Are You Serious?!

This forum is for discussing Reason. Questions, answers, ideas, and opinions... all apply.
jimmyklane
Posts: 740
Joined: 16 Apr 2018

23 Jun 2018

hurricane wrote:
23 Jun 2018
jimmyklane wrote:
23 Jun 2018
I don’t know why people are complaining about Reason on a Reason-centric forum. Go to Gearslutz.
I'd be all in on having a seperate "Complaints & Criticisms" section of the board. Would be the most popular section no doubt. And that would ensure that all your "everything is unicorns and rainbows" posts would remain untainted by the gloom and doom spewed by the more exasperated Reasoners.

But if that's not gonna happen (and I bet you a ga-jillion dollars it won't, lol) then we will just have to deal with both points of view as if we were living in some crazy, free-thinking society!

:mrgreen:
I’m pretty sure I’ve posted problems and wishlists as well, but you’re right, I’m for the most part positive about Reason as it allows me to do quite a few things very easily that are more difficult in other DAWs....but I’m not trying to be ITB, so I know it’s different for the guy with a laptop and MIDI controller.
DAW: Reason 12

SAMPLERS: Akai MPC 2000, E-mu SP1200, E-Mu e5000Ultra, Ensoniq EPS 16+, Akai S950, Maschine

SYNTHS: Mostly classic Polysynths and more modern Monosynths. All are mostly food for my samplers!

www.soundcloud.com/jimmyklane

DNGmaestro
Competition Winner
Posts: 97
Joined: 20 Jan 2015

24 Jun 2018

What the OP said is not well articulated or said in a very pleasant and polite manner but it's all true.

When, for example, a music software company is being asked for YEARS to implement the most simple "feature" of selecting multiple faders and moving them at the same time and simply ignores it, that tells a lot.

When you consider the last updates had absolutely no workflow improvements, only synths and sounds (wich are still completely not up to par to modern sounds and vsts but thats another story), on what is the most archaic big "DAW" available, that tells a lot.

Propellerheads have too much priority on money making as opposed to client pleasing.

jlgrimes
Posts: 661
Joined: 06 Jun 2017

24 Jun 2018

DNGmaestro wrote:
24 Jun 2018
What the OP said is not well articulated or said in a very pleasant and polite manner but it's all true.

When, for example, a music software company is being asked for YEARS to implement the most simple "feature" of selecting multiple faders and moving them at the same time and simply ignores it, that tells a lot.

When you consider the last updates had absolutely no workflow improvements, only synths and sounds (wich are still completely not up to par to modern sounds and vsts but thats another story), on what is the most archaic big "DAW" available, that tells a lot.

Propellerheads have too much priority on money making as opposed to client pleasing.
I think the new synths are up to par with what you get from most DAWS.

Most DAW synths are nothing to brag about. I like Europa better than Ableton Wavetable. Grain is much easier to use than Ableton's version and has much better presets.

Studio 1 synths are nothing to write home about.

Only Logic gives Reason good competition in terms of synths IMO.

Reason is kind of known for having good synths, they are just old, so I think they wanted to not let their synth quality slip. Version 10 seemed to do that IMO.

I actually like Europa better than Serum as Serum sounds a little too sterile. It also does stuff Serum can't do (and vice versa but Serum is a dedicated Wavetable synth so it is understandable). Also many RE developers we're starting to completely outshine Reason which isn't a bad thing. But the new synths gives the RE developers some ideas on how to improve their own synths improving the overall RE landscape.

That said I wish Props would have just waited on 10 and wait to include some performance/workflow enhancements. I don't think nobody was waiting on a major release in 2017 especially after 9.5.

It sounds like they won't be doing a major release this year which usually implies bug fixes and performance enhancements are on the way.

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Data_Shrine
Posts: 517
Joined: 23 Jan 2015

24 Jun 2018

I think they dragged themselves behind in terms of functionality for too long.. so yeah. It can't stay like this forever.

Troublemecca
Posts: 151
Joined: 04 Jun 2018

24 Jun 2018

jlgrimes wrote:I'll be the first to admit Reason has it's issues.

But at the same time, it does some things well as well.

I kind of guess though when Reason was smaller, it was a much easier program to learn.


Now we have alot, I was trying to show someone how to use it and I could tell I was going over their head.

It has a learning curve but that said with YouTube and the manual you can figure it out.


I'll admit drawing automation could be better.
Once i figured out what "remote override" meant, a great burden was lifted from my shoulders.

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Troublemecca
Posts: 151
Joined: 04 Jun 2018

24 Jun 2018


danc wrote:... but I do think there needs to be a better way to navigate around a populated rack...
I keep asking myself why they don't have the grabby hand...anyone who has used photoshop knows the grabby hand... in Adobe programs, if you hold spacebar, the mouse pointer becomes a little hand, and you can click and hold to drag the canvas around.


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rcbuse
RE Developer
Posts: 1175
Joined: 16 Jan 2015
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25 Jun 2018

Troublemecca wrote:
24 Jun 2018
danc wrote:... but I do think there needs to be a better way to navigate around a populated rack...
I keep asking myself why they don't have the grabby hand...anyone who has used photoshop knows the grabby hand... in Adobe programs, if you hold spacebar, the mouse pointer becomes a little hand, and you can click and hold to drag the canvas around.


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Well, they kinda do if you grab the wooden side panels of the rack

botnotbot
Posts: 290
Joined: 26 Oct 2017

25 Jun 2018

antic604 wrote:
22 Jun 2018
normen wrote:
22 Jun 2018
Your sarcasm doesn't quite work there - he said limited, not simple.

And yeah, understanding why you don't want to (have to) control every last single bit about your workflow or life in general... I guess that comes with age ;) At some point a lot of things just get too boring to obsess about.
On the contrary. Absence of choice - in my example: inability to make my own keyboard shortcuts or arrange & group tracks how I like - is a limitation. Sure, it stems from the features being simple, but it's still a limitation.

Also, as you're getting older you start to realise and be annoyed by things that are wasting your time (which - by then - is very precious), seem easy to fix but for some reason aren't.
Honestly antic604, we are similar in some ways but in this we will always differ -- I'm never going to look at the quirks of a DAW's workflow as the primary reason that my time is not being spent effectively.

Have you tried just staying off the forums/internet for a while?

The thing with DAWs, each of one of them has issues. I ended up at Reason after extensive testing, coming also from Bitwig where 1.x treated me well but 2.x was a kick in the teeth as they decided to cater to the modular synth crowd rather than instrumentalists trying to use the new generation of expressive instruments.

But it turned out that every DAW has serious limitations around MPE.

Did you know that Logic can only record input from a MAXIMUM of 16 *total* MIDI channels?

Did you know that Cubase 9.5 stutters visually and has audio drop outs with a nearly empty project when it is run on an iMac 5K?

By the time I tried Reason, I had given up on recording MPE as MIDI. Audio and live takes, that's it. Until the tech can catch up, at least.

There is no DAW to rule them all. I have repeatedly addressed why many of your wishlist items cannot come slowly and iteratively but rather require serious internal overhauls to be completed first. And this is exactly the kind of overhaul which they have promised to be working on with regards to VST performance improvements -- those come from an audio engine rewrite. It's coming.

So I apologize if my patience has run a bit thin, but I feel compelled to say it. The point is simple: the time Reason has wasted for you pales in comparison to the time you have wasted "for" Reason.

Peace.

madmacman
Posts: 786
Joined: 18 Jan 2015

25 Jun 2018

botnotbot wrote:
25 Jun 2018
I have repeatedly addressed why many of your wishlist items cannot come slowly and iteratively but rather require serious internal overhauls to be completed first. And this is exactly the kind of overhaul which they have promised to be working on with regards to VST performance improvements -- those come from an audio engine rewrite. It's coming.
It is still my assumption that the "rushed" R10 without any significant internal changes was a "timesaver" to spend more efforts into core rewrite. Based on the previous intervals they couldn't afford to double the time between two major versions without explanation. At least it isn't uncommon in the IT.

antic604

25 Jun 2018

botnotbot wrote:
25 Jun 2018
So I apologize if my patience has run a bit thin, but I feel compelled to say it. The point is simple: the time Reason has wasted for you pales in comparison to the time you have wasted "for" Reason.
I hear ya, but to be completely honest I write here 95% of the time while at work, between meetings, calls, etc. when I can't use Reason anyway :)

And I'm not saying that Reason wastes my time and by the end of each session I feel like 10 or 15 minutes was lost to clicking some menu option. I'm just saying, that a lot of those things seem to be a really quick fixes, like scripting - for a single kay press - of several actions that user does manually. Why aren't they including those? It's either that they don't care, or that indeed they're working on a great overhaul of Reason and don't want to invest time & money into patching the old code base. We'll see which is it, in the meantime I'll enjoy my time writing music in Reason and batch about it in the forums ;) :D

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normen
Posts: 3431
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

25 Jun 2018

antic604 wrote:
25 Jun 2018
It's either that they don't care, or that indeed they're working on a great overhaul of Reason and don't want to invest time & money into patching the old code base.
Maybe the issue is rather that they have to invest money into support people instead of programmers to help their average user think. :roll:

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WillyOD
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25 Jun 2018

I really wish you would stop comparing Reason to other software. Or more precisely comparing Reason's lack of features to problems with other DAWs. So I'm supposed to be happy with Reason just because Logic has only 16 MIDI Channels etc? What is the "reasoning" behind this statement? Other software have problems too? I don't quite understand.

The truth is that Props feels more like a Rack Extension company than the company that develops Reason. The lack of improvements in the core software are astonishing. I have no idea what Propellerheads are thinking but they seem to be super happy to sell you their own REs, and then bundle the their most sold REs with Reason updates to "mask" the lack of real update features.

You also say there is "no DAW to rule them all".

If I was working for Propellerheads, I would feel that our company has (or at least had) a chance to create excellence and beat out every other audio software out there, but instead we've decided to create more "Instruments" and the years keep on passing by...

But I understand if the boss man wants to sell another Rompler or even better make a quick buck by selling other companies' plugins.
I used to make music but now I just cry on these forums. @diippii.com

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normen
Posts: 3431
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

25 Jun 2018

WillyOD wrote:
25 Jun 2018
If I was working for Propellerheads, I would feel that our company has (or at least had) a chance to create excellence and beat out every other audio software out there, but instead we've decided to create more "Instruments" and the years keep on passing by...
Well if they have the programmer of one of the most iconic synths of the past decades why wouldn't they make instruments?

antic604

25 Jun 2018

normen wrote:
25 Jun 2018
antic604 wrote:
25 Jun 2018
It's either that they don't care, or that indeed they're working on a great overhaul of Reason and don't want to invest time & money into patching the old code base.
Maybe the issue is rather that they have to invest money into support people instead of programmers to help their average user think. :roll:
Maybe. Or maybe not.

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normen
Posts: 3431
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

25 Jun 2018

antic604 wrote:
25 Jun 2018
normen wrote:
25 Jun 2018


Maybe the issue is rather that they have to invest money into support people instead of programmers to help their average user think. :roll:
Maybe. Or maybe not.
I think we can safely assume that they are neither indifferent to their source of income nor that they think their users are stupid.

I mean at your workplace are you able to do everything the way you'd think it should ideally be done? If you are then I suggest you don't complain about anything ever again because that'd make you a very privileged man. For me I always run into limits when I want to do everything perfect - starting with the money and ending with my own capabilities or that of my coworkers.

And then theres people coming around making a sweeping uninformed comment about how everything could be so much better - on top of that suggesting that listening to such uninformed comments is a good way for me to improve things.

Yeah, no, it's not :)

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demt
Posts: 1357
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25 Jun 2018

the dark side has plenty of haters, support the underdog, whitewash is a skill to be enviede
reason is still the prittiest daw and has the happiest workflow, uplifting even.
Reason 12 ,gear4 music sdp3 stage piano .nektar gxp 88,behringer umc1800 .line6 spider4 30
hear scince reason 2.5

Troublemecca
Posts: 151
Joined: 04 Jun 2018

25 Jun 2018

I've never spent much time with other DAWs... Protools felt like overkill cause menus suck, and Maschine seemed pretty cool, but 90% because of the hardware controller... I'm pretty new to creating music, and spent the money on 10 because I would play around with 5 in the past, so, familiarity.

Have not regret it so far... But I enjoyed the hours spent watching youtube. I learned a lot (about producing music, not just Reason)



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antic604

26 Jun 2018

Troublemecca wrote:
25 Jun 2018
I've never spent much time with other DAWs... Protools felt like overkill cause menus suck, and Maschine seemed pretty cool, but 90% because of the hardware controller... I'm pretty new to creating music, and spent the money on 10 because I would play around with 5 in the past, so, familiarity.

Have not regret it so far... But I enjoyed the hours spent watching youtube. I learned a lot (about producing music, not just Reason)
Stay that way for as long as you can. Have fun writing music, instead of analysing what could've been :) In this case the "ignorance is bliss" is really true :D

calebbrennan
Posts: 315
Joined: 16 Aug 2016

26 Jun 2018

I am serious glad you asked.

You can make art on an antique cassette tape portastudio a pro one sequential circuits mono synth with a Boss drum machine, If you know how to program.
The complaining that Prop heads and Reason are rip off artists is plain stupid

what I hear in this thread is spoiled brat entitlement!

Reason 10 is the best program on the market for me, and efforts on this thread to turn it into
Logic or Live are driven by misguided malcontents who don't make music but complain a lot about
Programming features. Get a new Daw Dude

The only feature I agree with is Resolution could be improved. So I could blow up my tracks visually on multiple screens or projections.

EdGrip
Posts: 2343
Joined: 03 Jun 2016

26 Jun 2018

I think Reason is particularly attractive to ITB people, or at least to electronic music ITB people. You can approach it so many ways, but crucially you can approach it in a very hardware way if you want to: Set some Matrixes running, set some Redrums running, fade them in and out, mute them, high-pass them in the rack, change patterns, change notes and gates and hits here and there, lock some controller rotaries to interesting things, all without ever looking at the sequencer.
If you like to set the clockwork running and then form something from the rhythms, like hardware, there's nothing else like it.
If you want to record guitar and bass and piano and comp and edit all the clips, or if you want to write complex scores in MIDI notes... it just strikes me as a weird DAW to choose if that's your style. Having said that, of course I agree it would be better if Reason catered to that side of things better! There's nothing to stop Reason being "one DAW to rule them all", and Props should absolutely aim for the stars in that regard.
I suppose my point is, we have no control of what Props are up to. We know they read the forum so they know what our little (perhaps non-representative) sample of keeno users want; we know they know. Beyond that, we can't influence them. All we can do is use Reason to its strengths, or move to software that suits us better.

EdGrip
Posts: 2343
Joined: 03 Jun 2016

26 Jun 2018

It's often mentioned on here that it's good to have more than one DAW because they make you think in different ways. The other side of that coin is that having just one DAW will tend to gently push you toward whichever way of thinking and style of music it works best for.
I think that's a good thing, and better than having all music software equally excellent jacks of all trades. But it does mean that if you only have one, it could end up feeling restrictive and frustrating if you want to explore over there but it's pulling you over here.

antic604

26 Jun 2018

EdGrip wrote:
26 Jun 2018
It's often mentioned on here that it's good to have more than one DAW because they make you think in different ways. The other side of that coin is that having just one DAW will tend to gently push you toward whichever way of thinking and style of music it works best for.
I think that's a good thing, and better than having all music software equally excellent jacks of all trades. But it does mean that if you only have one, it could end up feeling restrictive and frustrating if you want to explore over there but it's pulling you over here.
Few thoughts on that:

1) if it's true that particular DAW is better suited to specific type of music or workflow, then using it might change your music; example? I like to automate a lot of things - instrument, effect, channel parameters - but since using Reason, I tend to either limit myself in terms of quantity of those automations or at least use LFOs (instead of manual, more self-controlled automations) because... automation of effects creates extra tracks in sequencer that I can't hide or collapse, which means I'm ending up with 50+ tracks for a song with 15 sound sources; other example stems from the fact there's no multi-clip editing, so - with my inferior knowledge of music theory - my melodies tend to be simpler and music more repetitive, because I can't stack my chords, bass and melodies on top of each other to easier and quicker work out what I hear in my head; in the end I don't know if those "forced" changes are for the better or worse, but they're there and they're not my conscious choice, just something that "happened" due to constraints of the software,

2) I don't think most of us want Reason to be jack of all trades? 95% of features we ask for are basic bread & butter comfort-of-life kind of things, which are common on the DAW market; very few people would want Reason to drop the Rack, the wires, the "SSL" Mixer or the REs, because - at least for me - they ARE what makes Reason different, unique and special and I'm here because of them! If Reason was to change into Cubase, then I'd get Cubase instead. I want Reason be Reason, but not with a sub par Sequencer, unless Props policy is to ReWire it elsewhere, but then maybe they should just scrap the Sequencer altogether or become a plugin company?

Obviously, to be fair, one could say that it's the same with "real" instruments - playing guitar will make you create different music than playing a cello and one shouldn't demand to add sustain pedal to a trumpet because they have it in the piano, so I definitely get where you're coming from :)

But somehow - possibly wrongly - I expect DAWs to be more "transparent", because they're tools and not instruments. Sure, some tools can be more versatile, others can be more specialised but they shouldn't compromise (significantly) in any area: what good is a screwdriver with a metal handle? or a spanner made off of soft alloy? or a hammer with a rubbery shaft? The supporting features need to enhance the main feature, not to hamper it :)

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guitfnky
Posts: 4408
Joined: 19 Jan 2015

26 Jun 2018

antic604 wrote:
26 Jun 2018
But somehow - possibly wrongly - I expect DAWs to be more "transparent", because they're tools and not instruments. Sure, some tools can be more versatile, others can be more specialised but they shouldn't compromise (significantly) in any area: what good is a screwdriver with a metal handle? or a spanner made off of soft alloy? or a hammer with a rubbery shaft? The supporting features need to enhance the main feature, not to hamper it :)
you've inadvertently found the nut of the issue. Reason wasn't initially a DAW, in the traditional sense. it didn't even have the ability to record audio until version 5. Reason is an instrument, every bit as much as it is a DAW, at this point. I agree with a lot of the things that should be added, but I would say that if you're looking for a 'transparent' DAW, Reason would be about the last choice you should consider.
I write good music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

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mcatalao
Competition Winner
Posts: 1824
Joined: 17 Jan 2015

26 Jun 2018

guitfnky wrote:
26 Jun 2018
you've inadvertently found the nut of the issue. Reason wasn't initially a DAW, in the traditional sense. it didn't even have the ability to record audio until version 5. Reason is an instrument, every bit as much as it is a DAW, at this point. I agree with a lot of the things that should be added, but I would say that if you're looking for a 'transparent' DAW, Reason would be about the last choice you should consider.
Well, but this is what makes Reason Reason, and other daws are... well... other daws right?

This is why i stopped using cubase once Record came. The whole arranging process in Cubase was so sterile, that Reason compared whas the most inspiring tool i ever had and i quickly got hooked to the new mixer.
The result is that i stopped using any other daw besides reason except clients send stuff recorded elsewhere.

kitekrazy
Posts: 1036
Joined: 19 Jan 2015

26 Jun 2018

guitfnky wrote:
26 Jun 2018
antic604 wrote:
26 Jun 2018
But somehow - possibly wrongly - I expect DAWs to be more "transparent", because they're tools and not instruments. Sure, some tools can be more versatile, others can be more specialised but they shouldn't compromise (significantly) in any area: what good is a screwdriver with a metal handle? or a spanner made off of soft alloy? or a hammer with a rubbery shaft? The supporting features need to enhance the main feature, not to hamper it :)
you've inadvertently found the nut of the issue. Reason wasn't initially a DAW, in the traditional sense. it didn't even have the ability to record audio until version 5. Reason is an instrument, every bit as much as it is a DAW, at this point. I agree with a lot of the things that should be added, but I would say that if you're looking for a 'transparent' DAW, Reason would be about the last choice you should consider.
I find it impressive the music that came out of Reason before v6. You had a limited set of tools and sometimes that can be a curse or blessing. Those old NNXT refills by Sonic Reality sounded great (some still do) back in the day when Gigastudio was king.

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