ReasonTalk.com

As the subject suggest, I want to know why Reason exports are limited to 4gb. I create meditation music, and the platform I upload to takes up to 8gb files and videos as long as 3 hrs! I do not need Propellerhead telling me how big my files should be, I have 64gb of ram, and a 2tb SSD. Just pop a warning up for people that a high amount of storage will be needed and let people make their own choices! I want to export in the highest quality possible with reason 194,000 Hz at 24bit but I can't and the only way I can export my long tracks is if I go much lower in the quality.

Why do they force a 4gb limit, I even chopped my hour long meditation down to 20 mins, exported that and then loaded it back into reason and then built the track back up. And I still cant do what I want to do! I want to be able to offer people my music at the highest possible quality, and they are preventing that, and killing my workflow at the same time.

I do not need to be controlled by Propellerheads limits, I spent a lot of money on my PC and it can handle what I want it to do, it is Reason preventing me exporting my projects in the best quality possible!

Can anyone suggest a work around?

KailasSounds wrote: ↑

10 Sep 2023

As the subject suggest, I want to know why Reason exports are limited to 4gb.

Yeah that's weird - not sure why that's still a thing in 2023. Originally the limitation was in place to ensure compatibility with various hardware and software systems and to prevent excessively large file sizes that could be difficult to work with or share. But no one is on dial-up anymore, so not sure why they have that limitation.

KailasSounds wrote: ↑

10 Sep 2023

I do not need Propellerhead telling me how big my files should be

Propellerhead doesn't exist anymore. They're called Reason Studios. Got bought by a venture capital group years ago.

KailasSounds wrote: ↑

10 Sep 2023

Can anyone suggest a work around?

A different DAW - use Reason as a plugin.

I suppose you could try exporting smaller chunks and stitching them together in audacity or something. Doesn’t sound that appealing to me though. I would be looking at which DAWs do support your use case and moving my projects over. You can load all your patches in the RRP.

I've ran across this before while making a 'mixtape' a long time ago and had to export in chunks and put them back together in wavelab. Never attempted doing it again, I'm surprised it is still a thing.

The limit might not be "imposed" by Reason Studios. The WAV file format is limited to a max 4GB size, if I am not mistaken, and AIFF to 2GB. A workaround is to export to W64 or RF64, but I doubt Reason supports these, plus, they are less stable than AIFF/WAV.

BonsaiMacKay wrote: ↑

11 Sep 2023

The limit might not be "imposed" by Reason Studios. The WAV file format is limited to a max 4GB size, if I am not mistaken, and AIFF to 2GB. A workaround is to export to W64 or RF64, but I doubt Reason supports these, plus, they are less stable than AIFF/WAV.

That is interesting. I thought something like this. And I guess a lot of applications in the past had problems with size bigger than 2GB because they don't understand the difference of signed and unsigned integer

KailasSounds wrote: ↑

10 Sep 2023

As the subject suggest, I want to know why Reason exports are limited to 4gb. I create meditation music, and the platform I upload to takes up to 8gb files and videos as long as 3 hrs! I do not need Propellerhead telling me how big my files should be, I have 64gb of ram, and a 2tb SSD. Just pop a warning up for people that a high amount of storage will be needed and let people make their own choices! I want to export in the highest quality possible with reason 194,000 Hz at 24bit but I can't and the only way I can export my long tracks is if I go much lower in the quality.

Why do they force a 4gb limit, I even chopped my hour long meditation down to 20 mins, exported that and then loaded it back into reason and then built the track back up. And I still cant do what I want to do! I want to be able to offer people my music at the highest possible quality, and they are preventing that, and killing my workflow at the same time.

I'd love to know who your clients are who can hear any difference between 48k and 194k sample rate (actually, I think you mean 192k). Meditation music? They're probably listening on AirBuds.

BonsaiMacKay wrote: ↑

11 Sep 2023

The limit might not be "imposed" by Reason Studios. The WAV file format is limited to a max 4GB size, if I am not mistaken, and AIFF to 2GB. A workaround is to export to W64 or RF64, but I doubt Reason supports these, plus, they are less stable than AIFF/WAV.

D'oh! Well there you go - nothing to do with Reason Studios. But yeah, they need to add support for W64 or something to get around that, for sure.

as above, 4gb is a pretty computationally significant amount because it's the max size you can address in 32 bits, and the wave format uses a 32 bit value in its header as a file size indicator. Same reason you can fit more than 4gb ram on a PC running a 32 bit OS but you'll never use more than 4.

So not reasons fault.

KailasSounds wrote: ↑

10 Sep 2023

I want to export in the highest quality possible with reason 194,000 Hz at 24bit
...
I do not need to be controlled by Propellerheads limits, I spent a lot of money on my PC and it can handle what I want it to do, it is Reason preventing me exporting my projects in the best quality possible!

Max file size for wave is 4gb.
source: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/siz ... files.html

There is is very little reason to be exporting your files at 192khz.
Typical standard is 44.1khz - neither you or your listeners will be able to tell the difference.

The reason is because they want to and that is plenty enough to justify trying to find out how to do it. I don’t think 16bit 44.1 is the holy grail of audio reproduction just because it is the cd standard (from 1982 or something). I do everything in 24bit 48khz because it sounds better, or rather it sounds closer to what I hear in the DAW on the mix down. So why not push it to the limit. Those extra kHz washing over your brain probably induce a molecular soundgasm somewhere.

Jackjackdaw wrote: ↑

12 Sep 2023

The reason is because they want to and that is plenty enough to justify trying to find out how to do it. I don’t think 16bit 44.1 is the holy grail of audio reproduction just because it is the cd standard (from 1982 or something). I do everything in 24bit 48khz because it sounds better, or rather it sounds closer to what I hear in the DAW on the mix down. So why not push it to the limit. Those extra kHz washing over your brain probably induce a molecular soundgasm somewhere.

48 also happens to be the sample rate commonly used in video, so it's difficult to argue against it.

Some people say they can hear the difference between 48 and 96. Those people are named Batman and Neil Young.

192? Unless you're solving some non-qualitative problem like interoperability, that definitely won't help anyone.

Working at 96 or 192 might not be a waste because some plug-ins don't have over-sampling.

But exporting at 96 or 192 because it "sounds better" is a waste.

That said, I wonder if the 4GB limit might be an actual problem for a long piece exported at 48/24. Anybody care to do the arithmetic?

integerpoet wrote: ↑

12 Sep 2023

Some people say they can hear the difference between 48 and 96. Those people are named Batman and Neil Young.

I came across this interesting piece about why 44.1

https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/defin ... 20aliasing.


I think that you can argue that although you may not be able to hear sound above a certain frequency, those high pitched sounds may affect how all the other present frequencies shape the air and surrounding environment which may alter how the audible sounds are perceived or felt. I expect if you are working on the realm of sound therapy then these are ideas you would like to explore.

KailasSounds wrote: ↑

10 Sep 2023

I want to export in the highest quality possible with reason 194,000 Hz at 24bit

There's your problem

dvdrtldg wrote: ↑

12 Sep 2023

KailasSounds wrote: ↑

10 Sep 2023

I want to export in the highest quality possible with reason 194,000 Hz at 24bit

There's your problem

The "problem" can be that the highest/fastest isn't always the best quality. Having a file with more frequencies captured (that we can't hear) doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be higher quality. More dynamic range doesn't alway mean higher quality.
Here's an interesting and geeky article about why higher rates may actually be worse sounding than lower, arguing there is an "optimal" range of sample rates and it is far below 192kHz:
https://sonicscoop.com/the-science-of-s ... mal%20rate.

There's a word that explains it perfectly: ENOUGH. It's true you need a sample rate high ENOUGH to capture all audible frequencies, and a dynamic range high ENOUGH to capture the dynamic range of the source. Beyond that, I'm not sure what gains are being made, especially compared to the "costs". Are 192k samples per second really four times better sounding than 48k samples per second? Or is 48k, or even 44.1k samples per second "enough"?
TL/DR: bigger isn't always better, aka the law of diminishing returns.

I think the confusion with high sample rates and quality comes from oversampling synths and FX. So higher sampling rates have an indirect quality effect.

Just try yourself how different Thor or Subtractor sounds on highest sampling rates.

Another impact can have any kind of distortion devices and algorithms, like all the vintage modeling stuff. All in it most not sound better, but different, which might give the impression it most be better on highest sampling rates settings.

Always wanted an oversampling option per device in Reason.i know there are VSTs doing this...

I occasionally use Reason for Podcasts and they can be close to 4GBs if the interview is an hour long or more.

That is concerning.

Loque wrote: ↑

12 Sep 2023

I think the confusion with high sample rates and quality comes from oversampling synths and FX. So higher sampling rates have an indirect quality effect.

There's a good video which covers this. In a nutshell, because of the way some audio DSP math works, you want a higher sample rate to avoid aliasing. However, once that math is done, you get no benefit from keeping the sample rate high.



Bonus: You get to hear him say "keela-hertz" repeatedly. Every time he does it, I get the image of a gila monster in my head.