Too much choice

[Reasonable man]

I remember saying a long time go after 9.5 came out that i wondered how relevent Hydlide's kinda early reason videos are nowadays considering that alot of what he was doing by combining tonnes of stock devices together to create wonderfull sounds can be done not only with one or two vst's but also now with one just one or two RE's.
His videos were my main Reason educational source (reason 8) and they scoped how deep the rabbit hole went .... same with Rob at Reason 101.net.
How this Daw has changed in such a short relative time. I almost feel nostaligic now when a propellerhead video/tutorila comes out and someones using a neptune or vocoder or Polar etc. There are so many devices now that its hard to remember that half of them are still there.from yesteryear and still do a great job. Cant remember last time i used Thor for anything other than scaling a cv siganl. Thor is a great synth!

[bitley]

reason never was reduced in any way

*cough* line6 amps?

personally I am from the synthesizer school so to speak and I had no particular use for those amps since I think Scream could cover my occasional dist / overdrive needs anyway. I just think Reason can be used in so many creative and joyful "modular" ways besides also offering a more obvious Cubase / Logic like way of working. I always liked the idea that Reason had a toolbox that made us compatible with each other. The RE / VST integration can be useful but it hasn't made me forget how much fun I had experimenting with Reason 1 to 4, writing articles for the swedish magazine Studio and coming up with ways to use Reason that made people raise their eyebrows. For me Reason's strength and flexibility lies there; how it integrates several sequencers and samplers with different GUIs and methods. I have a bunch of REs as well but the most useful ones for me are PX7 and Radical Piano. I have VSTs and AUs but their CPU usage doesn't impress and in fact often makes them pale considerably next to Subtractor.

[Jagwah]

I've never found having a bunch of tools to be any kind of hindrance. My only taxing decision is which synth to use.

However I never tried limiting myself until very recently when I went to demo mode and it got me using the matrix a ton and looking at it all a bit differently. I like the idea of restricting myself now.

[two shoes]

reason has always been more versatile than all other daws imho

i agree and i don't think this will change anytime soon, but VSTs are going places and doing stuff these days that I haven't seen in any rack extension (presumably because the re SDK doesn't allow for it) and not just with interface design. here's hoping that the rack extension SDK can keep pace with the VST standard because i think other hosts will be (and already are in some cases) introducing features that rival what the Reason rack can do, albeit with different methods so the advantage Reason has in those regards is getting smaller by the month.

[bitley]

My view is that VSTs - a technology from 1995 - never inspired me much and Reason was a godsend around 2000 because things would suddenly work for full arrangements and without crashing.

So I personally see Reason as more futuristic and promising, period.

The polyphony of a modern VST often still can not match what Reason 1 on a G3 Mac would deliver in the end of 1999. That was about 300-400 voices - and 9 ms of latency as well on the Mac's internal sound card, running OS 9 - and it's 20 years ago.

Propellerhead were never "after"; they were ahead of the game big time.

Sonically then? Well I program the sounds I want - and often many others too - so I am much more impressed by Subtractor - because I know exactly how it works - than what I am with Diva etc.

The choice, therefore, is simple:

Stay on the ground.

And by all means - do try out VSTs and hardware as well, naturally, keep being curious - but never let it hit your relation to your creativity.

I will never get rid of the G3 either, because it's still fantastic with Reason 1. I certainly enjoy looking backwards as well. And the G3 is so much newer than a Minimoog or Juno-60, yet people always crave for those. Weird!