Reason 13 browser issue - files not showing in shortcut folder

[Nymphomation]

I having a really annoying issue with Reason 13's browser, and it would be good if anyone else can verify it, as it seems like a fundamentally large UX bug.

Trying to access WAV samples from my hard disk - the only way I can do it is to navigate from the 'Computer' drop down arrow on the bottom left pane.
I have my samples folder saved as a shortcut and on my favourites list, but if I click on that, I just get an empty folder. I've double checked the top tab/filter, it is set to 'all types'

This worked fine with Reason 12, and obviously this is super annoying if this is a bug as it defeats the point of favorites and shortcuts!

Anyone else having this issue?

[Deep Schulzz]

The problem is known and it also annoys me quite a bit & was not fixed with the R13.01 update. Support wrote to me about this: Yes, we didn't have enough time to fix this in Reason 13.0.1, but we're working hard to fix it in an upcoming Reason 13 release.

[Nymphomation]

Thanks for the reply. Good to know its known about - amazed that such a big UI issue managed to get through the testing...

[esme]

browser is very slow to index
my spends hours and days and still misses files

[jam-s]

Thanks for the reply. Good to know its known about - amazed that such a big UI issue managed to get through the testing...

I suppose it didn't get through testing, but instead it was deemed more important to have the release still in 2024-Q2 instead of having a stable release without any known bugs. Who knows, perhaps someone had a bonus payment affixed to keeping that schedule.

[RobBarnett]

Yes, I have this problem in MacOS Sonoma 14.5

R13 Browser cant see/read - Macintosh HD\Library\Audio folder and its subfolders (where apple stores Apple Loops) when any of this folder structure is saved as a favourite.

However, I can navigate to the folder in the browser by going to my user folder on the LHS under Computer, then keep going ‘up’ until I get to Macintosh HD then navigate downwards to the Library, Audio, Apple....... folders

[Heigen5]

browser is very slow to index
my spends hours and days and still misses files

In R12 I had everything fine regarding indexing. They need to get it back as fast.

[PhillipOrdonez]

Seems to be an issue in some systems but not others. All my files and folders show up fine here.

[JazzAnarchy]

Can't access my samples from the browser, either. I can't emphasize how disappointing this is, along with not being able to dock the browser Reason 13 has crippled my workflow. I love Reason and I've been using it since Reason 7, but 13 is so frustrating.

I do think the new browser and the sequencer changes are amazing. And I think they'll eventually fix this really weird and obvious bug/workflow issue. But this rollout has really hurt my productivity.

[jam-s]

Seems to be an issue in some systems but not others. All my files and folders show up fine here.

The problem seems to affect mostly users with large sample and Refill collections. I guess RS never really stress-tested the browser with 100GiB of Refills and several hundreds GiB of samples in a few hundred thousand files.

[PhillipOrdonez]

Seems to be an issue in some systems but not others. All my files and folders show up fine here.

The problem seems to affect mostly users with large sample and Refill collections. I guess RS never really stress-tested the browser with 100GiB of Refills and several hundreds GiB of samples in a few hundred thousand files.

I do happen to have a sizeable sample collection, but not really a lot of refills. Could be that it only affects refills?

[selig]

The problem seems to affect mostly users with large sample and Refill collections. I guess RS never really stress-tested the browser with 100GiB of Refills and several hundreds GiB of samples in a few hundred thousand files.

I do happen to have a sizeable sample collection, but not really a lot of refills. Could be that it only affects refills?

Just chiming in, having no issues here.
ReFill folder is over 47 GB (some are raw samples)
My personal Sample Folder is 16.8 GB, not as big as others but much of this is one shots from the 80s days and not big multi-sample libraries.

[Tiefflieger Rüdiger]

Still happening with Reason 13.1 on Windows when having a directory in the Shortcuts browser section that contains a lot of audio data.

For reference, every directory that you put into the browsers "Shortcuts" section gets indexed. If I put a directory in there with something like 2tb of data, my successfully indexed user folder and Reason's ReFills directory (the one where Companion installs the drum and loop supplies to) become empty in the browser.

Funilly, when I restart Reason and quickly open the browser while it's still checking whether it needs to update the indexed data, I can see the user folder and ReFills content. After the initial check for outdated indexed data is done, the user folder and ReFills directory appear empty in the browser.

The only way to fix this is to remove the big directory from the browser and access that directory via the "Computer" entry.

[jam-s]

The other way to "fix" this would be to let Reason finish the indexing which will take quite a couple of hours for that large amount of data. After this the re-checking of the index should "only" take a few minutes each time.

[Tiefflieger Rüdiger]

The other way to "fix" this would be to let Reason finish the indexing which will take quite a couple of hours for that large amount of data. After this the re-checking of the index should "only" take a few minutes each time.

Not over here: the moment the indexing is finished (or the check whether the existing indexed data needs an update) is exactly the moment when directories like the user folder are shown as empty in the browser.

[jam-s]

That looks like a bug that should be reported to RS. Best to also try to get into the beta and check if it also occurs there.

[Tiefflieger Rüdiger]

I went into "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Propellerhead Software\Reason" and deleted all the SQLite files (like __ReasonIndex_v7.dat, __ReasonIndex_v7.dat-shm, __ReasonIndex_v7.dat-wal, __ReasonIndexExcludes.dat). Since then, the issue of "User Library" being empty simply goes away when I switch to another browser directory and then back to "User Library", by switching between the Flat and Tree view or going into Tree view and then clicking the "Up" button to go up a directory and then back into the User Library.

However, notice how this was not fixed by rebuilding the index or by removing all custom shortcuts and readding them. This issue was persistent here even after starting with a clean "C:\Users\Username\Music\Reason Studios" directory and then adding back my audio library folders to the browser.

So probably the database can get into a bad state which Reason cannot recover from by itself. Maybe this helps someone.

EDIT: This is likely caused by the browser always opening with the "All Locations" in Flat view, which causes a huge list to be build up by Reason over time. This takes Reason's RAM consumption beyond 2GB and causes several "Application is hanging" (main thread unresponsiveness) towards the end of the list buildup. It seems that when Reason's browser has started such a task, it has problems showing the content of the User Library directory. Quite the bad state this browser is in. In Reaper, similar databases are build up for view in a second and consume a maximum of 300MB of RAM. Oh well.

[Deep Schulzz]

I have similar experiences with the browser. Although the index process appeared to be complete before, the next time you open Reason it starts again and takes about 15 minutes to complete the process again. Not bad, but annoying, especially since it always takes a long time for wave files to reappear in the shorcut list.

[Abstrax]

i'm also having this issue. every time i open reason the 'All Locations' and my 'Samples' folder is doing the spinning icon. Of course my samples folder is my most important folder and sometimes it shows up as blank. It could take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour before any files show up

[Tiefflieger Rüdiger]

I reported this issue among other browser performance issues to Reason with log files and video captures.

Let's hope they don't move to the next shiny new thing and instead iterate and improve on the browser during the coming update cycles.

I realised that my previous fix of deleting the browser database was actually not effective. Instead, the empty User Library folder is caused by triggering a list buildup process that takes multiple minutes for Reason to complete. During such events, the Browser is unable to show the content of my User Library folder. You can trigger such a list buildup process by having a big library (>200.000 files) and then simply opening "All Locations" in the browser (that's the default) and then wait some seconds until the list starts growing.