Assuming there's going be one, what you think is coming in Reason 13?

[bxbrkrz]

Everyone needs a hardware workstation. You need a bit of Hell to savor the taste of the Apple again...
Or maybe Hell is that mouse and trackpad.
To page 13 people. Let's goooooo! We can do it.

[guitfnky]

that is the most ridiculous take I’ve seen yet on this site, and that’s really saying something.

You know it's true. Just admit it!

admit that wants ≠ needs? yeah, no shit. really groundbreaking stuff there, man.

[DaveyG]

MIDI channels. That would be nice in 2024

Yeah, it amuses me that people request MIDI 2.0 and MPE when Reason's support of plain old MIDI is so limited.

[SynthGang]

Serious DAW features attract professional, serious musicans. In the end you only need one synth, a delay and a reverb to make good music. A DAW is more some kind of an organizer for arranging tracks - this part needs investment now, because its indeed a gold mine. They just need to add some basic DAW features for the start and restore the reputation of the all in one unique reason DAW (which they ruined over the last years).

*Bold added for emphasis* This!!

I have been a longtime proponent of Reason, often going out of my way to promote and try to sell it to friends and people I've collaborated with.

Every time I've worked with somebody in some other platform, I almost always find at least one opportunity to say "You see, in Reason doing this is soooo much easier...". That being said, I can't even begin to count how many times I've been behind the wheel, using Reason to pilot the proverbial ship, and having my friend or collaborator say "Really?! You can't do this in Reason? That's crazy!"

Unfortunately I've found that, in the aggregate, things tend to tip out of Reason's favour more often than not, and that right there is something I imagine Reason Studios definitely don't want prospective new users to think!

[SynthGang]

Some of you guys have a very limited idea of what a DAW is supposed to be

It's like in your minds there's this Platonic archetype of the Perfect DAW, and it has a list of 100 specific features that you can name, and every DAW is judged according to how close it comes to the archetype

95/100 features? that's a good DAW. 37/100 features? that's a bad DAW. And so on

It's not so much that there is some ideal "final form" we all imagine a DAW to be - the reality is that the easier a DAW is to use, the less barriers there are to your creativity, and therefore the more likely you are to use it.

Market forces being what they are, people will inevitably find the easiest path forward. If that means abandoning Reason as a platform for greener grass, then that's what they'll do. We all want to see Reason succeed because we all know that Reason offers something truly unique and unmatched in the DAW world.

The problems many of us have with Reason lies in some very basic lack of functionality. I for one firmly believe that, if Reason were to tackle a significantly large number of these issues head-on, they could stand to gain market share and increase profits in the long-term.

We should want that for them as a company!

When I think in terms of marketing, I strongly feel that a marketing campaign centred around massive UI/workflow/QoL improvements would constitute far greater incentive for new and existing producers, mix/mastering engineers, sound designers and audio editors (why limit ourselves to music by the way?) to consider adopting Reason as their main audio work environment.

[NoiseCrime]

In most companies, the devs don't decide what they work on, they get their marching orders from management. You can do what you like to do as a dev, when contributing to an Open Source project, or doing development in your own start-up, but that's about it. If your paycheck is signed by someone else, that someone else it probably the one who tells you what to do

I'd agree to a certain extent, and company size can be a factor, but most developer jobs these days are specialised to some degree, some to very narrow niches, so it doesn't make sense for say a Physics dev to be told to work on say UI.

That is why I said they should hire someone with knowledge and interest in the specific area that needs fixing, as I would assume most existing devs would be audio focused.

[SynthGang]

That is why I said they should hire someone with knowledge and interest in the specific area that needs fixing, as I would assume most existing devs would be audio focused.

@Reason Studios - NoiseCrime says he'll do it!

@NoiseCrime - I hope you don't mind me trying to get you a job at Reason Studios lol.

[jam-s]

https://careers.reasonstudios.com/jobs right now they don't seem to be looking for new devs.

[SynthGang]

https://careers.reasonstudios.com/jobs right now they don't seem to be looking for new devs.

They just haven't yet considered hiring a dev who specializes in UI - luckily we have just the candidate right here in this forum

[Loque]

https://careers.reasonstudios.com/jobs right now they don't seem to be looking for new devs.

They just haven't yet considered hiring a dev who specializes in UI - luckily we have just the candidate right here in this forum

AFAIK they hired one...

[oneday2one]

1. Live looping feature built in. Better than live session view. Live session view still requires you to set temp and bar length and metronome to start. Boss live loopers set everything for you automatically after you record your first loop. Look at advanced features of Boss RC-505 mk2. Reason works be the only DAW that could do that and is so much better, music never has to stop.

2. Super advanced pure raw drum synthesizer. No samples no romper, pure syntheses but super advanced.

[NoiseCrime]

That is why I said they should hire someone with knowledge and interest in the specific area that needs fixing, as I would assume most existing devs would be audio focused.

@Reason Studios - NoiseCrime says he'll do it!

@NoiseCrime - I hope you don't mind me trying to get you a job at Reason Studios lol.

lol - I wouldn't mind, but sadly I suspect I don't have the required knowledge to fulfil such a role, not that I wouldn't mind giving it a try.
I'm hoping to have a stab at creating some Rack Extensions in the new year, assuming I can find the time. Though I suspect even that is quite different to the knowledge required to get into the core code of the DAW.

[Popey]

Im hoping for something a bit left field so perhaps something like europa but instead of wavetables it has various cowbell types (like multi osc) that you can combine to make more cowbells.

Most people with a lot of gear just need more cowbells to make everything a hit.

[Jackjackdaw]

I predict a minor sequencer tweak that gives a nod to user requests without really fulfilling any of them. And a new device or two. Some under the hood stuff to keep it working on new machines and then point updates fixing all the bugs until v14.

[Reminiscence]

nothing much happened recently. some eccentric devices, and what not, so not expecting too much. the Pulsar is still bugged in my workflow...

[Jagwah]

I predict a minor sequencer tweak that gives a nod to user requests without really fulfilling any of them. And a new device or two. Some under the hood stuff to keep it working on new machines and then point updates fixing all the bugs until v14.

That's a pretty good call lol

[chaosroyale]

R13 will have a feature that a few years after being installed, it suddenly deletes itself, locks all replies on social media, and hopes nobody notices.

[avasopht]

I expect a definitive UI revamp that will signal who their target audiences are.

The subtle differences will result in accelerated workflow improvements. Drag and drop will feel more like FL Studio. You'll be able to zoom the rack with Ctrl+Scroll wheel, and somehow it will feel 100 times more capable yet simpler than it ever was.

That's been my expectation since they announced the codebase overhaul.

admit that wants ≠ needs? yeah, no shit. really groundbreaking stuff there, man.

It's not so much about wants and needs, but the expectations we have with releases and what a finished product is.

First of all, this obsession with point updates and new versions every 2 years is odd.

Consider two worlds:

1. Reason 12 is released in September 2021, and receives many point updates with new features and various improvements until March 2024.
2. Reason 12 releases in March 2024 with all features and improvements as #1, but it all comes out at once.

New releases would be just as frequent, but complete without the need to wait for any point updates.

Extending this further, what if instead of a new version every 2 years, there was a new version every 5 years, but each new version was a vastly more notable and spectacular improvement over the last?

And maybe there are still regular point updates, but because of the expectation of a completely new version every 5 years, it made much more sense for them to plan for larger changes between versions.

No sense of a finished product

Think about hardware for a minute. They had to build them to a high enough standard that regardless of their shortcomings, they could stand tall as a finished product (with occasional firmware updates, but still work fine without them).

It's great we can patch software quickly and easily. But there was a time when there was no option and once your product went gold, that was it! It was pressed to CD/DVD or built into unmodifiable cartridges.

Internet access and the ease of rolling out updates have now become a crutch. And it's led to a lot of medium-warm releases.

My MPC regularly receives updates that are shortly followed by a patch for a regressive bug the update introduced, which might be followed by another patch for a regressive bug introduced by the patch .

There's more incentive to add new features than completing old ones making the product a solid standalone release

Several years ago I shared my comparison between Reason's file search and a few other options:
1. Using mingw/bash search.
2. Search via Windows command line.
3. A simple search program I'd written in C to compare notes (I might have written one using the Windows SDK and another using the standard C library).

Reason's search was a few orders of magnitude slower. It was faster for me to write a program in C and execute it to search for a file than it was to use Reason's search.

It took several years for them to offer an improvement.

It could always be fixed in a later version.

And with this all being said, Reason 12 was a significant release (Combinator 2, high-resolution display and VST3 support). But ...

... l feel Reason 11 (maybe even Reason 10) reached a point where it was good enough to not demand a new version. At least for me.

I'm reluctant to upgrade to a version that will feel like it needs a paid upgrade in a couple of years. It's okay for there to be new versions, but it doesn't have to feel like you need to.

Shortcomings make a paid upgrade feel more necessary than new features.

And I just feel that somewhere along the line we were sold on the idea/approach of the released product being incomplete without point updates with an expectation of obsolescence.

[Chi-Individual]

These are just my 10 guesses for the DAW proper and what’s coming in the shop. I think maybe 2-3 from each are possible but if it’s TL:DR basically I don’t think any of this is gonna happen just guessing.


1. Track Folders (they have to give us something with the mixer)
2. Mixer dark mode(praying for this)
3. Mimic updated to 16 slots
4. Piano Roll update
5. Least selling RS Re now is stock(i.e. Scenic, Parsec, etc - examples only I have no sales numbers please don’t crucify me lol, it’s just a guess)
6. Combinator update(mixer, buttons, etc)
7. Mono buttons added to mixer
8. Hide Tracks in mixer and seq.
9. New switchable mix consoles ( now we get a Neve emulation)
10. Foldable Rack Extensions to save space and and only show Macros like Thor.

Honorable Mentions
1. Clip Launch page (I.e. Live, Bitwig)
2. Complete modular environment page (Bitwig Grid)
3. Video support.

New Racks 2-3 stock and maybe a few for sale(Just guesses)
1. Physically Modeled Brass called Metals
2. Retro Synth Emulation (Jup 8, Juno 6)
3. New EQ with 5+ bands and maybe M/S or Vintage
4. New Unison(update to the half rack)
5. Fully Modular Rack(Uodate to Complex 1)
6. Vintage Multi-tap Delay
7. Physically Modeled Woodwinds called Sticks
8. Vintage Channel Strip/ Console emulation
9. Vintage Reverb
10. Bundle of emulations of all Rebirth Instuments.

Honorable Mention
1. Euclidean Player
2. Guitar Pedal emulator
3. CV Manipulator

[rorystorm]

I've been thinking about this a bit, and in particular thinking about what I'd be doing if I was in charge of development to kick Reason up a few notches. One of the things is looking at what's been happening in the market and the big trends over the past couple of years.... so:

Big ticket new toys. I know people were speculating a while ago that the next one would be some sort of delay and put that together with the fact that granularity is quite a thing, I'd be looking at some kind of granular-based delay/reverb/shimmerverb. There's a lot of these on the market right now but it would be interesting to see RS's take on it.

Id be looking at the hiphop/trap market so maybe something in that space? like a more featured bass synth or kick generator?

A big hole in the stock devices is vocal tools, apart from Neptune and the pitch editing function, so possibly a noise gate/d-esser/compressor/autotuning/reverb, spacializer, effects deal.

The other big trend has been analogue slash modularity and again there's a lot of this kind of thing around but an analogue style synth that's like an upgraded Complex mashed with the same kind of set up as Algoritm would be amazing for me personally at least. And/or, to jump back to an effects unit, if not a delay then maybe some sort of modular Swiss army knife.

Second, functionality. I have my own wishlist just like everyone*. But it's clearly more than time and it would be amazing to see the amount of work and ingenuity that's gone into the last few big devices put into QOL/sequencer upgrade/Combinator updates/etc. Personally apart from the stuff usually mentioned I think ReGroove needs some love - more factory grooves, more than one user groove, yada yada. There's a lot of work there and it's not that sexy but it really needs doing.

The other thing I'd be thinking about is what marks Reason out from the other DAWs and that thing is modularity, again. I'd be leaning into that hardcore, particularly as apart from Bitwig and VCV Rack (which is super niche and suffers from a lack of sequencer) Reason is the main modular DAW and it's the easiest to use. I'd be looking at a suite of Eurorack style CV tools - muting buttons, atenuverters, CV wranglers, a CV mixer, weird sequencers (hello Turing Machine, will you be my friend), CV=> pitch => a quantizer, gate triggers (with programmable gate lengths), S&H, massive fuck off loopable EGs, logic processors, and so on. I'm sick of hacking Thor and Complex for this stuff and while there's some really amazing REs in this space, it would be good to have some stock devices.

* wish list: track freeze. ghost clips. midi out from VST. multiple VST midi channels. markers with notes. double clicking a parameter and typing in an exact value. more automation curves. tags. clip colour editing. customisable short cuts. that thing where a long note plays wherever you start in it rather than the beginning, said every drone and ambient artist. unhooking the left and right cable at the same time. consistent parameter and automation values. and so much for the Combinator.

[antic604]

...I was watching some Ableton 12 youtube vids and there were lots of complaints about why Ableton was wasting dev time making new instruments and effects...

Which ones?

I must've seen like 40+ and not a single one complained about Meld and Roar - quite the opposite.

Also, there's so many GUI & workflow updates in v12 (not to mention Push 3, standalone to boot happening in parallel...) someone would have to be really ill-intentioned to complain about Ableton's work in 2023. If anything, there's a risk they're spreading themselves thin.

[sehov]

Because its so important, here again for Reason Studios:

These are just my 10 guesses for the DAW proper and what’s coming in the shop. I think maybe 2-3 from each are possible but if it’s TL:DR basically I don’t think any of this is gonna happen just guessing.


1. Track Folders (they have to give us something with the mixer)
2. Mixer dark mode(praying for this)
3. Mimic updated to 16 slots
4. Piano Roll update
5. Least selling RS Re now is stock(i.e. Scenic, Parsec, etc - examples only I have no sales numbers please don’t crucify me lol, it’s just a guess)
6. Combinator update(mixer, buttons, etc)
7. Mono buttons added to mixer
8. Hide Tracks in mixer and seq.
9. New switchable mix consoles ( now we get a Neve emulation)
10. Foldable Rack Extensions to save space and and only show Macros like Thor.

Honorable Mentions
1. Clip Launch page (I.e. Live, Bitwig)
2. Complete modular environment page (Bitwig Grid)
3. Video support.

New Racks 2-3 stock and maybe a few for sale(Just guesses)
1. Physically Modeled Brass called Metals
2. Retro Synth Emulation (Jup 8, Juno 6)
3. New EQ with 5+ bands and maybe M/S or Vintage
4. New Unison(update to the half rack)
5. Fully Modular Rack(Uodate to Complex 1)
6. Vintage Multi-tap Delay
7. Physically Modeled Woodwinds called Sticks
8. Vintage Channel Strip/ Console emulation
9. Vintage Reverb
10. Bundle of emulations of all Rebirth Instuments.

Honorable Mention
1. Euclidean Player
2. Guitar Pedal emulator
3. CV Manipulator

[avasopht]

Because its so important, here again for Reason Studios:

These are just my 10 guesses for the DAW proper and what’s coming in the shop. I think maybe 2-3 from each are possible but if it’s TL:DR basically I don’t think any of this is gonna happen just guessing.


1. Track Folders (they have to give us something with the mixer)
2. Mixer dark mode(praying for this)
3. Mimic updated to 16 slots
4. Piano Roll update
5. Least selling RS Re now is stock(i.e. Scenic, Parsec, etc - examples only I have no sales numbers please don’t crucify me lol, it’s just a guess)
6. Combinator update(mixer, buttons, etc)
7. Mono buttons added to mixer
8. Hide Tracks in mixer and seq.
9. New switchable mix consoles ( now we get a Neve emulation)
10. Foldable Rack Extensions to save space and and only show Macros like Thor.

Honorable Mentions
1. Clip Launch page (I.e. Live, Bitwig)
2. Complete modular environment page (Bitwig Grid)
3. Video support.

New Racks 2-3 stock and maybe a few for sale(Just guesses)
1. Physically Modeled Brass called Metals
2. Retro Synth Emulation (Jup 8, Juno 6)
3. New EQ with 5+ bands and maybe M/S or Vintage
4. New Unison(update to the half rack)
5. Fully Modular Rack(Uodate to Complex 1)
6. Vintage Multi-tap Delay
7. Physically Modeled Woodwinds called Sticks
8. Vintage Channel Strip/ Console emulation
9. Vintage Reverb
10. Bundle of emulations of all Rebirth Instuments.

Honorable Mention
1. Euclidean Player
2. Guitar Pedal emulator
3. CV Manipulator

There are lots of features with no value or benefit for me.

You have to remember that your needs might not be representative of the whole reason market

[antic604]

Because its so important, here again for Reason Studios:

There are lots of features with no value or benefit for me.

You have to remember that your needs might not be representative of the whole reason market

...not to mention some of them were available in previous versions, e.g. #7 (mono button in Mixer) could be added via Master insert programmer (a Combinator, for all intents and purposes), but they've ripped out the Inserts portion of the mixer willy-nilly, just because

[Chi-Individual]

...not to mention some of them were available in previous versions, e.g. #7 (mono button in Mixer) could be added via Master insert programmer (a Combinator, for all intents and purposes), but they've ripped out the Inserts portion of the mixer willy-nilly, just because

What other things were in previous version? IFRC mono has never been just a stock option. It's always been something needing to be added. There's no reason why at this point there's no mono option on each channel and the master channel.