Specs:
- x64 Windows 10 Home 20H2 19042.1165 / x64 Windows 10 Home 21H1 19043.1237
- Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700 CPU @ 3.60GHz 3.60 GHz
- 32.0 GB RAM
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Other software installed:
- VCV Rack
- Recycle 2.2.4
- Audacity
Reason 12 (upgrade version from 11 Suite) launches, I log in, and then it opens a document like the one pictured and simply hangs there; I've given it up to an hour to load. It does this every time, before/after reboot. No peripherals or control surfaces are or have been connected (I'm pressed for USB-real estate so they only get connected and used when I'm doing something performance-like, not for composition). I have ASIO4ALL installed but not currently in use. Rolled back to Reason 11 Suite and it continues to launch without issue.
I opened a ticket with support and was asked to download the troubleshooting logging version of 12... I gave them two logs, one attempting a standalone install, and another with the full install. In between attempts I also found an old version of Reason (10) and uninstalled it. I uninstalled and reinstalled the logging version and rebooted between attempts. I've left Reason 11 installed throughout to roll back to, and also b/c support has said they should be able to coexist without issue.
The logs grew to nearly 1GB in under a minute, both times, and all eventually started spamming this message indefinitely (which I'm including just in case someone else had better luck with support using the logging version after getting a similar error and checking the logs):
"Failed to render char: F022"
(I don't necessarily expect anyone here to know what to make of that but I attached a snippet of those logs for context, just in case someone does).
Since then, nothing from support, ticket's been open 20 days.
I keep reading on these forums about display issues that are caused by drivers, specifically OpenGL... (which is kinda infuriating that I'm having more trouble getting Reason to work due to graphics card driver issues than I had installing and configuring a Dolphin Wii emulator, but I digress). In all those situations I'm seeing its causing display issues were there's some minor issue with the graphics or like, the fonts are off or things are out of scale. For me, Reason don't even launch properly and is wholly unusable. As seen in the attached image I just get a white screen and then it just hangs and has to be killed.
(side note: I get that this was the "Hi-Res" update, and yeah, data-point of 1, but I personally - as a devoted 1.5 decade user of this software - do not give 3/8ths of a dusty f*** about graphics in my DAW, particularly not when that DAW already goes above and beyond in emulating physical hardware/patching/cabling. A wholly unnecessary feature that is causing far more problems than it solves, IMO. Screw the graphics. I'm making music. EOF.)
Tonight I did a bunch of Windows updates (hence the two OS versions listed above), and tried again - nothing.
Earlier when I'd read about the driver issues, I upgraded to 471.68-desktop-win10-win11-64bit-international-nsd-dch-whql for OpenGL. That made no difference. I can't recall what the previous version was. I tried two other OpenGL drivers from NVIDIA that I was able to find on their site (this was about two weeks ago):
- 426.02_geforce_win10_64bit_international
- 426.02_geforce_win10_64bit_dch_international
- 472.12-desktop-win10-win11-64bit-international-nsd-dch-whql
- 472.12-desktop-win10-win11-64bit-international-dch-whql
I've used Reason all my adult life, basically 15 years, since version 2.5, never had this kind of difficulty using new versions. The combi2 had me particularly excited, far more excited than most recent major upgrades, as I build tons of gigantic combis and have to use extra REs to get a proportionate level of control/parameter mapping.
If anyone has ANY kind of "I did this and it worked" solution please feel free to share, there's not much I'm above trying at this point.