A Case For Mixing Entirely With Reason's SSL

[BradfordMoeller]

I recently watched a video comparing Reason's master bus compressor to a hardware unit in a blind test, and it turned out that I preferred Reason's each time. It made me realize I have never mixed a track entirely with the stock SSL, or have even used it's EQ or dynamic sections much at all, and that maybe I'm missing out on something really nice.

It's always tempting with so many tools at hand to get elaborate with things, whether you prefer certain UI's, want certain analog emulations for "color", or advanced/more modern utilities like dynamic EQ and spectral shapers.

Does anyone have experience mixing material solely with the SSL, and if so what are your thoughts?

[Jackjackdaw]

There are things I love about Reason and mixing is definitely not one of them!

I find it like an old school adventure game where you have to trek back and forth across the little town over and over again to look for tiny pixelated objects.

[orthodox]

I prefer to mix in Cakewalk, there is a number of clear advantages there. You can save multiple variants as mix scenes and switch between them, hide channels. The EQ/analyzer is much nicer.

By the way, Reason MasterBus is a quite simple compressor, there's almost no difference in how it works compared to M-Class or Mix Channel ones.

[Jackjackdaw]

Luckily Reason makes it really easy to export projects as stems! Not to be taken for granted!

[Loque]

Thankfully they added the SSL stuff to the rack! I was waiting quite long for that, makes things easier here and there!

I thought in the past, that the SSL EQ is just crap, but now i think it sounds quite musical. Its not for surgical operations, but for changing the overall tone of a track and i think, that is it, it was made for.

Same for the compressors. They sound musical to me. Not the biggest punch or pump, not hyper precise, but musical.

Just not fully warmed up with the Gate/Expander...

[gregmarksimpson]

I recently watched a video comparing Reason's master bus compressor to a hardware unit in a blind test, and it turned out that I preferred Reason's each time. It made me realize I have never mixed a track entirely with the stock SSL, or have even used it's EQ or dynamic sections much at all, and that maybe I'm missing out on something really nice.

It's always tempting with so many tools at hand to get elaborate with things, whether you prefer certain UI's, want certain analog emulations for "color", or advanced/more modern utilities like dynamic EQ and spectral shapers.

Does anyone have experience mixing material solely with the SSL, and if so what are your thoughts?

The best way to use Reason, imho, is with three monitors. One for Sequencer, one for Rack, and one for Mixer. Arranged in that order and all windows full screen. I mix all my tracks using the SSL Mixer. Once you get used to, it is hugely powerful; and is clearly a criminally underrated aspect of Reason as a DAW.

[diminished]

The SSL is my favorite part about Reason nowadays. It's immensesly powerful, easy to use, organized.. my biggest gripe is that there is no channel strip coloring besides the labels at the bottom, and that says a lot.
It's very rare that I grab another EQ than the built-in one, and if I do, it's only for extreme changes like taming ugly resonances in hihats which is annoying to do in the SSL if there is more than one frequency.
If you took away all my compressors and EQs, I'd get by with just the SSL.

[Zac]

I.use the ssl mixer a lot. I'm used to the two compressor modes now. The peak I use a lot just to trim excessive peaks, never more than a a couple of leds lighting up usually and the other mode is nice for some light transient enhancement esp on drums.

The EQ is by far my most used EQ. I only rarely reach for something with narrower Q. The combination of great visuals and included filters make it so quick to use.

I went through a stage of not using the master comp. But I always use it now. I sidechain it to cut low freqs using seligs method and have a nice slow attack. I love bringing it in towards the end of my mix and it just adds that nice finishing touch after accounting for the gain red with a little make up.

I'm pretty sure I would have moved on to Ableton by now if the ssl wasn't there.

[Jackjackdaw]

Could someone tell me, is there a quick way to change the order of channel inserts? I just want to drag it to the new position in the chain but have to deal with cable spaghetti re-routing it manually.

[orthodox]

Could someone tell me, is there a quick way to change the order of channel inserts? I just want to drag it to the new position in the chain but have to deal with cable spaghetti re-routing it manually.

Shift-dragging works for me.

[selig]

Does anyone have experience mixing material solely with the SSL, and if so what are your thoughts?

I do it all the time. I even recently mixed a live iHeart Radio concert for a major artist on Sony Nashville, totally in Reason. I didn't tell anyone either, I just made sure I got individual tracks with the Pro Tools session (I attended the concert to make sure I'd get what I needed). I had a ridiculous 3 day turnaround too. There were around 50 tracks at 96 kHz, which I converted to 48 kHz. Mixed without seeing the video or syncing in any way. They said it lined up perfectly, no one complained about the mix (other than some basic mix requests from the artist/manager), and I didn't feel restricted in any way either!
I learned mixing on the SSL back in the mid 1980s so I'm biased, but I've always said I felt Reason's SSL was spot on the SSL "experience", meaning that without a side-by-side comparison I couldn't say it sounded exactly the same - but all my SSL "tricks" and techniques translated effortlessly to the Reason mix, no problem.
So while I wish I had some advanced features such as full hardware support, more automation features, track show/hide, markers, and other things to help the production process, I'm still able to do projects big and small with no one on the receiving end complaining!

[Djstarski]

Does anyone have experience mixing material solely with the SSL, and if so what are your thoughts?

I do it all the time. I even recently mixed a live iHeart Radio concert for a major artist on Sony Nashville, totally in Reason. I didn't tell anyone either, I just made sure I got individual tracks with the Pro Tools session (I attended the concert to make sure I'd get what I needed). I had a ridiculous 3 day turnaround too. There were around 50 tracks at 96 kHz, which I converted to 48 kHz. Mixed without seeing the video or syncing in any way. They said it lined up perfectly, no one complained about the mix (other than some basic mix requests from the artist/manager), and I didn't feel restricted in any way either!
I learned mixing on the SSL back in the mid 1980s so I'm biased, but I've always said I felt Reason's SSL was spot on the SSL "experience", meaning that without a side-by-side comparison I couldn't say it sounded exactly the same - but all my SSL "tricks" and techniques translated effortlessly to the Reason mix, no problem.
So while I wish I had some advanced features such as full hardware support, more automation features, track show/hide, markers, and other things to help the production process, I'm still able to do projects big and small with no one on the receiving end complaining!

Thats great . is it possible you can post link to the track your talking about ?

[PhillipOrdonez]

Could someone tell me, is there a quick way to change the order of channel inserts? I just want to drag it to the new position in the chain but have to deal with cable spaghetti re-routing it manually.

Shift-dragging works for me.

And for everyone else who uses it. It works in the rack plugin as well.

Basic stuff, Jackjackdaw

[selig]

I do it all the time. I even recently mixed a live iHeart Radio concert for a major artist on Sony Nashville, totally in Reason. I didn't tell anyone either, I just made sure I got individual tracks with the Pro Tools session (I attended the concert to make sure I'd get what I needed). I had a ridiculous 3 day turnaround too. There were around 50 tracks at 96 kHz, which I converted to 48 kHz. Mixed without seeing the video or syncing in any way. They said it lined up perfectly, no one complained about the mix (other than some basic mix requests from the artist/manager), and I didn't feel restricted in any way either!
I learned mixing on the SSL back in the mid 1980s so I'm biased, but I've always said I felt Reason's SSL was spot on the SSL "experience", meaning that without a side-by-side comparison I couldn't say it sounded exactly the same - but all my SSL "tricks" and techniques translated effortlessly to the Reason mix, no problem.
So while I wish I had some advanced features such as full hardware support, more automation features, track show/hide, markers, and other things to help the production process, I'm still able to do projects big and small with no one on the receiving end complaining!

Thats great . is it possible you can post link to the track your talking about ?

It was for Miranda Lambert's iHeart Radio album release concert for "Wildcard" (recorded Oct 31, 2019), but the links I had are broken now and I can't find working links on their site. Tried searching but can't see it on their site any more…

[Jackjackdaw]

Shift-dragging works for me.

And for everyone else who uses it. It works in the rack plugin as well.

Basic stuff, Jackjackdaw

Lol, yes it is

[Djstarski]

Thats great . is it possible you can post link to the track your talking about ?

It was for Miranda Lambert's iHeart Radio album release concert for "Wildcard" (recorded Oct 31, 2019), but the links I had are broken now and I can't find working links on their site. Tried searching but can't see it on their site any more…

Thanks for trying . Maybe you can do a live stream yourself , mixing a small project using the SSL mixer in reason ? just a suggestion maybe .

[BradfordMoeller]

Wow thanks for all the feedback, this is exciting. I get why heavy use of/ only using the SSL might not be for everyone, but I'm excited to go deeper into it!

[gullum]

After I got the Softube Console 1 I have used it to control the SSL mixer in reason and use SSL for 99% of my mixing.
Having hand on control over the mixer is so grate.
Also if you need colloring EQ/COmps on synths why are you using those synths in the first place if they don't give you the sound you want

[hurricane]

Once I got used to using the SSL, the urge to use eqs/comps as inserts diminished greatly. And now I understand how someone can "know" their console. The benefits for me at least are that it makes mixing quicker, the rack is less cluttered, and my mind is less cluttered because I don't have to choose between the billions of EQs and comps in my list. Helps separate the left-brain/right-brain processes too, which for me, is very important. Finish the song, I'm done messing around with the devices, switch to the SSL window and mix.

[BradfordMoeller]

Once I got used to using the SSL, the urge to use eqs/comps as inserts diminished greatly. And now I understand how someone can "know" their console. The benefits for me at least are that it makes mixing quicker, the rack is less cluttered, and my mind is less cluttered because I don't have to choose between the billions of EQs and comps in my list. Helps separate the left-brain/right-brain processes too, which for me, is very important. Finish the song, I'm done messing around with the devices, switch to the SSL window and mix.

Well said, definitely the two main benefits of using it.

[selig]

Also if you need colloring EQ/COmps on synths why are you using those synths in the first place if they don't give you the sound you want

An electric guitar doesn't give me the sound I want without adding pedals and amp/FXs. I see synths the same way, because you can create YOUR sound using this approach rather than the instrument designers idea of what it should sound like. Not so say I DON'T use synths that way, just that there are options out there to be explored if you have the inclination to do so.

[gullum]

Also if you need colloring EQ/COmps on synths why are you using those synths in the first place if they don't give you the sound you want

An electric guitar doesn't give me the sound I want without adding pedals and amp/FXs. I see synths the same way, because you can create YOUR sound using this approach rather than the instrument designers idea of what it should sound like. Not so say I DON'T use synths that way, just that there are options out there to be explored if you have the inclination to do so.

Also, some styles of music would not have been if people did not experiment. My comment was meant to be an end line joke

[mcatalao]

There are things I love about Reason and mixing is definitely not one of them!

I find it like an old school adventure game where you have to trek back and forth across the little town over and over again to look for tiny pixelated objects.

Funny... I feel exactly the opposite.

Mixing in reason is by far the best decision I did since Record came.
Add to that, I have my controllers fully integrated with Reason's mixer, and my remotes are so tweaked that when I'm mixing I almost don't touch the mouse.