What do Propellerhead staff do at work all day?

[EdGrip]

When I mess around with other DAWs (Studio One and recently Ableton), I must say it's great to simply drag an mp3 track out of the Windows file browser and drop it onto the sequencer and have it just work.
Reason: "I wonder if I can just grab this bit..." Open fre:ac > navigate to file > check it's the WAV encoder that's currently enabled > transcode to WAV > back to Reason > navigate to new WAV file in Windows browser > drag and drop onto Reason sequencer.

mp3 import is much more handy than mp3 export!

[plaamook]

The funny thing is that dead or alive there's been years of batch and moaning about MP3, and what with Props usual one step behind model, we'll prob get Mp3in R11.

I don't particularly care if they implement it. If they do I'll use it. I still use it for my ipod classic and to send quick bounces to epople. I don't get the 'dead' bit. What advancements do we need in MP3? I'm probably missing something.

[plaamook]

When I mess around with other DAWs (Studio One and recently Ableton), I must say it's great to simply drag an mp3 track out of the Windows file browser and drop it onto the sequencer and have it just work.
Reason: "I wonder if I can just grab this bit..." Open fre:ac > navigate to file > check it's the WAV encoder that's currently enabled > transcode to WAV > back to Reason > navigate to new WAV file in Windows browser > drag and drop onto Reason sequencer.

mp3 import is much more handy than mp3 export!

Eh... I drag mp3's into the sequencer all the time.
Again, I'm probably missing something

[esselfortium]

When I mess around with other DAWs (Studio One and recently Ableton), I must say it's great to simply drag an mp3 track out of the Windows file browser and drop it onto the sequencer and have it just work.
Reason: "I wonder if I can just grab this bit..." Open fre:ac > navigate to file > check it's the WAV encoder that's currently enabled > transcode to WAV > back to Reason > navigate to new WAV file in Windows browser > drag and drop onto Reason sequencer.

mp3 import is much more handy than mp3 export!

You can already do that in Reason, it's been in for several major versions now.

[Geltic Höhn]

Mp3 is a dead format. There's no point in going through the development cycle it takes to implement

Sometimes we need to look outside of our own ecosystem for a more reliable indicator. While many members here are listening through high quality outputs like monitors or decent headphones, with ears that are more delicate to sound quality (after all, that's what we all do, we make music), your average consumer has no such standards. People are either listening through their smartphones with earbuds, a terrible output no matter how you swing it, in their car's factory stereo unit which is average quality at best, or through some little computer speakers with perceived dynamics that we would consider pretty bad.

Is MP3 dead ? Well, with the considered statements I just made above, even I still use MP3 in some situations. My car, which is only 5 years old, has limitations on formats, and only plays MP3 from either USB or CD. And even if it played WAV or FLAC, there is the matter of storage space. My smartphone, which is only three years old or less, only plays MP3 by default. So what do I dowhen I want to preview my own mixdowns in real-world environments? I need to render to MP3.

I walked into a bar a while ago and a bunch of people were enjoying some music while drinking. They were playing music right out of their phone's speaker, which was placed in an empty glass ! I've seen similar in bars before, using an ashtray. SO I approached them and asked why, they said 'because it makes the sound better!'. We could give them a extreme sample rated HD audio format as much as we like, and they won't be able to determine the difference between that and the worst quality MP3 render.

MP3 may not be a dead format, but no professional really needs it. All main online distributors require mixed down songs in 44.1 Khz 16 bit wav files. Record labels certainly do. Lossy formats are taken care of by the streaming services they're shared on.

No disrespect or arrogance intended here, but are you a professional ? Last financial year, half of my reportable income was derived from editing and post-production. And my clients want only one format - MP3. And any prospective customers I try to onboard, my recommendation for their purposes is MP3 format, for very clear and concise reasons.

Just the other day this topic came up (in one of my own threads) and the only other person to contribute to the conversation that was a professional , stated that he needs to bounce ideas backwards and forwards with his/her clients for review, and that format was also MP3. Which makes perfect sense, since there are email size limitations, even using cloud storage, it's a whole lot more productive from a commercial standpoint to use MP3 for such an example.

I can certainly see a use for MP3 export for the enthusiast/hobbyist, though.

And where does Reason sit in the world, as far as the majority of users are concerned ? I've never heard of a studio using Reason for recording/mixing/mastering, and over the years only came across a small number of 'A-List' musicians/creators/producers who use Reason. Not to begrudge the power of our favourite DAW, but in the real world, I would hazard a guess to say that the vast majority of users are in the hobbyist/enthusiast realm.

For music that I am working on at any given moment (hobbyist hat on now), I have three people whose opinions I hold in high regard, and send them WIPs, and I do so in MP3. It's actually a huge pain in the rear to get it from WIP to their inbox (or Dropbox) since I can't simply select a menu based render option of MP3 in Reason. Even the 'budget' software suites like Reaper and Audacity allow MP3 rendering to be integrated into their app with the FFMPEG .dll, yet we're 20 years in to Reason, and it still doesn't have that capability.

Out of interest, can someone tell me if Pro-Tools can render MP3 ? At a professional level, this is the industry standard DAW, no? What about Studio One, or Cubase, or Logic, do they have MP3 render capability?

[antic604]

How did such a promising topic turned into discussion about mp3 export?! What a waste

[plaamook]

No disrespect or arrogance intended here, but are you a professional ? Last financial year, half of my reportable income was derived from editing and post-production. And my clients want only one format - MP3. And any prospective customers I try to onboard, my recommendation for their purposes is MP3 format, for very clear and concise reasons.

Just the other day this topic came up (in one of my own threads) and the only other person to contribute to the conversation that was a professional , stated that he needs to bounce ideas backwards and forwards with his/her clients for review, and that format was also MP3. Which makes perfect sense, since there are email size limitations, even using cloud storage, it's a whole lot more productive from a commercial standpoint to use MP3 for such an example.

Similar here

[plaamook]

How did such a promising topic turned into discussion about mp3 export?! What a waste

Agreed
Whoops...

[EnochLight]

How did such a promising topic turned into discussion about mp3 export?! What a waste

[Kenni]

I'm not saying mp3 isn't useful. Im just saying it's dead as a format. The inventors of the format made that very statement that they're ceasing all activity on the format.

Mp3 is good for sending ideas back and forth. Mp3 is good because a lot of devices supports playback of the format. Mp3 is good because there's a gazillion tools that can convert back and forth between that and other formats in a matter of 1-2 clicks. For that reason alone I see no reason why DAW developers should spend any time developing an export function in 2018 if they don't have it already.

For mix down, compressed audio formats is no good. Compressed audio in production in general is weird, unless it's for hard-to-find-otherwise effects or something along those lines. That people listen to compressed audio in ear buds is not an argument in my world either, mobile-first is the primary reason for that (Spotify etc). But even here, mp3 isn't the standard.

I'm not against mp3. The format has a lot of uses, just like any other compressed audio format. I'm just saying that while it's perhaps not a gigantic implementation task, it's also not only a 1-2 days worth of implementation, and if DAW developers want to implement export to compressed audio features, I'd seriously wonder if they chose mp3 over, say, AAC.

[EnochLight]

I'm not against mp3.

I am, but I'm also against people who have silly walks or use the term "welp", so I'm probably not a good authority on the matter.

[nickb523]

Agree.

With modern fibre internet connections now being the 'norm' - there is no longer a use for mp3's.

I've not been using mp3's for a good while now... and i'm out in the sticks with basic FTTC connection.

Nick

[EdGrip]

Weird. I don't know where I got the idea that I can't import mp3s. I can only imagine I've tried to import a file that was otherwise tricky for some reason and then converted it outside.

[nickb523]

I imagine there's a really big room with floor-to-ceiling windows. People start turning up around 11am and sit around drinking coffee. Then someone suggests a game of Doom on the LAN and that covers things until lunch. After lunch (at about 3pm) somebody puts on an some late 90s hard-euro-trance and everyone sits back and starts to get into the mood for work. By 4-4.30 everyone is psyched to really get stuff done. For the next 30 mins the place is frantic as people power up their laptops, clean their screens and write a few words on a whiteboard like 'User Focus' and 'More Romplers'. Then damn! Its 5pm and time to go home. The place is empty again by 5.15 apart from the intern whose job it is to sweep all the days user requests and bug reports into the bin.

- this is a great image! - MOAR ROMPLERS! haha

[ravisoni]

Mp3 is a dead format. There's no point in going through the development cycle it takes to implement

Sometimes we need to look outside of our own ecosystem for a more reliable indicator. While many members here are listening through high quality outputs like monitors or decent headphones, with ears that are more delicate to sound quality (after all, that's what we all do, we make music), your average consumer has no such standards. People are either listening through their smartphones with earbuds, a terrible output no matter how you swing it, in their car's factory stereo unit which is average quality at best, or through some little computer speakers with perceived dynamics that we would consider pretty bad.

Is MP3 dead ? Well, with the considered statements I just made above, even I still use MP3 in some situations. My car, which is only 5 years old, has limitations on formats, and only plays MP3 from either USB or CD. And even if it played WAV or FLAC, there is the matter of storage space. My smartphone, which is only three years old or less, only plays MP3 by default. So what do I dowhen I want to preview my own mixdowns in real-world environments? I need to render to MP3.

I walked into a bar a while ago and a bunch of people were enjoying some music while drinking. They were playing music right out of their phone's speaker, which was placed in an empty glass ! I've seen similar in bars before, using an ashtray. SO I approached them and asked why, they said 'because it makes the sound better!'. We could give them a extreme sample rated HD audio format as much as we like, and they won't be able to determine the difference between that and the worst quality MP3 render.

MP3 may not be a dead format, but no professional really needs it. All main online distributors require mixed down songs in 44.1 Khz 16 bit wav files. Record labels certainly do. Lossy formats are taken care of by the streaming services they're shared on.

No disrespect or arrogance intended here, but are you a professional ? Last financial year, half of my reportable income was derived from editing and post-production. And my clients want only one format - MP3. And any prospective customers I try to onboard, my recommendation for their purposes is MP3 format, for very clear and concise reasons.

Just the other day this topic came up (in one of my own threads) and the only other person to contribute to the conversation that was a professional , stated that he needs to bounce ideas backwards and forwards with his/her clients for review, and that format was also MP3. Which makes perfect sense, since there are email size limitations, even using cloud storage, it's a whole lot more productive from a commercial standpoint to use MP3 for such an example.

I can certainly see a use for MP3 export for the enthusiast/hobbyist, though.

And where does Reason sit in the world, as far as the majority of users are concerned ? I've never heard of a studio using Reason for recording/mixing/mastering, and over the years only came across a small number of 'A-List' musicians/creators/producers who use Reason. Not to begrudge the power of our favourite DAW, but in the real world, I would hazard a guess to say that the vast majority of users are in the hobbyist/enthusiast realm.

For music that I am working on at any given moment (hobbyist hat on now), I have three people whose opinions I hold in high regard, and send them WIPs, and I do so in MP3. It's actually a huge pain in the rear to get it from WIP to their inbox (or Dropbox) since I can't simply select a menu based render option of MP3 in Reason. Even the 'budget' software suites like Reaper and Audacity allow MP3 rendering to be integrated into their app with the FFMPEG .dll, yet we're 20 years in to Reason, and it still doesn't have that capability.

Out of interest, can someone tell me if Pro-Tools can render MP3 ? At a professional level, this is the industry standard DAW, no? What about Studio One, or Cubase, or Logic, do they have MP3 render capability?

Mic drop.

For reasons you mentioned, and also this: dropping a file through FB message or whatsapp is way easier when you have an mp3. Sending mp3 to others also ensures they'll be able to play it no matter where they open. Since most others I send my reason files to are hobbyists, they actually even prefer that they be sent a quick mp3 copy.
I cannot recount the many times I made my friends wait because I had to export the wav, import it into audition, export as mp3, get prompted by the IDR and file info dialog box, and then wait a second while it gets converted again. Only so that my friend could listen to it and give me some feedback. In this era of "fast", that's a genuine rate limiting step for sharing and feedback.

[aeox]

I use audacity. It takes about 5 seconds to convert the .wav. Plus, you'll have the .wav as well.

My clients want both wav and mp3!

[bxbrkrz]

What do Propellerhead staff do at work all day?

Welp... Not using MP3s?

[Psuper]

I know their marketing staff works overtime...

[Geltic Höhn]

My clients want both wav and mp3!

This. So you work commercially as well, and your clients want MP3. This is the reality beyond people's assumptions and bias, who think there's no call for it. That's four people now, who have commercial requirements, who have identified the need for it.

For me, they don't need WAV, like ever. So I need to do two renders, with two pieces of software, then delete a file, before I send.

Reason is a software who's primary purpose is to spit out audio at the end. When they overlook being able to do so in the world's most common format, then that's an indication that they don;t really concern themselves with reviewing their product and user needs.

[Geltic Höhn]

I'm not saying mp3 isn't useful. Im just saying it's dead as a format. The inventors of the format made that very statement that they're ceasing all activity on the format.

To clarify, the Mp3 patent has expired. And it needs no further development. That's different to saying it's 'dead', when your average consumer of audio still uses it as the predominate format.

I buy music from Bandcamp, arguably the biggest distro for independent artists, and the default download format is MP3. Sure, the counter arguement was raised that it gets compressed on their end (to which I can confirm), but we're looking at this from the wrong side of the fence. The consumer still wants MP3, and well, the consumer is King.

How about podcasts, which have an incredible amount of 'ear ownership' in the world today. Podcast popularity has more than doubled in the past decade and continues to rise. I'm not making this up, it's from a well-regarded research agency in their annual report. Further to that, of people who have ever listened to a podcast is 44% of the population (based on USA trends, both Spanish & English) Some people are lucky enough to have high speed internet, but some developed and developing countries have terrible internet connectivity, both 4G or ADSL. It does not make any sense at all to host a podcast and stream in WAV format, because the end user experience will suffer. I can hear the counter arguements already, because I have heard them a million times before 'but they can host on iTunes'. Well, not everyone uses iTunes, actually nobody I know on the android platform uses it at all. So to say MP3 is no longer a format that should be considered, I politely disagree with you, when it is the gold standard for performance in the biggest emerging and upward trajectoried market space today.

Streaming in general benefits the end consumer when it doesn't keep buffering due to lousy connectivity, and MP3 is the solution over any other format.

[Raveshaper]

I use audacity. It takes about 5 seconds to convert the .wav. Plus, you'll have the .wav as well.

My clients want both wav and mp3!

Add up each of those 5 seconds for an entire year, however. Your point is taken but that 5 seconds should be happening during export, not "over again" or in addition to some other process.

What we are left with is this odd limbo where people anticipate being able to use the program in a professional capacity due to marketing spin, but the planning and follow through clearly state this has never been and never will be the intention behind using the software.

So then what. Who is this for.

[seqoi]

The only thing I want is use my REs and VSTs without thinking about DSP bar... If pheads staff are between naps and CPU otimitzation it's ok for me.

Everything else I can do in a way or another.

+1

[Goodbye]

I know their marketing staff works overtime...

I'm thinking they've sacked all their developers and replaced them with marketing staff. That would explain why they have got so little done, but spent so long telling us how much they're giving us, though they seem to have gone quiet on that front recently as well. I guess they're all heads down, writing loads of celebratory copy for the next release where they'll finally address all the user requests and bugs. I just cannot wait! I just wish they wrote code as well as they write ad copy.

[antic604]

Ok, let's cut the discussion here & there - Reason should have mp3 output, even if some of us (me, for instance) wouldn't use it. It's a simple thing to implement, likely free by now and should take few days to code & test.

You're all making such a big fuss about it as if it justified upgrade to v11 alone. No, it should be a footnote in 10.1

[bik44]

I’m Live 10 beta tester and every 1-4 week I get new beta version with a list of something added and improved. I can see they’re working all the time


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