How would you rate the R12 upgrade? (Upgraders and R+ subscribers only)

[dasmode]

2, because I was deceived.

Nowhere in the system requirements is it stated that the video card or video chip must support the modern version of OpenGL (I don't know where to get the details).

12.png (67.82 KiB) Viewed 2152 times

I wasted two days trying to figure out why fonts and other design elements were missing in Reason 12. But I found the reason is OpenGL: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7524500

My computer is fine with me: 8 core processor, 32 GB of memory, it works fast enough. But I don't play games, so I haven't changed the graphics card for a long time. Therefore, if your graphics card hasn't received updates for 5 years or so, you will also face the same problem.

[CaptainBlack]

. Ummm, Reason 11 was all about the sequencer...?

Reason 11 was all about the RRP. At that point, Reason was my main DAW so it was little use to me. There just wasn't £125 worth of updates. Minor improvements are a point release, not a full blown update. I finally bought it when they threw in 12 a few months back.

I feel Reason has positioned itself in the market as what the kewl kids move onto after they're bored with Garageband. Meanwhile, we veterans of 20 years have started divorce proceedings. Sorry.

Seems that more than the name was lost when Propellerheads was retired.

[PhillipOrdonez]

. Ummm, Reason 11 was all about the sequencer...?

Reason 11 was all about the RRP. At that point, Reason was my main DAW so it was little use to me. There just wasn't £125 worth of updates. Minor improvements are a point release, not a full blown update. I finally bought it when they threw in 12 a few months back.

I feel Reason has positioned itself in the market as what the kewl kids move onto after they're bored with Garageband. Meanwhile, we veterans of 20 years have started divorce proceedings. Sorry.

Seems that more than the name was lost when Propellerheads was retired.

Except it had more sequencer features than ever before.

Why do people forget they just did stuff to the sequencer?

They do stuff to the sequencer and people literally say that they don't and are going to phase out the standalone in favour of the RRP blah blah whatever

[deigm]

The sequencer has had no attention at all for two upgrades now. Meanwhile all the other DAWs disappear into the distance. Think it’s time to jump back to Cubase. They practically told us to use another DAW with the Reason Rack Plug-in.

R11 was one of the bigger updates to the sequencer I have seen since R9 which gave us pitch edit.
- crossfades
- automation curves
- absolute snap
- improved/individual track zoom
- multi-note pencil tool
- key visualization
- mute midi notes
- shortcut for shifting an octave
- shift+double-click to select notes and all following notes in clip

It's not a gigantic list, but comparatively to what we have seen in the past, it is one of the bigger updates to the sequencer I have seen. And to say the sequencer got no attention is false.

I honestly feel like after they do that and then people claim they did nothing to the sequencer, it could be for THAT very reason if they were to decide to take a break on the sequencer, because they could never add enough to satisfy people. And making claims that they did nothing to the sequencer is so false and the spreading of misinformation helps nobody.

Can you elaborate on key visualization? That one has somehow escaped my attention but it sounds like something I'd find useful..

[joeyluck]

R11 was one of the bigger updates to the sequencer I have seen since R9 which gave us pitch edit.
- crossfades
- automation curves
- absolute snap
- improved/individual track zoom
- multi-note pencil tool
- key visualization
- mute midi notes
- shortcut for shifting an octave
- shift+double-click to select notes and all following notes in clip

It's not a gigantic list, but comparatively to what we have seen in the past, it is one of the bigger updates to the sequencer I have seen. And to say the sequencer got no attention is false.

I honestly feel like after they do that and then people claim they did nothing to the sequencer, it could be for THAT very reason if they were to decide to take a break on the sequencer, because they could never add enough to satisfy people. And making claims that they did nothing to the sequencer is so false and the spreading of misinformation helps nobody.

Can you elaborate on key visualization? That one has somehow escaped my attention but it sounds like something I'd find useful..

The keys on the keyboard in the piano roll light up to show played and selected notes.

[Carpainter]

Reasons core was always modular, long before bitwig was a twinkle in its developers eye...

I'm not just talking about the ability to patch devices together with virtual cables, though. I'm thinking more along the lines of a visual programming language, but done in a way that suits Reason.

[FiatLux]

I am in the same boat, I have two recent pretty fast Macs, and R12 is completely unusable on both of them.
I actually already upgraded, but I gave it a 1 since I had to revert back to R11 Suite.

I think a 4 or so is probably fair given the features, but since I had to go back to 11 it can only be a 1 on your scale.
Sorry RS, the software is simply not tested properly.

[Ahornberg]

IMHO the new Combinator and Mimic are the real upgrade. Everything else is just eye-candy.

[Faastwalker]

7 for me;

Hi-res - A work in progress. Fantastic we have it but it’s not finished …….. yet!

Mimic - I really love the direction they went with this. I think it’s a fantastic sampler device.

Combinator 2 - Phenomenal upgrade to Combinator. Steals the show for me. Brilliant

[TritoneAddiction]

Interesting outcome of votes. Right now while I'm writing this comment 38% find the upgrade pretty good or really good, 32% think it's "ok" and 29% find it pretty bad or terrible. As always people will value new features differently. That's to be expected. But besides that, it appears to be a complete gamble to upgrade, like rolling the dice. For some people things work pretty smoothly or even better than before. For others it's a complete mess.
What troubles me in particular is the 7% that felt they had to revert back to an older version.
I know RS will work on fixing things here and there, but reading through the various comments from different sources about this upgrade, there's seems to be A LOT of fixing to do. My guess is it will take quite some time before R12 feels like a finished release ready version. I hope that this approach from RS is a one off thing, because I just can't see myself supporting a company that knowingly releases unfinished products. If they do they should put a disclaimer on their site next to the upgrade button, "WARNING, not finished yet, we're working on it". So that people know what they're getting into.

[Jagwah]

A very sad looking poll result indeed. It seems out of those that did upgrade there's not a ton of satisfaction there. Oh well, only a couple more years of waiting and begging for features to know if it's going to be yet another couple more years, and so on and so forth. Such is being a Reason user. I'm quite content using R10.

[deigm]

Can you elaborate on key visualization? That one has somehow escaped my attention but it sounds like something I'd find useful..

The keys on the keyboard in the piano roll light up to show played and selected notes.

Oh right. Thanks

[avasopht]

It's hard to say. I'm coming from R10 (I'm not counting R11 Lite), so there are a bunch of features in R11 that already add tremendous value.

With R+ I get things like Parsec, Algoritm and Complex - all devices I've not even touched since installing it but am looking forward to using. I had a lot of fun with the Complex demo when it first came out, and I've got 16 cores to play with now.

[PhillipOrdonez]

The first day after installing the system was pretty slow but not unusable, but I can see understand if people felt bad due to things being sluggish. After turning off hyperthreading and I guess until the indexing was done, and maybe their machine has 2 GPUs and they need to set it so the powerful one takes the reason load or something idk, the performance went back to normal. I imagine someone who isn't patient loads it and half an hour later goes to the internet to complain that it sucks and they are going back to X version that was better. ‍♂️

[FiatLux]

Just to be clear, this isn't an issue of the wrong setting for hyper-threading, or a day to index.
This is happening on two different Macs, both recent 8-core i7 and i9. Both left Reason running for over a day to make sure indexing wasn't complete. I can confirm that after about half an hour, the size of the cache file hasn't changed. One of those machines recieved a dress system install. None of that fixed it. Pops and clicks from even using a single instance of the Default Europa patch. CPU when idle goes into complete overdrive, fans on computer go to 100% and won't go down. Reason 11 Suite is still installed and works fine.
This is something definitively wrong in the code for R12 that needs to be addressed. There is absolutely no way this is user error!
BTW...but tickets were submitted, with tons of documentation.

The first day after installing the system was pretty slow but not unusable, but I can see understand if people felt bad due to things being sluggish. After turning off hyperthreading and I guess until the indexing was done, and maybe their machine has 2 GPUs and they need to set it so the powerful one takes the reason load or something idk, the performance went back to normal. I imagine someone who isn't patient loads it and half an hour later goes to the internet to complain that it sucks and they are going back to X version that was better. ‍♂️

[PhillipOrdonez]

Just to be clear, this isn't an issue of the wrong setting for hyper-threading, or a day to index.
This is happening on two different Macs, both recent 8-core i7 and i9. Both left Reason running for over a day to make sure indexing wasn't complete. I can confirm that after about half an hour, the size of the cache file hasn't changed. One of those machines recieved a dress system install. None of that fixed it. Pops and clicks from even using a single instance of the Default Europa patch. CPU when idle goes into complete overdrive, fans on computer go to 100% and won't go down. Reason 11 Suite is still installed and works fine.
This is something definitively wrong in the code for R12 that needs to be addressed. There is absolutely no way this is user error!
BTW...but tickets were submitted, with tons of documentation.

The first day after installing the system was pretty slow but not unusable, but I can see understand if people felt bad due to things being sluggish. After turning off hyperthreading and I guess until the indexing was done, and maybe their machine has 2 GPUs and they need to set it so the powerful one takes the reason load or something idk, the performance went back to normal. I imagine someone who isn't patient loads it and half an hour later goes to the internet to complain that it sucks and they are going back to X version that was better. ‍♂️

Weird hopefully the cause of the issue is found and addressed very quickly.

[ravasb]

I deeply regret the subscription, mostly because it has so far added very little value. I already owned a lot of the REs and the packs are okay, but seem to be an excuse for not updating the factory library. There are so few new features that having a couple of weeks of early access is not a big deal. If I was new to Reason I probably would have been happier. I reflexively buy the updates because they came every few years and were pretty good. For owners of 11 and some REs this is not good value.

[utdgrant]

I think I qualify, as I got a 'free' R12 upgrade bundled when I bought the R11 Intro -> R11 full upgrade back in May 2021. The move from Intro to R11 'full' (NOT Suite) was worth the money (£199, IMSC) in itself, so I'm certainly not complaining about the cost.

That said...

The ONLY R12 feature which I find useful is Combinator 2. The ability to add extra controls and customise the front panel is very worthwhile to me; I tend to roll my own patches (instruments and effects) rather than use presets.

However, as I've said in another thread, I'm not too happy that Combi 2 patches cannot be loaded by earlier versions of Reason. I would have preferred the peaceful co-existence of the original AND Combinator 2, using one or the other as appropriate to the situation.

Ultimately, I gave it a vote of '3'. If I'd had to pay £129 for an upgrade from 11 to 12, I simply wouldn't have done it. Mimic is of little interest to me - all my sampling needs are covered by Redrum and NN-19. (I know that mine is not a typical use-case! ).

[Jackjackdaw]

I think if they held off releasing it for a year, got the HD finished, added VST 3 and a something for the sequencer like track folders and it would be a banging upgrade. Feels a bit like they hit a deadline and put out what they had ready. I think it has the potential to be a 10 nearer the end of its lifecycle after some point updates but is currently a 5

[jlgrimes]

First of all, only those of you who have upgraded to R12 or are R+ subscribers may vote in this poll. You have to actually have tried R12 out for yourself.
Also for this particular poll, we're sticking to the version that was released on september 1, the initial R12 version. So improvements or speculations of what may come later doesn't count for this one, not even future promises made by Reason Studios themselves count. It's about the initial release. Just so we're talking about the same product. If you're a R+ subscriber, try to exclude the soundpacks bit from this when casting your vote.

Feel free to add a comment if you want for more nuance.

5.

Mimic and Combinator are welcome additions (Combinator definitely). Reason kind of was the inventor of the stacking device that so many developers improved on the original concept so RS had to hit a home run here and they definitely did. It feels more like an instrument than a layering device and Reason improved in alot of areas here.

Mimic while not perfect is a great unique device. It has a unique character to it as well and I like that they limited it's effects and didn't stick with the standard Europa based effects (although Europa's effects are nice, they are a bit too polite for Mimic). They didn't knock it out the park here but definitely made it to 3rd base. Tempo syncing is the biggest glaring ommision. With that, I think they could have knocked it out the park big time. Also a good sample editor should have a full screen mode and would have made it more competitive.

Graphics are much better but I think still could have went further. Hopefully more is in store. I hope Reason starts improving their base devices. Notably their samplers, pattern devices, to come up with some more modern concepts.

The browser I'm the least pleased about. Loading patches on my external HD is still slow. The Rack plug-in browser is still not expandable which is a pain.

There are bugs as well. Sometimes Reason Rack plug-in fails to load in Ableton and Studio One.


Overall though their improvements are too little.
Other DAW major releases are big improvements that focus on wide ranging issues. Reason is actually a great sequencer for getting ideas on "tape". Very simple (in a good way). It's editing functions are a pain though and although I don't think they need to do major improvements here with each update, they need to throw standalone users some bones. A few minor improvements here or there would have made the majority of users happy. The mixer was totally neglected. And I disagree on them including both Friction and Algorithm, maybe including one of those (or an older RE like Complex or Parsec), and maybe a player device would have made it more worthwhile. I think they should still offer Suite packages vs getting users to go plus. I think they would be surprised on how many user bite the bullet and spend extra money getting fully up to date (even with a much more expensive update price). Many users are totally against subscriptions but that don't mean they won't pay the extra money to get fully up to date on choice.

Also the last 3 updates feel like they are abandoning the standalone which is a shame. Their sequencer isn't bad just a bit outdated. I doubt that they aren't skilled to make good improvements here. Their instruments show that they are excellent coders. That said if they do decide to go fully plugin, they need to go all in on the player devices, Redrum, and Matrix to modernize the plugin. All that might be needed is just improvements to the Drum Sequencer and maybe a Matrix II Pattern RE but with those, I could see alot of people using Reason RE to program drums in other DAWS.

[moalla]

I would give it 8 points, maybe together with old/new seuquencer features from R11

For me i‘m happy with the new comb features, is started a comb2 with d16’s drumazon and now decide to build a mixer and tune, decay XY comb panel to have a direct control over the 11 voices of this drumachine without opening the vst window, with two drum sequencer under this controls.

Also automation curves are a great thing, and for me the sequencer updates since R10 are more than enough, outherwise for new users the learning curve in sequencer features are too much! My opinion

The only thing in reasons stability I think is caused by vst‘s and gpu drivers, as w10 user I can say this windows is now more or less finalized and much faster than 2years ago.

So i‘m tense how far RS will implement vst3 and if they will give us the ability to load vst‘s in the rack plugin especial in context with ableton, for live performance usage with midi clips.

But yeah I know from this forum, people would text like, we need a midi clip launcher, we need a new .... but at all I think forget about these, to complicated, a hardware tracker or ableton is the better choice for this amount!

Reason now gets an adult status, I really hoped for this and thought maybe with number 12 it could be and i would say yeah it happened successfully.

The only thing what would be really nice and needed are trackfolders for clarity and such a great redo record function like ableton has, without the extra way of loading sequences, but maybe sequences has more power... I don‘t checked out now all functions of this player, so had not enough time with a 6 month old baby.

//made this Post in wrong thread grrrr //

[OverneathTheSkyBridg]

I like the new devices, but for me it seems there a lot of elements missing the HiRes update. (transport bar, sequencer) So it is a little bit unfinished and i hope it will be corrected in an upcoming patch.

For this reason I decided not to continue with my R+ trial. Not in a big hurry to upgrade, but if a point update sees a proper hi res update (one where the rest of the program doesn't have to scale up with the Rack) then I may be more interested. That and some of the many workflow improvements that have been requested. Combinator 2 is cool, but I wasn't really using the Combinator 1 all that often so it's not a huge thing for me, but it is impressive and definitely exceeded what I was expecting them to do. I think I'm going to stick with R11 Suite for now, God knows I've barely dug into Complex-1 enough even though it was a big selling point for me.

[pjelli]

I rate it highly based on the potential of Combinator 2. Are they going to keep it as-is or are they going to compete with Bitwig and introduce a fully modular core within Reason? It doesn't have to be on the level of Max or Reaktor, but the Rack was made for something like that.

Reasons core was always modular, long before bitwig was a twinkle in its developers eye...

You do realize that Bitwig is developed by folks previously with Ableton, and doing stuff in their DAW, way before Reason even tried? I would argue Reason's core was only SEMI-modular. And don't forget it was all based on Rebirth..something that was not even close to modular...only an emulation of a few Roland hardware devices. Look at Rebirth and then look at Redrum(one of their first few devices).

[pjelli]

Being that they did very little on the "DAW"/Standalone version of the app, maybe there should be another poll seperate that rates standalone, and VST rack?

I say this because I have moved on from the standalone and into Reaper. I use the rack here and there. The VST rack version just plain crashes Reaper and won't even load. Uninstalled and I am back to v11 VST rack. If they want their focus to be on the rack, they should test in all popular DAW's. I am sure they will fix this, but it's another thing that is pushing me further and further from propellerhead...sorry...Reason Studios.

[Kalm]

If I have to wait for a point update to feel better about the upgrade, then its a 5. I can't give it lower than a 5 because its not worst than where it left. There is the most requested feature of all time in the upgrade so . . . I gotta go with 5