Let's Moan About the Sequencer!

[elMisse]

Automation for the instrument always appears with the instrument - these cannot be separated. Maybe you're talking about when you automate a Mix Channel? In this case working with "Auto-group Devices and Tracks" will solve this problem for you. If you don't start with this mode "on", you'll need to clean up your rack/sequencer track order first (then us "Sort Selected Device Groups"), but from that point forward all related/connected devices will stay together.

Yep, instrument has them on the same track, but I have been searching for those automation lanes of f.ex parameters of effects coming after the instrument, sooooo many times in larger projects, and have been forced to drag them closer to the instrument track. And always had "Auto-group Devices and Tracks" on.
Seems to work as you described now, though. I wonder what have I done wrong.

So, all mixchannelautomation should go above the intrument track and other devices in the chain under it, right?

[chimp_spanner]

Just be grateful you're not editing your guitar recordings with tape and a razor blade.

This is how I remember my mum and dad doing it when I was growing up!

"Where's the chinagraph?" - heard that at least once a day haha.

[Oquasec]

Reason as a vst will fix that for me since I did not wait for props to edit that.

[chimp_spanner]

And after all that I spend the night noodling in R11 standalone and end up having all the fun *shrugs* I still think it's gonna be the sequencer for me for the foreseeable. At least for certain kinds of projects.

[Creativemind]

Just be grateful you're not editing your guitar recordings with tape and a razor blade.

Lol!

[antic604]

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[antic604]

Yeah I know what you mean about the anonimity of the combinator.

Skins are not reflected in Sequencer, though

With regards to moving things, I mean, don't be too scared. Routing is always preserved. It's just confusing sometimes, visually. I've had to develop a workflow for keeping things organised. So colour coding is a big one. I have colours that I use for different instrument groups from project to project so I always know what I'm looking at. I also use rack dividers (there are free ones in the shop) to split my rack up and label different parts of it. You can also create a sequencer track for them as well and use them to divide up the track list in sequencer view. And whenever I move anything, I always select all, right click, sort selected device groups. And that keeps everything the same in all three views. But one of my top, top feature requests (and hopes for 11) was an option to make this automatic. For new users the default behaviour is very confusing. They reasonably expect to drag a track from one place to another and have that change reflected without having to do an extra two step process. Oh I almost always alt/option click the collapse button as well so it's not too visually overwhelming. Also consider using different columns for different things. Drums in one, bass in another, pads in another, etc.

I learned most of those things the hard way, by trying, failing, reading up Manual and then succeeding. But I guess the early mistakes scared me for life and I somehow don't trust Reason to keep order by itself, especially if there's complex routing using the same devices by couple of tracks, spiders, etc. Oh well, I guess Reason is faithful to real hardware studios in that regard, when things can also get pretty confusing and messy

But thanks for the above!

[Last Alternative]

You kids and your fancy sequencers... Why back in my day we recorded in mono, in one take...

Thing is we’re not back in your day. It’s 2019 for God’s sake. All those little bugs and annoyances should be top priority for a company to smooth out before they go spending time on making shiny new stuff.
It’s like selling a car with new features and design with the same old engine problems. PH/RS is notorious for that.. ugh

[Jagwah]

Thing is we’re not back in your day. It’s 2019 for God’s sake.

EXACTLY. If he thinks we're bad, imagine young kids coming to the scene hearing that Reason has a lot of very outdated features that NEVER get updated, they wouldn't even blink before deciding against it.

[Raveshaper]

Thing is we’re not back in your day. It’s 2019 for God’s sake.

EXACTLY. If he thinks we're bad, imagine young kids coming to the scene hearing that Reason has a lot of very outdated features that NEVER get updated, they wouldn't even blink before deciding against it.

Imagine the reaction to workflow impacts in the other apps once this gets released though.

The sequencer is kind of a red herring when it comes to users of other DAWs picking this up and giving it a try. It's the least of their worries. Best practice in the VST3 world is you load an instrument on its own channel and then apply a sensible and well structured linear effect chain if you need to spice the sound up a bit. What isn't natural or intuitive for people in those workflows is stacking a whole bunch of things all over the place and noodling things up in weird ways just because they can. It'll slow them down and seem strange.

In short, all of the workarounds and clunkiness of using Reason is now going to be imported into other workflows, and the general feeling is going to be "I'm not sure if this company is just starting up, but they've got some kinks to work out". No text input for values, everything is done manually, the plugins hook into audio channels but you have to open the rack plugin to interact with it (no integration), oh and the graphics looking like 1998 side by side with crisp, high resolution vector interfaces of the big leagues.

Then imagine a diehard Cubase user giving the standalone experience a spin for the first time. What a fiasco. Nothing but a list of over 100 questions on how to do basic workflow things with nothing but "can't" answers anywhere they ask.

Seriously, this is going to be an epic parade of cringe and I'm looking forward to it. The level of "nope" is higher than I've ever seen and it's everywhere this time.

[electrofux]

Honestly the Rack is way better than any implementation of device chains i have seen so far. But speaking of the sequencer, i will moan as long as there is no modern session view/clip launcher like so many other DAWs have nowadays.

[dezma]

Then imagine a diehard Cubase user giving the standalone experience a spin for the first time. What a fiasco. Nothing but a list of over 100 questions on how to do basic workflow things with nothing but "can't" answers anywhere they ask.

That's not a very fair statement. At least 40 of those questions you can solve following a 15min workaround video

[dezma]

Honestly the Rack is way better than any implementation of device chains i have seen so far.

Except I keep on hitting "TAB" and it's doing NOTHING !
Might need a replacement keyboard soon

[electrofux]

Honestly the Rack is way better than any implementation of device chains i have seen so far.

Except I keep on hitting "TAB" and it's doing NOTHING !
Might need a replacement keyboard soon

Well, yeah. I keep hitting delete and nothing happens too. Dunno if a DAW claims keyboard input for itself or if it just missing keboard implementation.
But i have fiddled around with the device chans in Bitwig and Ableton and cant say that i like this more than the rack just the opposite.

[dezma]

Except I keep on hitting "TAB" and it's doing NOTHING !
Might need a replacement keyboard soon

Well, yeah. I keep hitting delete and nothing happens too. Dunno if a DAW claims keyboard input for itself or if it just missing keboard implementation.
But i have fiddled around with the device chans in Bitwig and Ableton and cant say that i like this more than the rack just the opposite.

Yes, DAW takes all key bindings while in focus.

Have you tried Studio One, it is impressive on multi instruments and fx chains. Give it a try. Multi-instruments are like combinators (for instruments) and with the channel splitters you can go crazy without all the bussing troubles. After all those reason-only years you forget how easy drag and drop is for changing the chain order. Only thing I need getting used to is the absence of CV in/out

[mcatalao]

Automation tracks appear anywhere they want. Most often 27miles from the instrument track, and have absolutely nothing recognizable in common with it. They should of course be grouped together. And one click should open/close the whole palette of automated devices tracks, nicely stacked together, in the order they are wired in the rack.

Automation for the instrument always appears with the instrument - these cannot be separated. Maybe you're talking about when you automate a Mix Channel? In this case working with "Auto-group Devices and Tracks" will solve this problem for you. If you don't start with this mode "on", you'll need to clean up your rack/sequencer track order first (then us "Sort Selected Device Groups"), but from that point forward all related/connected devices will stay together.

Though sometimes for unknown reason the channel track and the instrument track get separated miles away. However, you just need to drag the device with a mouse and they will get together...

[mcatalao]

More on subject...

TBH, one of the reasons i'm not getting another daw is the sequencer. The simplicity of the sequencer and the midi editor, plus the way reason recognises context on each kind of track and device, blocks, fully integrated pitch editor, the comp editor and so on... It just simply works and to be honest i really have some difficulty understanding some complains.

As for the midi editor... As i have classical piano training and i play an EWI usb, i end up never using the midi editor to enter notes... i record them with midi controllers, and at most i end up creating all stuff like that. Ctrl - k is my best friend for quick quantizing of selected notes.

Also a lot of stuff that people complain is already available on the tool window, like fast transposes, percentage quantize, and a lot of other midi manipulation feature that are available on the tool window and a lot of people forget it.

An important thing about the sequencer... Dragging and dropping to the sequencer, bouncing for creative processing, and so on is not going to exist for people that go the other daw route. It's a lot of stuff that will simply be broken in the workflow.

[chimp_spanner]

More on subject...

TBH, one of the reasons i'm not getting another daw is the sequencer. The simplicity of the sequencer and the midi editor, plus the way reason recognises context on each kind of track and device, blocks, fully integrated pitch editor, the comp editor and so on... It just simply works and to be honest i really have some difficulty understanding some complains.

As for the midi editor... As i have classical piano training and i play an EWI usb, i end up never using the midi editor to enter notes... i record them with midi controllers, and at most i end up creating all stuff like that. Ctrl - k is my best friend for quick quantizing of selected notes.

Also a lot of stuff that people complain is already available on the tool window, like fast transposes, percentage quantize, and a lot of other midi manipulation feature that are available on the tool window and a lot of people forget it.

An important thing about the sequencer... Dragging and dropping to the sequencer, bouncing for creative processing, and so on is not going to exist for people that go the other daw route. It's a lot of stuff that will simply be broken in the workflow.

Yeah I feel all this. After using the rack in Cubase I definitely miss the tight integration the rack has with Reason's sequencer. I know I keep saying it but I honestly don't even feel like it's missing *that* much. I could probably put the things I really, really need on one hand. But without them, I can certainly still work.

[JiggeryPokery]

I can't wait until people get to use the new extended vertical zoom in the sequencer.

It only zooms into the track at the top, regardless of which track you have selected. "No," I hear you cry, "they wouldn't be that stupid". Well, it's certainly not stupid, it's utterly intentional: they saw this behaviour and someone said "that'll do, move on".

The freely resizeable track height is a nice addition, right up to the point that you can make the track height bigger than the visual space available, and so lose the bottom, so you can't reselect it later unless you scroll down to see it again (i.e. the sequencer should automatically compenscroll down to keep the bottom of the selected track being resized at the bottom of the screen, not invisibly beyond it). You can't zoom out and back in as you'll be returned to the top of the sequencer rather than the selected track.

What's depressing is that the horizontal zoom does kind of work in at least it will zoom to playhead, if not the cursor. It's always one step forward, then half a pace back. (Edit: actually I just realised in the first horizontal zoom in that video, it doesn't zoom to playhead either, does it? It swishes promptly offscreen to the right...)

[electrofux]

Well, yeah. I keep hitting delete and nothing happens too. Dunno if a DAW claims keyboard input for itself or if it just missing keboard implementation.
But i have fiddled around with the device chans in Bitwig and Ableton and cant say that i like this more than the rack just the opposite.

Yes, DAW takes all key bindings while in focus.

Have you tried Studio One, it is impressive on multi instruments and fx chains. Give it a try. Multi-instruments are like combinators (for instruments) and with the channel splitters you can go crazy without all the bussing troubles. After all those reason-only years you forget how easy drag and drop is for changing the chain order. Only thing I need getting used to is the absence of CV in/out

Yeah but i just tested VcW Rack VST (vsv) in Bitwig and there i can use strg+d to duplicate devices. I think thats what meant.

BTW does Studio One have a clip launcher of some sorts? Never used it but heard only good. But without a clip lauchner i am not going anywhere and would rather stay in Reason.

@Jiggery: lol for the video. It is weird. Someone must have used this and thought this is good and that it cant possibly be better.

[Luxuria]

I can't wait until people get to use the new extended vertical zoom in the sequencer.

It only zooms into the track at the top, regardless of which track you have selected. "No," I hear you cry, "they wouldn't be that stupid". Well, it's certainly not stupid, it's utterly intentional: they saw this behaviour and someone said "that'll do, move on".

The freely resizeable track height is a nice addition, right up to the point that you can make the track height bigger than the visual space available, and so lose the bottom, so you can't reselect it later unless you scroll down to see it again (i.e. the sequencer should automatically compenscroll down to keep the bottom of the selected track being resized at the bottom of the screen, not invisibly beyond it). You can't zoom out and back in as you'll be returned to the top of the sequencer rather than the selected track.

What's depressing is that the horizontal zoom does kind of work in at least it will zoom to playhead, if not the cursor. It's always one step forward, then half a pace back. (Edit: actually I just realised in the first horizontal zoom in that video, it doesn't zoom to playhead either, does it? It swishes promptly offscreen to the right...)

Omg wow. This looks so bad.

I either think the developers have really low standards at what is acceptable or they seriously don't care because they aren't the ones using the program.

Everything I've said is unfolding in R11 so it's bittersweet. I called that the new CEO would rebrand the company and they did. I called that there would be less then a handful of workflow features and was correct. I even called that at least one of them would be half assed and poorly implemented.

Hey Mattias and PHeads: your sequencer zoom and focus priority sucks and you should be ashamed knowing users are going to be complaining about this but you won't be doing anything about it.

[Boombastix]

I can't wait until people get to use the new extended vertical zoom in the sequencer.

It only zooms into the track at the top, regardless of which track you have selected. "No," I hear you cry, "they wouldn't be that stupid". Well, it's certainly not stupid, it's utterly intentional: they saw this behaviour and someone said "that'll do, move on".

The freely resizeable track height is a nice addition, right up to the point that you can make the track height bigger than the visual space available, and so lose the bottom, so you can't reselect it later unless you scroll down to see it again (i.e. the sequencer should automatically compenscroll down to keep the bottom of the selected track being resized at the bottom of the screen, not invisibly beyond it). You can't zoom out and back in as you'll be returned to the top of the sequencer rather than the selected track.

What's depressing is that the horizontal zoom does kind of work in at least it will zoom to playhead, if not the cursor. It's always one step forward, then half a pace back. (Edit: actually I just realised in the first horizontal zoom in that video, it doesn't zoom to playhead either, does it? It swishes promptly offscreen to the right...)

This feels like a never ending story (I hope though they have it listed as a bug) . But I've had a feeling that they do not use the DAW themselves in a serious way (noodling maybe, but finished song production, no) and they do not work closely observing how advanced users work - simply put: They do not understand what they are doing (must understand the end user's need first). Could also be a case where the programmers have to much power/leverage inside of the company and the product manager is always run over. I can also understand that after the long list of bug fixes after 10.x, they have not had enough time to develop v11, since they need to push it out well before Black Friday and Christmas sales.

The long term problem here though is that it looks real shitty. The few YouTubers left doing videos will complain about it, and I checked in with some of them. They laugh at Reason (never used it, never will) and/or they jumped ship and don't care anymore. This spreads like wildfire and the kids trying to use Reason will be laughed at as some "lame kids" wearing the wrong jeans, then they have to go to Ableton or Studio One. It feels they are digging their own grave as Reason is putting themselves on a fast track to become the Oldsmobile of DAWs. Bad management sums it up... They probably need to think about their corporate culture too if that is the case. I wish they would...

[electrofux]

I can also understand that after the long list of bug fixes after 10.x, they have not had enough time to develop v11, since they need to push it out well before Black Friday and Christmas sales.

Does it zoom? yes kindof? check, next item in the list.

[BigPictureSound]

Hmmm ... are there other DAWs that do a better job here?

Not without their own share of trade-offs. I own a number of sequencers and they all have their quirks. The more you work in something that more annoying the little things become. But yeah, at least it doesn't crash! Can't say the same for FL, Maschine, Studio One, etc.

[BigPictureSound]

The long term problem here though is that it looks real shitty. The few YouTubers left doing videos will complain about it, and I checked in with some of them. They laugh at Reason (never used it, never will) and/or they jumped ship and don't care anymore. This spreads like wildfire and the kids trying to use Reason will be laughed at as some "lame kids" wearing the wrong jeans, then they have to go to Ableton or Studio One. It feels they are digging their own grave as Reason is putting themselves on a fast track to become the Oldsmobile of DAWs. Bad management sums it up... They probably need to think about their corporate culture too if that is the case. I wish they would...

I don't care about kids, honestly, I care about professionals and the tools they use. Back in the day, FL studio was laughed at but today it wears the DAW crown. Who will wear the crown in the next few years?

Suppose for a moment that Reason added every feature requested from the last 10 years. Would it had made a difference in sales? If it didn't then what good would everyone's vision be if the company went out of business?

Maybe they saw the writing on the wall years ago that the DAW market is saturated. The rack provides an opportunity to make the RE closed eco-system open to everyone no matter the DAW.

The update as a whole definitely sucks for long-time users, though. In my opinion, they should have found a way to release the VST rack as its own module and include it in the Suite upgrade, and focus on making the 11 release pleasing to their core audience. That seems like it would have been a win-win.