Noise Engineering's 3x RE

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aeox
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16 May 2018

If anything, I'll probably grab Basimilus Iteritas by itself. The other two aren't that special to me.

madmacman
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Joined: 18 Jan 2015

16 May 2018

Galaxy wrote:
16 May 2018
madmacman wrote:
16 May 2018


Click on the link provided by Loque?
Thanks for that. That's obvious. Why is it hidden from browsing customers? How did Loque find it in the first place?
Hmmm, it‘s placed very prominently under „New Arrivals“:
701CCA15-F804-41B5-BAC2-2897EA55A0AD.jpeg
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kuhliloach
Posts: 880
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17 May 2018

aeox wrote:
16 May 2018
If anything, I'll probably grab Basimilus Iteritas by itself. The other two aren't that special to me.
any chance you could be more specific about why one but not the other two?

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aeox
Competition Winner
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Location: Oregon

17 May 2018

kuhliloach wrote:
17 May 2018
aeox wrote:
16 May 2018
If anything, I'll probably grab Basimilus Iteritas by itself. The other two aren't that special to me.
any chance you could be more specific about why one but not the other two?
To be fair, I quite like Manis as well. I just can't come to terms with the prices of these devices. Basimilus is an exception for me because I've been wanting something for synthesizing kicks in RE format for some time now.

madmacman
Posts: 786
Joined: 18 Jan 2015

17 May 2018

Finding on Twitter this morning (I'm not the author):


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Marco Raaphorst
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17 May 2018

I love the rawness of it but they seem to be a little too limited imo. All 3 could be one device.

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MattiasHG
Reason Studios
Posts: 488
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

17 May 2018

Marco Raaphorst wrote:
17 May 2018
I love the rawness of it but they seem to be a little too limited imo. All 3 could be one device.
I own all of these as hardware and I'm inclined to disagree with you. The impressive thing about these devices is the range of the different settings and how they interact. Combine that with three modes om BI, for example, and you have sooooo many sounds. What I particularly like is that they sound like nothing else. It shows a great care for product design, they've zoomed in on an interesting set of features and sounds and gone to town on that.

To be honest, I've started to enjoy things that do a few thing really well more than things that do all the things.

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friday
Posts: 336
Joined: 17 Jan 2015

17 May 2018

I just bought the bundle because I want to support interesting rack extension developers. Last night in the studio I played around for about an hour and I am extremely surprised how inspiring these devices are. Unbelievable how well the functionality is limited to the essential.

Undistraction

17 May 2018

I would get these anyway purely for the reason that the more successful they are, the more chance there is of more Eurorack developers coming to the RE format which would be a really wonderful thing. Small, interesting, focused REs are the future. We have more than enough in the way of generic effects.

Just take a looked through this list without drooling: https://www.modulargrid.net/e/modules/evaluationlists

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MattiasHG
Reason Studios
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Joined: 16 Jan 2015

17 May 2018

Undistraction wrote:
17 May 2018
I would get these anyway purely for the reason that the more successful they are, the more chance there is of more Eurorack developers coming to the RE format which would be a really wonderful thing. Small, interesting, focused REs are the future. We have more than enough in the way of generic effects.

Just take a looked through this list without drooling: https://www.modulargrid.net/e/modules/evaluationlists
That's a very good way to look at it. ;)

Since I'm a Eurorack fanatic, I'm always mentioning this to Eurorack devs I meet (primarily those who make digital modules as those make sense to port). If there's a real market for this, and you guys want more, feel free to contact your favorite module developers and let them know what you think.

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Marco Raaphorst
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17 May 2018

MattiasHG wrote:
17 May 2018
Marco Raaphorst wrote:
17 May 2018
I love the rawness of it but they seem to be a little too limited imo. All 3 could be one device.
I own all of these as hardware and I'm inclined to disagree with you. The impressive thing about these devices is the range of the different settings and how they interact. Combine that with three modes om BI, for example, and you have sooooo many sounds. What I particularly like is that they sound like nothing else. It shows a great care for product design, they've zoomed in on an interesting set of features and sounds and gone to town on that.

To be honest, I've started to enjoy things that do a few thing really well more than things that do all the things.
I will test it al little more. For many years this is still my favorite wacko plugin for insane sounds:
meloh.jpg
meloh.jpg (147.39 KiB) Viewed 2772 times

antic604

17 May 2018

MattiasHG wrote:
17 May 2018
To be honest, I've started to enjoy things that do a few thing really well more than things that do all the things.
Guess what? It shows in Reason :P

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Faastwalker
Posts: 2281
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Location: NSW, Australia

17 May 2018

MattiasHG wrote:
17 May 2018
To be honest, I've started to enjoy things that do a few thing really well more than things that do all the things.
I agree. Monster all singing & dancing synths are great. But I'd love to see more focused devices like the Noise Engineering offerings available in the shop. I think the timing is right. RE's have been around a while now. There is a lot of choice in the shop. That's great but it does mean it gets harder for developers to stand out. One obvious way is to develop something that's a bit off the wall, a bit different, more specific. Beyond this Eurorack is obviously a very exciting world for sound design & exploration. So having an established & well regarded Eurorack developer creating RE's is fantastic. These won't be for everyone. But that's fine. We have the choices now ;)

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MattiasHG
Reason Studios
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17 May 2018

antic604 wrote:
17 May 2018
MattiasHG wrote:
17 May 2018
To be honest, I've started to enjoy things that do a few thing really well more than things that do all the things.
Guess what? It shows in Reason :P
How so? Europa is the polar opposite of this.

lakinlakin
Posts: 121
Joined: 07 Jan 2016
Location: Scotland

17 May 2018

Got the bundle. Great fun.

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Auryn
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Joined: 12 Aug 2015
Location: La Mancha

17 May 2018

Also insta-buy for me. Fun, characterful devices always get a place in my rack. Props to the developers for making all 3 available in a package at a IMHO very affordable price.
MattiasHG wrote:
17 May 2018
To be honest, I've started to enjoy things that do a few thing really well more than things that do all the things.
Same here, I've been working on an Expanse refill for a while now, and to be honest it's been more of a struggle to get it to form a cohesive package like my previous refills. With both Oberon and Zero (previous refill subjects) it seemed easier to get a grasp on the specific character of the synth and build on that. Expanse is harder to pin down and I imagine the same would be true for Europa, though I still have barely tried it.
~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-~-.-
Quixotic Sound Design: http://www.quixoticsounddesign.com
Europandemonium Refill: https://gumroad.com/l/YxIGB

antic604

17 May 2018

MattiasHG wrote:
17 May 2018
antic604 wrote:
17 May 2018


Guess what? It shows in Reason :P
How so? Europa is the polar opposite of this.
You mean it does many things but none of them really well? Maybe.

I was thinking more about how Reason (as a whole) reflects this notion that it's better to do select few things well, than everything 'just' good. Problem is, some aspects are not even good. Rack and Mixer are great, but the Sequencer and GUI (4K & laptop support in particular, not its visual design) are really outdated and are actively standing in a way of comfortable workflow when you compare it to its peers.

Example? Say I have a Subtractor where I automate cutoff, resonance and amp decay; processed through Scream-4 where I need to move P2 and Scale and then I split the signal into low & mid+high bands sending the latter through Synchronous to add some stutter effect that I trigger by automating the amount and rate; and all of it goes through a Send track to hi-passed RV7k. All in all, I need to automate 8 parameters for single sound. In (all?) other DAWs, I'll have my track with MIDI and underneath it I'll have 8 lines, each for one parameter. I'll typically be able to fold all of them completely or keep selected ones visible, while others hidden. In Reason, not only can't I hide automation lanes completely, but I'll have them if 4 SEPARATE sequencer tracts: Subtractor, Scream-4, Synchronous and Mix Channel (for send amount). So for a project with 15 sound sources I'll usually end up with 40-50 tracks, because I like to do a lot of processing on almost everything. Try to work on that effectively on a laptop screen, if you can't zoom out without blurring the picture, can't put windows side by side (Rack & Mixer are vertical by nature, who thought of putting them one on top of the other?!?!), that when single area is open you have those huge handles (gray bars with circle & "Mixer", "Rack", "Sequencer" labels) that take space of 1-2 tracks and no sane person uses them to actually recognise and arrange their screen...

Sorry, I need to vent because otherwise I LOVE Reason - the Rack, the Mixer (even with its limitations), the RE environment and even the look of the software when I squint my eyes; all of it is pure work of a genius! And then I quickly forget about all this, when I need to duplicate a vertical slice of the arrangement (why can't I select time on the transport track?), mute series of 16 clips (why can't I "lasso" them when Mute tool is selected?), change the grid snapping (why do I need to click on a drop-down list, instead of a keyboard shortcut?), guess how many thousands of unknown quantity 0dB on the track's volume fader is when I want to automate it, guess whether my Track Follow is on or not (because there's no visual indication), etc....

I wish I could just hate Reason completely and stick to Live & Bitwig exclusively ;) :D

sdst
Competition Winner
Posts: 896
Joined: 14 Jun 2015

17 May 2018

very interesting sound and Noise, I welcome things like this to the REs

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MattiasHG
Reason Studios
Posts: 488
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

17 May 2018

antic604 wrote:
17 May 2018
MattiasHG wrote:
17 May 2018


How so? Europa is the polar opposite of this.
You mean it does many things but none of them really well? Maybe.

I was thinking more about how Reason (as a whole) reflects this notion that it's better to do select few things well, than everything 'just' good. Problem is, some aspects are not even good. Rack and Mixer are great, but the Sequencer and GUI (4K & laptop support in particular, not its visual design) are really outdated and are actively standing in a way of comfortable workflow when you compare it to its peers.

Example? Say I have a Subtractor where I automate cutoff, resonance and amp decay; processed through Scream-4 where I need to move P2 and Scale and then I split the signal into low & mid+high bands sending the latter through Synchronous to add some stutter effect that I trigger by automating the amount and rate; and all of it goes through a Send track to hi-passed RV7k. All in all, I need to automate 8 parameters for single sound. In (all?) other DAWs, I'll have my track with MIDI and underneath it I'll have 8 lines, each for one parameter. I'll typically be able to fold all of them completely or keep selected ones visible, while others hidden. In Reason, not only can't I hide automation lanes completely, but I'll have them if 4 SEPARATE sequencer tracts: Subtractor, Scream-4, Synchronous and Mix Channel (for send amount). So for a project with 15 sound sources I'll usually end up with 40-50 tracks, because I like to do a lot of processing on almost everything. Try to work on that effectively on a laptop screen, if you can't zoom out without blurring the picture, can't put windows side by side (Rack & Mixer are vertical by nature, who thought of putting them one on top of the other?!?!), that when single area is open you have those huge handles (gray bars with circle & "Mixer", "Rack", "Sequencer" labels) that take space of 1-2 tracks and no sane person uses them to actually recognise and arrange their screen...

Sorry, I need to vent because otherwise I LOVE Reason - the Rack, the Mixer (even with its limitations), the RE environment and even the look of the software when I squint my eyes; all of it is pure work of a genius! And then I quickly forget about all this, when I need to duplicate a vertical slice of the arrangement (why can't I select time on the transport track?), mute series of 16 clips (why can't I "lasso" them when Mute tool is selected?), change the grid snapping (why do I need to click on a drop-down list, instead of a keyboard shortcut?), guess how many thousands of unknown quantity 0dB on the track's volume fader is when I want to automate it, guess whether my Track Follow is on or not (because there's no visual indication), etc....

I wish I could just hate Reason completely and stick to Live & Bitwig exclusively ;) :D
Europa does many things well, I just meant it's very very feature dense. Tons of wavetables, modifiers, spectral filter types etc. etc.

But sure, it probably shines through on a higher level for Propellerhead in general (even way before my time) that we try to do certain things really well, perhaps even at the expense of others. Quality of built-in instruments and effects vs. advanced sequencer features for example. :)

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chimp_spanner
Posts: 2907
Joined: 06 Mar 2015

17 May 2018

I love single purpose devices, at least in a modular environment. It makes so much more sense. I love how there aren’t any redundant filters or FX in these Eurorack models. I only see what I need/what I add. The dream is still PH’s own vertical EuroRack (EuroStack?!). Even if they re used stuff we’ve already seen, like oscillators from Parsec or Europa as standalone modules that’d be suuuuper sick.

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tiker01
Moderator
Posts: 1423
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

17 May 2018

MattiasHG wrote:
17 May 2018
antic604 wrote:
17 May 2018


You mean it does many things but none of them really well? Maybe.

I was thinking more about how Reason (as a whole) reflects this notion that it's better to do select few things well, than everything 'just' good. Problem is, some aspects are not even good. Rack and Mixer are great, but the Sequencer and GUI (4K & laptop support in particular, not its visual design) are really outdated and are actively standing in a way of comfortable workflow when you compare it to its peers.

Example? Say I have a Subtractor where I automate cutoff, resonance and amp decay; processed through Scream-4 where I need to move P2 and Scale and then I split the signal into low & mid+high bands sending the latter through Synchronous to add some stutter effect that I trigger by automating the amount and rate; and all of it goes through a Send track to hi-passed RV7k. All in all, I need to automate 8 parameters for single sound. In (all?) other DAWs, I'll have my track with MIDI and underneath it I'll have 8 lines, each for one parameter. I'll typically be able to fold all of them completely or keep selected ones visible, while others hidden. In Reason, not only can't I hide automation lanes completely, but I'll have them if 4 SEPARATE sequencer tracts: Subtractor, Scream-4, Synchronous and Mix Channel (for send amount). So for a project with 15 sound sources I'll usually end up with 40-50 tracks, because I like to do a lot of processing on almost everything. Try to work on that effectively on a laptop screen, if you can't zoom out without blurring the picture, can't put windows side by side (Rack & Mixer are vertical by nature, who thought of putting them one on top of the other?!?!), that when single area is open you have those huge handles (gray bars with circle & "Mixer", "Rack", "Sequencer" labels) that take space of 1-2 tracks and no sane person uses them to actually recognise and arrange their screen...

Sorry, I need to vent because otherwise I LOVE Reason - the Rack, the Mixer (even with its limitations), the RE environment and even the look of the software when I squint my eyes; all of it is pure work of a genius! And then I quickly forget about all this, when I need to duplicate a vertical slice of the arrangement (why can't I select time on the transport track?), mute series of 16 clips (why can't I "lasso" them when Mute tool is selected?), change the grid snapping (why do I need to click on a drop-down list, instead of a keyboard shortcut?), guess how many thousands of unknown quantity 0dB on the track's volume fader is when I want to automate it, guess whether my Track Follow is on or not (because there's no visual indication), etc....

I wish I could just hate Reason completely and stick to Live & Bitwig exclusively ;) :D
Europa does many things well, I just meant it's very very feature dense. Tons of wavetables, modifiers, spectral filter types etc. etc.

But sure, it probably shines through on a higher level for Propellerhead in general (even way before my time) that we try to do certain things really well, perhaps even at the expense of others. Quality of built-in instruments and effects vs. advanced sequencer features for example. :)
One thing could solve a lot of issues. Just a tiny bit more customisation.

First off custom keyboard shortcuts with a macro editor option.
    
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Undistraction

17 May 2018

MattiasHG wrote:
17 May 2018
Undistraction wrote:
17 May 2018
I would get these anyway purely for the reason that the more successful they are, the more chance there is of more Eurorack developers coming to the RE format which would be a really wonderful thing. Small, interesting, focused REs are the future. We have more than enough in the way of generic effects.

Just take a looked through this list without drooling: https://www.modulargrid.net/e/modules/evaluationlists
That's a very good way to look at it. ;)

Since I'm a Eurorack fanatic, I'm always mentioning this to Eurorack devs I meet (primarily those who make digital modules as those make sense to port). If there's a real market for this, and you guys want more, feel free to contact your favorite module developers and let them know what you think.
I'm thinking one thing that would almost certainly help get people thinking, using and buying in a more modular way would be an updated combinator.

chaosroyale
Posts: 728
Joined: 05 Sep 2017

17 May 2018

Seeing as Reason is basically "virtual modular" it is about time that we got some RE's from legit modular makers. Noise Engineering's modules look and sound GREAT, and feature full CV implementation (like they should, yay!), which makes the Reason versions much more attractive than a VST option.

I am especially happy about these units, because there has been a deluge of lazy, minimum-effort rack extensions lately (you all know what I'm talking about), none of which would even pass muster as a free VST. Those kind of RE's dilute the overall attractiveness of the Reason shop, reinforce the idea that Reason is a toy, and make REs seem like a poor mans VST. I hope Props can exercise some quality control and get more items on Noise Engineering's level into the store.

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Loque
Moderator
Posts: 11170
Joined: 28 Dec 2015

17 May 2018

I just had time to play around with those little things. IMO, they sound pretty good and you can dial in pretty fast some weird sounds. Their selection of knobs lead you to some unsual results and can be a good boost for creative sound design and make you think a little bit different when designing sounds. They are obviously not the normal sound food. If it is some good food for me, i am not sure atm and need to try a bit more. If i was not settled with so many synths, i probably would get them directly.

What do i miss? Not much atm, as all is accessable via CV i even do not need a mod matrix. Maybe some dedicated filters per voice and the "usual" stuff would be handy. But since they were created as "modules", you have to build up on them and i think therefor they are pretty good. They invite to turn some knobs and see what happens, very inviting because all is directly accessable.
Reason12, Win10

Undistraction

17 May 2018

Those kind of RE's dilute the overall attractiveness of the Reason shop, reinforce the idea that Reason is a toy, and make REs seem like a poor mans VST.
I think the shop is really starting to need a big update. As more and more mediocre REs get pumped out the good stuff gets more and more lost. This is when a really solid review/rating system pays along with better categorising//filtering. At the moment almost everything seems to get four stars. Crappy new stuff gets surfaced, as do REs with constant sale prices, while great older REs are buried.

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