Imagine if combinators could only be played and modulated via its basic combi interface ...

[joeyluck]

I take a different approach, offering all but one of my combinator creations for free because they are great teaching tools. But even the Combinator I charged for (B3) was not able to be locked, and I never felt that was a bad thing. BTW, this has come up more than a few times over the years, mainly before REs were introduced.

The main problem I see is that they STILL are not robust enough feature wise to lock out the user. If they had better feedback (metering/displays) and enough controls to handle all basic tasks maybe it would be useful. As they are, you still need to look inside for additional feedback/features. Plus, they are excellent learning tools, if you’re interested in teaching/sharing with others.

That B3 should have been PH's posterchild for what was possible with mere combinators.

I brought over a church musician and that alone sold him on Reason. When I showed him how it's made from basic Reason devices I nearly blew a fuse in his brain.

But tbh I was really thinking of this as a "What if?" scenario rather than a feature suggestion. Like, what if this is how it had always been? Would we have treated them differently if their inner workings were obscured by magic? Would we have myths about the quality of Combinators vs stock devices?

I don't know. People seemed to be really concerned about the "obscure magic" of REs made with the IDT/Gorilla Engine. And I of course always disagreed with that. I think the reception has since improved. Point being is we have something like that already. The GE is a platform with ready to use and scriptable tools and effects, etc. for creating REs in a "locked black box" as you call it.

I just don't see the desire. I'd be more concerned about the uniqueness of what is packaged under the hood of a locked Combinator than a RE built using the GE. On one hand with the GE you have very basic tools as building blocks which can be used in creative ways. On the other hand with the Combinator, while you can have the same if starting from scratch, what prevents someone from selling a bass patch by simply combining presets or device patches made by other designers? Or even just single devices contained in Combinators? At least with the way it is now, you can open it up and look at samples and you can view the programmer and synth settings, etc.

[RobC]

I take a different approach, offering all but one of my combinator creations for free because they are great teaching tools. But even the Combinator I charged for (B3) was not able to be locked, and I never felt that was a bad thing. BTW, this has come up more than a few times over the years, mainly before REs were introduced.

The main problem I see is that they STILL are not robust enough feature wise to lock out the user. If they had better feedback (metering/displays) and enough controls to handle all basic tasks maybe it would be useful. As they are, you still need to look inside for additional feedback/features. Plus, they are excellent learning tools, if you’re interested in teaching/sharing with others.

In my situation, I kind of wanted to freely share those of my prototypes that kind of can be partly created in Reason, even if not exactly efficiently, and it would need additional coding to have all the features I planned out. Still at least people could get a flavor of what a potential RE or VST that I planned, would be like, but without giving away all the details.
But yeah, I know we have Beta RE's now for that. Even if for a smaller circle of testers.