason 8.3, and it was not possible to make a RE that load impulse files (it's still not possible). So, the only way for a developer to offer a convolution reverb was to offer an impulses set, packed in a closed RE that was acting as the reverb itself. That's what Numerical Sound did, by offering us ten devices based on convolution technology (reverbs and other effects). Since Reason 8.3, the RV7000 includes a convolution program, in which you can load your own impulses. This said, REs like those of Numerical Sound are still not useless: Numerical Sound is known and made a reputation based on the quality of its impulses sets. But now, users have suddenly way more choices...

If the rumors are true about the new features of Reason 9, some utilities (like AutoTheory) might become less attractive. But, as you can see, there aren't really of lot of cases in which a feature of Reason or a Propellerhead Rack Extension really hurted what independant developers had to offer... There might be a bigger "competition" between the developers themselves, as some of their products are pretty near one from another... Overall, Propellerhead seems to go its own path, and only occasionally overlap what Rack Extension developers are doing...

Well, that's how I view things!

[zakalwe]

probably the mastering inserts would be most 'at risk' but really i'm not sure it would be an issue for synapse any more than it would be an issue for fabfilter. they could either upgrade their product to compete on a feature basis or acknowledge a niche has gone.

[Loque]

I hope the poly CV will make it into next release.

[RandomSkratch]

Well, that's how I view things!

Thanks for the extremely thorough post along with examples and not just speculation! I'm happy to see that they are clearly looking after their own baby first.

You brought up AutoTheory and that's actually one of the RE's that caught my eye when I first bought Reason but it's method of implementation turned me off. I thought something like that would be much better suited to be implemented into the core program. Like on a right click menu somewhere. Not a module that needed to be wired in. I think Live has a feature like this (limited experience with it so I'm not sure) and before I jumped off the Maschine boat they added that but I never got into it). Now I don't believe any of that speculation that was posted recently but I would definitely be interested in a feature like that.