R11 Suite - in hindsight

[avasopht]

Now we know the reason why they canceled the Suite line and created Reason+ in its place

Jokes aside, I think the subscription is the easier option for the user that wants it all...and that's how they see it as well. It really does make things much simpler. If you want to buy the new REs, best to just get them while on sale.

Get "it all". Temporarily.

It's not quite there.

It doesn't have orchestral sounds covered well enough.

Doesn't have a clear one stop shop for high quality bread and butter sounds on par with workstations from even 20 years ago.

It has a lot of the elements.

But it pales in comparison with:
1. EWQL
2. Roland Cloud
3. Korg Collection
4. Steinberg's Absolute
5. IK Multimedia's workstation like VST
6. Native Instruments Komplete Ultimate
7. Studio One+ (which feels like they took inspiration from the Reason+ naming)

Reason+ has a lot going for it and I have often chosen it above all of those options in the past (plus I have some quality refills).

It is tremendous value but not complete enough to feel it stands on its own two feet and doesn't need some additional plugins to complete it.

Maybe Xpand!2 ($10) or Sonic Reality Gold (but with new patches using all the new instruments) would do the trick.

So yes, it gives you all of Reason Studios stuff, but it needs to be a complete package to make it the no brainer it wants to be.

It's nearly there.

So ... Close.



But it's the lacking that is ... Lacking

[joeyluck]

Now we know the reason why they canceled the Suite line and created Reason+ in its place

Jokes aside, I think the subscription is the easier option for the user that wants it all...and that's how they see it as well. It really does make things much simpler. If you want to buy the new REs, best to just get them while on sale.

It's not quite there.

It doesn't have orchestral sounds covered well enough.

Doesn't have a clear one stop shop for high quality bread and butter sounds on par with workstations from even 20 years ago.

Huh? All REs by Reason Studios that would be included in any version of Suite. This is in a thread about the Suite package...and a comparison for those who want to bundle everything.

[QVprod]

Doesn't have a clear one stop shop for high quality bread and butter sounds on par with workstations from even 20 years ago.

What workstation bread and butter sounds you're looking for? I'm not saying all of the sounds are of the same quality of workstations per se, but stock Reason is pretty much that. A workstation. It shares a lot of the same weaknesses of most workstations (aside from acoustic piano where most modern workstations are better) IMO. I say that having a Yamaha MODX that I play gigs with. I'm relying on neither for any horns, strings, or any band instruments within a production where I need them to stand out.

[avasopht]

What workstation bread and butter sounds you're looking for? I'm not saying all of the sounds are of the same quality of workstations per se, but stock Reason is pretty much that. A workstation. It shares a lot of the same weaknesses of most workstations (aside from acoustic piano where most modern workstations are better) IMO. I say that having a Yamaha MODX that I play gigs with. I'm relying on neither for any horns, strings, or any band instruments within a production where I need them to stand out.

Yes, Reason most certainly has a lot of stuff in it (especially with those optional REs that bring vocals and strings).

I quite like Radical Pianos.

It's got drums and bass covered as well.

Maybe it's an organization/presentation problem and a lack of solid brass and horn sounds.

I just don't get the sense of a cohesive collection of quality sounds on par with workstations. With Xpand!2 and Fabric, I have a decent set of immediately available and reachable sounds that are organized and cover the key bases (though I think Fabric lacks reed sounds).

I'm fine in Reason as I've got Sonic Reality Gold to fill in a lot of gaps.



When it comes to drums and percussion, Reason has a solid set of sounds that are modern and rich. I don't recall seeing any patches with those sounds, however.




There could be a purely subjective experiential aspect to it as well that could be improved on through the browser, patch navigation, and how they integrate.

It's hard to put my finger on it.



Reason has a hell of a lot in it.

Maelstrom might even have the horn sounds covered!

Maybe it could all be solved with an ID8 type of instrument that uses the very best of instrument capabilities Reason has to offer.

[chimp_spanner]

I think there are some good sounds in Reason but without audio previews for patches, a lot of them will sadly never be discovered. I have often thought about using dry spells to categorise patches into some favourites but I mean, that's a huge job. I'd LOVE to see a Live or Komplete style browser some day, with tags and previews at least for RS devices and patches. Maybe with the option to save your own into third party presets although I have NO clue how that'd be done haha.

Somewhat related, I've always wished that some company would come up with a way to embed an audio preview into the project file. So you can hear very quickly what it is you want to open and work on. Why has that not happened yet.

[selig]

I think there are some good sounds in Reason but without audio previews for patches, a lot of them will sadly never be discovered. I have often thought about using dry spells to categorise patches into some favourites but I mean, that's a huge job. I'd LOVE to see a Live or Komplete style browser some day, with tags and previews at least for RS devices and patches. Maybe with the option to save your own into third party presets although I have NO clue how that'd be done haha.

Somewhat related, I've always wished that some company would come up with a way to embed an audio preview into the project file. So you can hear very quickly what it is you want to open and work on. Why has that not happened yet.

Yes and yes. Just like with the Information Age, having all that data (patches in this case) available means nothing if you can't find what you want. That's at least part of why we have a Google as such a huge company today.
Same for huge patch libraries - if you can't find the "good stuff" (whatever that may be at the moment), it doesn't matter how many patches you have.

As for the song preview, I'm baffled why it's not a thing already, as it's been discussed in many places for many years now…

[antic604]

...I'd LOVE to see a Live or Komplete style browser some day, with tags and previews at least for RS devices and patches. Maybe with the option to save your own into third party presets although I have NO clue how that'd be done haha...

I always thought Bitwig solved this nicely and economically.

They don't have audio previews, but instead every patch can be tagged with a number of factory and user tags, so you can hit "B" (to open the pop-up browser) and type in "bass aggressive metallic" and you'll get a list of patches, which you can then narrow down filtering by developer, device, etc.

[antic604]

...As for the song preview, I'm baffled why it's not a thing already, as it's been discussed in many places for many years now.

Is there a DAW that offers it, thought? I can't think of any that does (not that it's a bad idea; quite the contrary).

[selig]

...As for the song preview, I'm baffled why it's not a thing already, as it's been discussed in many places for many years now.

Is there a DAW that offers it, thought? I can't think of any that does (not that it's a bad idea; quite the contrary).

Not that I'm aware of, I was just piling on with the fact it's not a new idea, but seems like such an obvious useful feature.
Maybe there's some aspect I'm overlooking in regards to how to implement it, such as how to deal with the user having to wait for rendering each time the file is closed.

[avasopht]

Maybe previews is the missing link.

...As for the song preview, I'm baffled why it's not a thing already, as it's been discussed in many places for many years now.

Is there a DAW that offers it, thought? I can't think of any that does (not that it's a bad idea; quite the contrary).

MPC does, though you have to manually export to project preview.

I think Maschine is similar given their projects do have demos.

[QVprod]

What workstation bread and butter sounds you're looking for? I'm not saying all of the sounds are of the same quality of workstations per se, but stock Reason is pretty much that. A workstation. It shares a lot of the same weaknesses of most workstations (aside from acoustic piano where most modern workstations are better) IMO. I say that having a Yamaha MODX that I play gigs with. I'm relying on neither for any horns, strings, or any band instruments within a production where I need them to stand out.

Yes, Reason most certainly has a lot of stuff in it (especially with those optional REs that bring vocals and strings).

I quite like Radical Pianos.

It's got drums and bass covered as well.

Maybe it's an organization/presentation problem and a lack of solid brass and horn sounds.

I just don't get the sense of a cohesive collection of quality sounds on par with workstations. With Xpand!2 and Fabric, I have a decent set of immediately available and reachable sounds that are organized and cover the key bases (though I think Fabric lacks reed sounds).

I'm fine in Reason as I've got Sonic Reality Gold to fill in a lot of gaps.



When it comes to drums and percussion, Reason has a solid set of sounds that are modern and rich. I don't recall seeing any patches with those sounds, however.




There could be a purely subjective experiential aspect to it as well that could be improved on through the browser, patch navigation, and how they integrate.

It's hard to put my finger on it.



Reason has a hell of a lot in it.

Maelstrom might even have the horn sounds covered!

Maybe it could all be solved with an ID8 type of instrument that uses the very best of instrument capabilities Reason has to offer.

A tagged browser would help for sure. But I’ll also say Reason has some of the same issues with presets that a lot of software companies have. The raw material is there but not always well utilized.

Working on patches for the R12 factory soundbank, I was surprised how capable synths like Maelstrom still are. Even ID8 has some gems. There are certainly some horns and strings on Xpand! level. Recently did a project using Reason Drum kits and when you really dig into it, it’s still pretty good. The presets just aren’t great overall.

[Steedus]

Suite was good for me at the time because I never had the money / interest in buying many of the Props REs à la carte. I don't think I would've upgraded to v11 at the time it was a normal upgrade, but I think like many people saw the Suite upgrade as more of a bundle of REs for a special price - and you get the latest version thrown in.

While I got some good use out of a few of them and it's nice to known they're there, they are largely unused these days and another side effect was at time of R+ launch, I didn't feel like there was much for a Suite owner to gain really.

In the proceeding months / years they offered a few smaller bundles of some of their newer REs which I picked up, so I guess I'm staying on the perpetual side - for now.

The only real device I am envious of in R+ at the moment is Objekt!

Oh, as for the Props themselves, I think it probably something they regret doing, as it took away some of the allure of R+ the following year.

[DaveyG]

I've said it before but if RS ever wanted to introduce tags for patches I'm sure they'd find a willing army of helpers amongst us lot to help tag the factory sound banks.

[selig]

I've said it before but if RS ever wanted to introduce tags for patches I'm sure they'd find a willing army of helpers amongst us lot to help tag the factory sound banks.

Yes please - I offered/suggested this when adding patches to the 6.5 Factory Sound Bank, noting there would only be more and more patches over the years and we could add tags to the new patches now to have them ready for “that day” - which I can only think means that day is not likely coming.

Another useful browsing feature would be a “find similar” feature with modifiers, such as “find more like this, but slightly brighter” or similar. This is the type of place where AI could be put to work in a useful way IMO, playing the role of the “super smart assistant” who knows “everything” about Reason and the patch library.

Again, all these patches aren’t doing any good if you don’t know how to quickly find them when you need them.

[joeyluck]

I know this has gotten sort of off topic, but I'll add to the discussion about tags...something else I feel makes things detached and forgotten is that when I buy or download a ReFill or some free patches, I have to remember that I have those additional patches.

If I load a Thor, it will point to the Thor presets, but I can't just simply browse all the Thor ReFills and patches from there, I need to navigate to those, wherever they are stored.

You can of course create favorite lists for each device that contains all the ReFills and patches you have for each one, and then browse using favorite lists... but that is a bit much and favorite lists are already being utilized to make up for missing tags and they really should just be used for actual "favorites"

Unlike individual plugin browsers, I appreciate Reason's browser for being centralized. But unlike individual plugin browsers, it lacks a way to simply browse all patches for a device like you would for a plugin. It lacks a way to add a library to a device to easily browse that library and others when you load the device. And without that, we can tend to forget what ReFills and patches we have.

[antic604]

The law of ReasonTalk - "every topic inevitably evolves into feature-request list"

[DaveyG]

I know this has gotten sort of off topic, but I'll add to the discussion about tags...something else I feel makes things detached and forgotten is that when I buy or download a ReFill or some free patches, I have to remember that I have those additional patches.

If I load a Thor, it will point to the Thor presets, but I can't just simply browse all the Thor ReFills and patches from there, I need to navigate to those, wherever they are stored.

You can of course create favorite lists for each device that contains all the ReFills and patches you have for each one, and then browse using favorite lists... but that is a bit much and favorite lists are already being utilized to make up for missing tags and they really should just be used for actual "favorites"

Unlike individual plugin browsers, I appreciate Reason's browser for being centralized. But unlike individual plugin browsers, it lacks a way to simply browse all patches for a device like you would for a plugin. It lacks a way to add a library to a device to easily browse that library and others when you load the device. And without that, we can tend to forget what ReFills and patches we have.

Yep, I agree. It wasn't so bad when you just had a handful of ReFills but over the years my collection has grown to hundreds of free ones and dozens of paid ones. There is no consistency between the refills - some might organise subfolders by genre, some by type (bass etc) and some by RE name.

I think the new browser already indexes all of the refills so they just need to add the ability to filter by RE/Instrument - "Show me all of the Subtractor patches across this pile of REs and folders"

[kitekrazy]

Right. One could also argue, that if I bought an RE months or years prior to Suite release where it came included, then I already had my moneys worth anyway in the music I that RE in that time.

No no no!!! I hate that comment even more than RTFM.

What's worse if someone on a forum tells you to google it. I guess they forget google searches take you to forums.

[MrFigg]

No no no!!! I hate that comment even more than RTFM.

What's worse if someone on a forum tells you to google it. I guess they forget google searches take you to forums.

What’s even worse than that is when they make the person asking the question look like an idiot by saying “A quick search of the forum using the search function gave…”.

[antic604]

What's worse if someone on a forum tells you to google it. I guess they forget google searches take you to forums.

What’s even worse than that is when they make the person asking the question look like an idiot by saying “A quick search of the forum using the search function gave…”.

Thanks for the tip - will use this from now on!

I hate lazy, inconsiderate people.

[selig]

I hate lazy, inconsiderate people.

Good to know, I'll put in a little more effort in the future...

[DaveyG]

I hate lazy, inconsiderate people.

How about people who are actively and deliberately inconsiderate? Is that OK?

[moneykube]

I hate lazy, inconsiderate people.

How about people who are actively and deliberately inconsiderate? Is that OK?

Well, then the hate is for 99 percent of this lazy , inconsiderate world. I'm not a fan for sure, but hate is a strong word.
I stick with highly disappointed.

[avasopht]

Is hate not both lazy and inconsiderate, for hate is, by any good measure nothing but the lust of another's non existence without review

[bxbrkrz]

A browser that can listen to all the patches and tag them automagically is what I need as a lazy and inconsiderate human.
I would prompt the patch I need and the Reason browser would build it using all the raw material available, generating a unique combinator.

Tailor-made to fit my need...



Only for R+ subscribers, of course...