ReasonTalk.com

Off the top of my head I can think of:
SSL mixer
Fully integrated spectrum eq
Expansive CV and Audio routing
Rack Extensions

It's proprietary & in some of the most reliable programming languages.
But other daws have workflow enhancements to be considered luxury/out of this world.

Perhaps some of these have made it to other DAWs and I’m just out of the loop but some of my favourites are;

Proper global undo
Add/remove instruments/effects without pausing the audio stream
Automation container clips
The rack and back panels (obvs)
Static automation values
Blocks
Self contained project files (blessing and a curse sometimes!)
Absolute backwards compatibility to version 1
Players (I know they’re basically MIDI inserts but I mean the way they stack and work)

Annoyingly fiddly cables?

That Reason Smell™

inspiration.

that sounds ridiculous, but honestly, that’s the feature that keeps me coming back. a host of incredible stock devices and the modularity of studio routing devices—as many as your system can handle—is by far the most important contributing factor, but the streamlined workflow is also crucial. but yes, it is still TOO streamlined; to the point where it’s still missing lots of basic features.

there’s simply nothing else I’ve found that comes close to being as inspiring and fun as Reason—and I’ve tried a lot of DAWs over the last several months.

i remember a lot of folks would say reason is great because it doesn't crash, reason is solid but i don't hear that so much anymore. possibly other DAWs don't crash as much these days

In this thread: people who don't realize that nearly all of these features exist and are often implemented better in other DAWs*

"guitfnky" hit the nail on the head tho - Reason has a special something that makes creating music way more fun than most other DAWs. (When you aren't wasting time with workarounds). That's why I was happy to see the new Friktion instrument getting back to "innovative and fun".

*except the jiggly cables, and the pointless "SSL" desk which recreates the limitations of an out-of-date piece of gear from decades ago, instead of innovating and making an original "Reason mixing desk". Honestly one of the most headscratching decisions by Reason in the last 10 years. Even Paul Frindle who designed the actual SSL says he doesn't understand why people waste their time trying to copy it, forgoing all the advances in modern technology and GUI. He already moved on to making newer and better tools.

That studio feel, putting together a rack, dragging cables about and patching it all up, being able to make mistakes that turn out to be happy mistakes. There might be some stuff you want in the sequencer but the rack just makes reason special.

Reason has "The Sound".

Mataya wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

Reason has "The Sound".

DaveyG wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

Annoyingly fiddly cables?

always enough cable available and always fitting in the length!

deeplink wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

Off the top of my head I can think of:
SSL mixer
Fully integrated spectrum eq
Expansive CV and Audio routing
Rack Extensions

The first one isn't true as Universal Audio and SSL themselves make versions you can buy as a vst.

Others might be:-

An End Marker, L/R Locators, Player Devices that come as stock (forgive me if I'm wrong), a Unison device and Global Undo?

At the beginning and still (to a lesser extent)...

DR OCTAREX

very handy

Creativemind wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

deeplink wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

Off the top of my head I can think of:
SSL mixer

The first one isn't true as Universal Audio and SSL themselves make versions you can buy as a vst.

Isn't it?
Can you imagine how you would put 24-32 or more VST SSL channels on the screen at a time and scroll around. What about the DSP hit?

It's similar to pitch correction - there have been plugins for this for decades, but having it integrated in the DAW gives a totally different experience IMO. Same for the SSL mixer, which IMO is still one of the most elegant ways to mix a record despite its age.

Bottom line: there are few (if any?) DAWs which have full built in mixers, let alone a legendary mixer, for better or worse.

selig wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

Bottom line: there are few (if any?) DAWs which have full built in mixers, let alone a legendary mixer, for better or worse.

Don't want to derail this thread, but this seems debatable - probably a matter of taste: mimicking retro hardware vs. having a common ground with faders + individual building blocks (plugins). Thinking of Logic, Cubase, and S1 here...

selig wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

Creativemind wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

The first one isn't true as Universal Audio and SSL themselves make versions you can buy as a vst.

It's similar to pitch correction - there have been plugins for this for decades, but having it integrated in the DAW gives a totally different experience IMO. Same for the SSL mixer, which IMO is still one of the most elegant ways to mix a record despite its age.

Bottom line: there are few (if any?) DAWs which have full built in mixers, let alone a legendary mixer, for better or worse.

I was lucky to start my modern DAW journey with Digital Performer, which also has integrated pitch editing. going from that and Reason’s integrated pitch editor to using something from a third party, like Melodyne just feels super weird to me. so glad Reason built it into the core DAW—it’s not without its faults, for sure, but it does a great job as long as you’re patient with it.

as for built in mixers, I’ve tried Harrison Mixbus, which has that, and it’s a good mixing platform in its own right, but damn, the CPU hit you take with it is insane (but more importantly, to me, it’s not very creative-friendly; it really is intended more as a mixing tool than a production DAW).

chimp_spanner wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

Perhaps some of these have made it to other DAWs and I’m just out of the loop but some of my favourites are:

Absolute backwards compatibility to version 1

Alas, this stopped being a thing when the Line6 amps were removed, breaking all Reason 6.0 - 8.0 projects in later versions. I know they threw in the new Softube amps as a replacement in Reason 9, but those Line6 amps had a very specific sound, and arguably a lot more versatility (they came with a veritable ton of presets). I find the Softube amps OK, but they're downright meger by comparison, IMHO.

EnochLight wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

chimp_spanner wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

Perhaps some of these have made it to other DAWs and I’m just out of the loop but some of my favourites are:

Absolute backwards compatibility to version 1

Alas, this stopped being a thing when the Line6 amps were removed, breaking all Reason 6.0 - 8.0 projects in later versions. I know they threw in the new Softube amps as a replacement in Reason 9, but those Line6 amps had a very specific sound, and arguably a lot more versatility (they came with a veritable ton of presets). I find the Softube amps OK, but they're downright meger by comparison, IMHO.

I don't agree with this.

Line 6 is not available, but backwards compatibility isn't broken at all. Reason converts the amps to bypassed softubes and it works as if you didn't have a Re Installed. Which from my experience is not the same as opening a Cubase 2 project in Cubase 10 with the bunch of project formats they had along the years.

Furthermore, Having this issue with a specific device and having that "solved" so elegantly is really smart. So if you put Line 6 aside, project backwards compatibility is absolute, and if you consider Line 6, at least it doesn't break your project to oblivion has happened to my song projects that didn't open in Cubase 4. Luckily, most my projects had the midi parts in reason instruments all along and porting them to Record was easy pizzy!

For me its the mixer, the de-cluttered midi sequencer, and the way everything is so well integrated between the Rack sequencer, mixer and browser. The mixer is also a great addition and it's great that it has everything on your front.

The browser, despite being slow for searches, is great as it integrates fully every single type of device. I hate the crazy exploration times and different vst browsers so much that I started creating shell combis of my favorite VST patches just so that I don't have to dwell so much searching for sounds on VST's.

About the midi sequencer, for me it's simplicity is paramount. Other midi sequencers, add tons of features that clutter menus and right click tools and so on, that you get lost with so much stuff that most times you don't use. With reason, you spend less time searching for stuff and more time just making music. It's the perfect sequencer if you're ok with a keyboard instrument because if you're ok inputing midi playing the instrument, a lot of the features that were added on other daws, seem to be focused on people that input midi with a mouse and need accelerators for their midi work.

mcatalao wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

EnochLight wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

Alas, this stopped being a thing when the Line6 amps were removed, breaking all Reason 6.0 - 8.0 projects in later versions. I know they threw in the new Softube amps as a replacement in Reason 9, but those Line6 amps had a very specific sound, and arguably a lot more versatility (they came with a veritable ton of presets). I find the Softube amps OK, but they're downright meger by comparison, IMHO.

I don't agree with this.

Line 6 is not available, but backwards compatibility isn't broken at all. Reason converts the amps to bypassed softubes and it works as if you didn't have a Re Installed. Which from my experience is not the same as opening a Cubase 2 project in Cubase 10 with the bunch of project formats they had along the years.

Furthermore, Having this issue with a specific device and having that "solved" so elegantly is really smart. So if you put Line 6 aside, project backwards compatibility is absolute, and if you consider Line 6, at least it doesn't break your project to oblivion has happened to my song projects that didn't open in Cubase 4. Luckily, most my projects had the midi parts in reason instruments all along and porting them to Record was easy pizzy!

I think they handled what was undoubtedly a tricky problem about as well as they could have, and I agree it doesn’t really break backward compatibility, in a strict sense.

but I think EnochLight’s point is that it’s not going to sound the same as it did, which is a really important thing when you’re talking about audio. in that sense, it does break backward compatibility, because it changes the audible result. semantics, absolutely—but important semantics, for some.

all that said, the Line 6 stuff didn’t sound all that great without a bit of futzing around, and the Softube stuff also doesn’t sound all that great without a bit of futzing around. the best option for guitar tones in Reason is to use 3rd party stuff anyway, unfortunately.

full-of-life wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

DaveyG wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

Annoyingly fiddly cables?

always enough cable available and always fitting in the length!

Actually, that's a great point. They should emulate the frustration of finding that the right length cable you just picked up is unbalanced when you needed a balanced one. Then you plug a different one in and have to give it a waggle to make proper contact. People go to great lengths to emulate the very crapness of cassette tape and noisy circuits but neglect to model buzzy cables and crackly pots. It's just not good enough!

guitfnky wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

but I think EnochLight’s point is that it’s not going to sound the same as it did, which is a really important thing when you’re talking about audio. in that sense, it does break backward compatibility, because it changes the audible result. semantics, absolutely—but important semantics, for some.

I guess it depends on what one might define by Backwards Compatibility. In my Cubase example, i'd be happy if i could simply open the freaking projects... Nothing like that has happened to me in 20 years of reason usage.

ReSolder

mcatalao wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

guitfnky wrote: ↑

31 Aug 2020

but I think EnochLight’s point is that it’s not going to sound the same as it did, which is a really important thing when you’re talking about audio. in that sense, it does break backward compatibility, because it changes the audible result. semantics, absolutely—but important semantics, for some.

I guess it depends on what one might define by Backwards Compatibility. In my Cubase example, i'd be happy if i could simply open the freaking projects... Nothing like that has happened to me in 20 years of reason usage.

yep, totally agree—why I acknowledged the difference is really semantic. I can understand people being upset that their old Line 6 projects won’t sound the same when opened in newer versions, but like you suggest, the fact that you could still open the first Reason file ever saved is still pretty impressive.