How Did Reason Miss The Modular Boat So Badly

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Undistraction

17 Jul 2018

bxbrkrz wrote:
17 Jul 2018
The interaction with a modular system is very hands on and very visual, but you could be legally blind and fully control a modular system without much help after a while. As long as you have to patch with a mouse a physical modular system will always be faster and/or unpredictable in a fun way. Instead of somebody missing the proverbial boat, I see two worlds working great together, especially for sound design. It's a plus, not a minus.
If you have a good midi controller, the tactility problem is solved. The idea of a blind person finding their way around a huge Eurorack setup is rediculous. There are many things that are much faster with a virtual rack, like loading a different patch, and there is no real reason why software can't be as unpredictable as hardwear.

When you say "it's a plus not a minus" what are you referring to?

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O1B
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17 Jul 2018

On PUF you learn “ hey! Cv is good for goofy stuff”
On PUF, you get what Reason IS -not what it Could be.
In Reason! CV is inthe back.

On Muff, you’d have a clue what you were missing.
And, small market? Seems you’re still in the dark about the market, QV.
The modular market pays $80-$2000 for proper Modules.
We haggle over $50-$100 here.

CV with “modules” - and a scope is more understandable/useable/controllable.

My next filter. Fumana... 16 band fixed filter, follower, generator, parame-, etc.
Oh yeah... and, a vocoder!! A true analog vocoder.
(- unless I go with the ADDAC 601, and save some HP.... )
Look ‘em up.

Image

For Norman: Fumana has tilt.... with parameters under CV.

QVprod wrote:
17 Jul 2018
Loque wrote:
17 Jul 2018


Your comment just made me think, how long i would need to explain to a friend that plays in a band what "CV" is and where it can be used... :o
Exactly! If I weren't a Reason user than hung out on the PUF, I wouldn't know either.

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bxbrkrz
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17 Jul 2018

Undistraction wrote:
17 Jul 2018
bxbrkrz wrote:
17 Jul 2018
The interaction with a modular system is very hands on and very visual, but you could be legally blind and fully control a modular system without much help after a while. As long as you have to patch with a mouse a physical modular system will always be faster and/or unpredictable in a fun way. Instead of somebody missing the proverbial boat, I see two worlds working great together, especially for sound design. It's a plus, not a minus.
If you have a good midi controller, the tactility problem is solved. The idea of a blind person finding their way around a huge Eurorack setup is rediculous. There are many things that are much faster with a virtual rack, like loading a different patch, and there is no real reason why software can't be as unpredictable as hardwear.

When you say "it's a plus not a minus" what are you referring to?
A plus, not a minus.
Image
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QVprod
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17 Jul 2018

O1B wrote:
17 Jul 2018
On PUF you learn “ hey! Cv is good for goofy stuff”
On PUF, you get what Reason IS -not what it Could be.
In Reason! CV is inthe back.

On Muff, you’d have a clue what you were missing.
And, small market? Seems you’re still in the dark about the market, QV.
The modular market pays $80-$2000 for proper Modules.
We haggle over $50-$100 here.
If you've read my comments, I did not say that there is not a modular market. I said it is considerably small compared to music makers in general. Propellerhead has 57.2K Twitter followers. That's a lot of people and "influence", but very minuscule to for example; Kim Kardashian's reach at 58.5 million. Hopefully that illustration makes more sense for you. Additionally, the price of hardware euroracks and modules is completely irrelevant to that. Large price does not equal to a larger market. Macs cost more than PCs. PC is the larger market.

Also, the PUF IMO did not paint CV as for "silly stuff" I actually use CV occasionally because of the stuff I learned on the PUF. The people who introduced me to Reason never went on the forum and were not using CV. Nonetheless as cool as it is, the majority of Reason users don't use it extensively, which is reflected in Prop's lack of attention to it.

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Iapetus 9
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18 Jul 2018

I'd say that as soon as the rack can allow modules with cabling on the front, then the modular madness will come. I got no probs with cables on the front, IMHO it's the only reason why we haven't seen an MS20 RE. Let's hope it happens, because while I enjoy Reason as a semi modular system, it would be the bees knees with this capability.
38L > 51D every time.

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Faastwalker
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18 Jul 2018

I'm not sure about cables on the front of Reason's rack when we've got them on the back. I'd imagine it would get a bit messy. I'm happy with Euro Rack style modules that fit in the rack in the current format. Maybe they could be made so parameters on the front are directly mirrored as i/o on the rear. So hitting 'Tab' shows basically the same GUI layout as the front. I think that would be a workable work around to having cables on the front of the rack.

Of everything that's going on in music technology Euro Rack is easily the most exciting area for me. So I would like to see more of this in Reason. The Noise Engineering RE's are awesome. Would love to see more like this. We already have a lot of very Euro Rack like RE's in the shop. So it's a great platform for this kind of development. The only problem is the separation of CV & audio in Reason. In Euro rack you can patch any out to any in. Would like to see an adoption of this in Reason. Of course it would only be backwards compatible in Reason if developers updated devices to take advantage of this. But it would be a big step if new devices could adopt this idea.

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Ahornberg
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18 Jul 2018

Faastwalker wrote:
18 Jul 2018
I'm not sure about cables on the front of Reason's rack when we've got them on the back. I'd imagine it would get a bit messy. I'm happy with Euro Rack style modules that fit in the rack in the current format. Maybe they could be made so parameters on the front are directly mirrored as i/o on the rear. So hitting 'Tab' shows basically the same GUI layout as the front. I think that would be a workable work around to having cables on the front of the rack.
Yes, that's exactly what I plan to do on my first RE.

Undistraction

18 Jul 2018

Faastwalker wrote:
18 Jul 2018
I'm not sure about cables on the front of Reason's rack when we've got them on the back. I'd imagine it would get a bit messy. I'm happy with Euro Rack style modules that fit in the rack in the current format. Maybe they could be made so parameters on the front are directly mirrored as i/o on the rear. So hitting 'Tab' shows basically the same GUI layout as the front. I think that would be a workable work around to having cables on the front of the rack.

Of everything that's going on in music technology Euro Rack is easily the most exciting area for me. So I would like to see more of this in Reason. The Noise Engineering RE's are awesome. Would love to see more like this. We already have a lot of very Euro Rack like RE's in the shop. So it's a great platform for this kind of development. The only problem is the separation of CV & audio in Reason. In Euro rack you can patch any out to any in. Would like to see an adoption of this in Reason. Of course it would only be backwards compatible in Reason if developers updated devices to take advantage of this. But it would be a big step if new devices could adopt this idea.
I was wondering if the answer to my question is as simple as that: the cables are hidden in Reason and part of the primary interface in Eurorack - whilst that might seem like a small thing if you've never played with a real rack, it is a critical part of the workflow. In fact you could say it is the critical part of the workflow. When you combine that with the separation between audio and CV I guess this is actually a big technical limitation of Reason.

I don't think Propellerhead will ever put cabling in the front, but without it, a big part of the modular way is impossible.

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Ahornberg
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18 Jul 2018

Undistraction wrote:
18 Jul 2018
Faastwalker wrote:
18 Jul 2018
I'm not sure about cables on the front of Reason's rack when we've got them on the back. I'd imagine it would get a bit messy. I'm happy with Euro Rack style modules that fit in the rack in the current format. Maybe they could be made so parameters on the front are directly mirrored as i/o on the rear. So hitting 'Tab' shows basically the same GUI layout as the front. I think that would be a workable work around to having cables on the front of the rack.

Of everything that's going on in music technology Euro Rack is easily the most exciting area for me. So I would like to see more of this in Reason. The Noise Engineering RE's are awesome. Would love to see more like this. We already have a lot of very Euro Rack like RE's in the shop. So it's a great platform for this kind of development. The only problem is the separation of CV & audio in Reason. In Euro rack you can patch any out to any in. Would like to see an adoption of this in Reason. Of course it would only be backwards compatible in Reason if developers updated devices to take advantage of this. But it would be a big step if new devices could adopt this idea.
I was wondering if the answer to my question is as simple as that: the cables are hidden in Reason and part of the primary interface in Eurorack - whilst that might seem like a small thing if you've never played with a real rack, it is a critical part of the workflow. In fact you could say it is the critical part of the workflow. When you combine that with the separation between audio and CV I guess this is actually a big technical limitation of Reason.

I don't think Propellerhead will ever put cabling in the front, but without it, a big part of the modular way is impossible.
Take a look at Blamsoft's VK-2. On this RE the CV ins and outs are doubled with audio ins and outs. The real limitation in Reason is that data is processed in chunks of 64 samples whereas in VCV data is processed on a per sample base. That makes a huge difference in feedback loops.

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selig
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18 Jul 2018

Ahornberg wrote:
Undistraction wrote:
18 Jul 2018
I was wondering if the answer to my question is as simple as that: the cables are hidden in Reason and part of the primary interface in Eurorack - whilst that might seem like a small thing if you've never played with a real rack, it is a critical part of the workflow. In fact you could say it is the critical part of the workflow. When you combine that with the separation between audio and CV I guess this is actually a big technical limitation of Reason.

I don't think Propellerhead will ever put cabling in the front, but without it, a big part of the modular way is impossible.
Take a look at Blamsoft's VK-2. On this RE the CV ins and outs are doubled with audio ins and outs. The real limitation in Reason is that data is processed in chunks of 64 samples whereas in VCV data is processed on a per sample base. That makes a huge difference in feedback loops.
This is one of the bigger limitations of using multiple devices as a big modular system, and probably one reason why many are not developing this approach.

That being said, the “solution” would be a euro rack system inside of Reason that is a single device.

After all, how many analog synth modules were developed for the 19” rack format (few if any) and why would one expect to seem them developed here?

Also, I always hated the cable mess when working with real modular systems. Software is the perfect environment to improve upon the limitations of things like front panel “physical” cables. Why re-create all aspects of the modular originals? The “experience” is what we want, not necessarily a one-to-one literal reproduction warts and all.

For example, why should we need mults and summing devices like the Spiders? Why not just allow connecting multiple cables in and out of any “jack”? The concept of insisting on following real world physics when it’s not necessary to do so makes no sense to me. It’s more logical to simply connect as many ins and outs as necessary without having to add additional modules etc.

I don’t have “The answer” to how to do this, I just feel there must be better ways to get the same user experience as with modular synths, but with all the advantages of the software world.




Sent from some crappy device using Tapatalk
Selig Audio, LLC

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O1B
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18 Jul 2018

...from your quote (below), you were just guessing modular users, correct? How'd you get
Image
you missed my point - which is in line with the OP:

Reason missed the Boat, for now.
About CV in reason, examples like Selig graphing out Flanging in the sequencer was stellar.
Such things haven't happened in a while.
Some people here are in 'make excuses for Reason's inadequacies' mode.

Im not.
Not saying there isn't a market for it at all. But in comparison to most music makers, the modular crowd is small. A million is still a small amount compared to several billions for example. Indeed they could have made it happen, but it comes down to their target audience which seems to be a more general audience while still providing a tease of cv modularity. That's not to say that more modular features won't ever be added though.
QVprod wrote:
17 Jul 2018
O1B wrote:
17 Jul 2018
On PUF you learn “ hey! Cv is good for goofy stuff”
On PUF, you get what Reason IS -not what it Could be.
In Reason! CV is inthe back.

On Muff, you’d have a clue what you were missing.
And, small market? Seems you’re still in the dark about the market, QV.
The modular market pays $80-$2000 for proper Modules.
We haggle over $50-$100 here.
If you've read my comments, I did not say that there is not a modular market. I said it is considerably small compared to music makers in general. Propellerhead has 57.2K Twitter followers. That's a lot of people and "influence", but very minuscule to for example; Kim Kardashian's reach at 58.5 million. Hopefully that illustration makes more sense for you. Additionally, the price of hardware euroracks and modules is completely irrelevant to that. Large price does not equal to a larger market. Macs cost more than PCs. PC is the larger market.

Also, the PUF IMO did not paint CV as for "silly stuff" I actually use CV occasionally because of the stuff I learned on the PUF. The people who introduced me to Reason never went on the forum and were not using CV. Nonetheless as cool as it is, the majority of Reason users don't use it extensively, which is reflected in Prop's lack of attention to it.

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chimp_spanner
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18 Jul 2018

I wouldn't say I use CV extensively? But I'm always aware that it's an option. Mostly I use it for relatively simple stuff like triggering a sidechain effect with the gate output of a drum channel, or just using dedicated modulation devices where I feel the built in ones on a synth are lacking. Beyond that I never really go crazy. It's more like a feature that I know is there if I absolutely can't get what I need with plugins and REs, but most of the time I'm in too much of a hurry to really dive into it. I enjoy being able to build things but I wanna make music first and foremost. Sound design is a different thing. I love the flexibility in that context.

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O1B
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18 Jul 2018

I mean no harm. And, we make music how we make music - but, consider...

Using Reason - A DAW - with REs/VSTs IS Sound Designing, is it not?
you know.... " to evoke emotion, reflect mood and underscore actions"..
CV is just a means to that End.

There's Stereo. Then, there's Panning under CV
There's Amplification. Then there's Voltage Controlled Amplification.
There's Gating. Then, there's Low Pass Gating.
Dynamic Control via modular CV also yields EXPANSION .... compared to most RE/VST 'compressors.'

All can be done in Reason... if you can...

BELOW: mini channel module for the WMD Performance Mixer.
Notice to the Right of that awesome lighted fader: CV for Gain, Pan, Aux...
... a little tricky in Reason - without rack-level workarounds.... Tedious.
Now... imagine those CVs under Joystick/Dynamic control.... not just you USUAL LFO monotany?

Image
chimp_spanner wrote:
18 Jul 2018
I wouldn't say I use CV extensively? But I'm always aware that it's an option. Mostly I use it for relatively simple stuff like triggering a sidechain effect with the gate output of a drum channel, or just using dedicated modulation devices where I feel the built in ones on a synth are lacking. Beyond that I never really go crazy. It's more like a feature that I know is there if I absolutely can't get what I need with plugins and REs, but most of the time I'm in too much of a hurry to really dive into it. I enjoy being able to build things but I wanna make music first and foremost. Sound design is a different thing. I love the flexibility in that context.

antic604

18 Jul 2018

Obviously they've not missed it...
modular.jpg
modular.jpg (367.36 KiB) Viewed 2668 times
...and I remember Mattias is a huge fan (the whole Noise Engineering deal?).

But somehow decided not to do anything about it.

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Ahornberg
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18 Jul 2018

Reason's mixer channels already have CV ins for gain and pan
mixer back.png
mixer back.png (408.89 KiB) Viewed 2662 times

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benjified
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18 Jul 2018

Is it feasible to port an open source app to a Re? There may be licensing restrictions using GPL code in a proprietary license. Check it out before you potentially run up to a brick wall.

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Ahornberg
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18 Jul 2018

benjified wrote:
18 Jul 2018
Is it feasible to port an open source app to a Re? There may be licensing restrictions using GPL code in a proprietary license. Check it out before you potentially run up to a brick wall.
The license at https://github.com/VCVRack/AudibleInstruments says:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.


I don't see any problem here.

Undistraction

18 Jul 2018

Looks like that Dutch guy has made a video about my question without actually bothering to read my question. I never said you couldn't do modular in Reason. FFS that is exactly what I do in Reason most of the time:


tibah
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18 Jul 2018

Undistraction wrote:
18 Jul 2018
Looks like that Dutch guy has made a video about my question without actually bothering to read my question.
But your actual question reads like "why PH can't make developer X to develop Rack Extensions?", which is inconsistent to the topic you chosen and the points made later in your original post, because, simply put, you can't make people want to develop for a certain platform OR license their products to be used for said platform.

Undistraction

18 Jul 2018

I didn't say anything about anyone making anyone do anything. I'm guessing from your use of English that it isn't your primary language, so I think you're maybe misunderstanding my original question.

I pointed out that Reason's rack-based approach had the potential to be a great catalyst for capturing the market created by the popularity of modular in hardware and its more recent move to a virtual modular paradigm. I'm interested why, despite seemingly being in the perfect position to become the go-to software solution for modular, it has completely failed on that count.

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Iapetus 9
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18 Jul 2018

I don't see how cables on the front would be trouble to many, especially if it included the hide cables function we already have. Just use another rack side for the modular. I envision getting modules through the RE store and adding them to the rack through a modular type device. I'd buy that, but there would need to be a serious update for it. That was my point- The way things are with cables on the back and limited RE sizes, the modular type system hasn't taken off the way it should. The Pheads should really consider this important IMHO, but I'm modular biased.
38L > 51D every time.

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aeox
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18 Jul 2018

So, you want the eurorack visual experience?

How do you imagine they would implement that experience into the current design of Reason?

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Ahornberg
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19 Jul 2018

I don't think that Propellerhead will give us cables on the front side of the rack. There are hundreds of REs with cables on the back side. How should connections from front to back look like?

I don't think we will see more half rack devices, although they would be fine for coming closer to a visual Eurorack experience.

If you want the visual Eurorack experience, go for Softube Modular (with fewer but very accurate modelled modules) or go for VCV (with dozens of mostly free modules and a lot of creative modules that go far beyond hardware Eurorack). Beside that there's also Reaktor Blocks with a huge user library full of very unique modules to download for free.

IMO Reaktor Blocks and VCV both make it easy for developers to create and distribute new modules. Reaktor modules are made by wiring up cables. For VCV you need to have some basic software-coding skills compared to coding an RE for Reason (beneath that, getting your own REs - even free REs - into the Propellerhead shop is not that easy for developers living in countries where you have to pay in advance just for founding a company ... see this post: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7507474&p=400613&hi ... ry#p400613 so focusing on Reaktor Blocks or VCV for creating Eurorack style modules seems more obvious to me).

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Ahornberg
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19 Jul 2018

selig wrote:
18 Jul 2018
Ahornberg wrote:
Take a look at Blamsoft's VK-2. On this RE the CV ins and outs are doubled with audio ins and outs. The real limitation in Reason is that data is processed in chunks of 64 samples whereas in VCV data is processed on a per sample base. That makes a huge difference in feedback loops.
This is one of the bigger limitations of using multiple devices as a big modular system, and probably one reason why many are not developing this approach.

That being said, the “solution” would be a euro rack system inside of Reason that is a single device.

After all, how many analog synth modules were developed for the 19” rack format (few if any) and why would one expect to seem them developed here?

Also, I always hated the cable mess when working with real modular systems. Software is the perfect environment to improve upon the limitations of things like front panel “physical” cables. Why re-create all aspects of the modular originals? The “experience” is what we want, not necessarily a one-to-one literal reproduction warts and all.

For example, why should we need mults and summing devices like the Spiders? Why not just allow connecting multiple cables in and out of any “jack”? The concept of insisting on following real world physics when it’s not necessary to do so makes no sense to me. It’s more logical to simply connect as many ins and outs as necessary without having to add additional modules etc.

I don’t have “The answer” to how to do this, I just feel there must be better ways to get the same user experience as with modular synths, but with all the advantages of the software world.
I recently took a look at Bitwig. They got the modular thing done without any cables. They made some kind of Combinators that can be nested ad infinitum and all modulators placed outside can control nearly every parameter on every device inside such a nested chain. Everything turns out so easily.

But using cables seems to be more "fun" ... maybe because it's harder to get the desired result.

Caustic's modular synth on my phone:
P1060158.JPG
P1060158.JPG (498.62 KiB) Viewed 2554 times

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joeyluck
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19 Jul 2018

Faastwalker wrote:
18 Jul 2018
I'm not sure about cables on the front of Reason's rack when we've got them on the back. I'd imagine it would get a bit messy. I'm happy with Euro Rack style modules that fit in the rack in the current format. Maybe they could be made so parameters on the front are directly mirrored as i/o on the rear. So hitting 'Tab' shows basically the same GUI layout as the front. I think that would be a workable work around to having cables on the front of the rack.
Yes, completely possible and a great idea :puf_smile:

Look at ABL3.

It is the first and only device in Reason that I know of (correct me if I'm wrong) that has knobs on the front and back that mirror each other. This was done with the Hipass and Gate Trim (when they were added to the front in the update). And while you can’t right-mouse-click to choose ‘edit automation’ from the back panel, you can however option+click on Hipass or Gate Trim on the back panel to assign automation. If you hit record and start turning the knobs on the back panel, it will also create automation lanes and record the automation.

It was over a year ago that the update was released to ABL3, and when I wrote the article pointing this out, I was certain somebody would get the idea to make a more convenient modular/semi-modular synth utilizing the cable system. And knobs on the back panel can also be custom, they don't have to be those standard knobs you typically see. So yeah, you could have the front panel and back panel look identical. The back panel could be everything plus cables and the front panel would be your cable-free view. Best of both worlds. Totally feasible and would love to see somebody do this :puf_smile:

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