EnochLight wrote: ↑05 Jan 2020
Theo.M wrote: ↑05 Jan 2020
Hi Enoch, Happy 2020 to you.
I am just curious, how could props possibly know what DAWs people have been rewiring reason into mostly over all these years?
Hey Theo - hope all is well - seeing Australia burn on the news is scary! Anyway, there's two ways: 1. In-house (and/or 3rd party) market research, and 2. Reason's "Send Error Reports and Statistics" metrics that are phoned home to Reason Studios (Propellerhead). While I'm sure some users opt out, there's a fair amount of users that just leave that check box "checked" under Preferences.
Theo.M wrote: ↑05 Jan 2020
Pro Tools is absolutely awesome.. I have never looked back since I switched overnight int December 2015. The only complaint I have is why didn't I start with it, so i'd have all my songs in PT format now rather than 1000 Logic projects still!
But because PT has a few little shortcomings for songwriters (well it did, it's much better now in that regard), I actually wouldn't be surprised if it was one of THE most used when it came to rewire/reason. Especially with it's excellent rewire implementation.
I can't pull up the thread or post, so unfortunately you'll have to take this statement with a grain of salt, but Reason Studios stated that very few people were using ReWire these days. I can imagine that if Reason Rack Plugin wasn't a hugely requested feature, and saw that most people don't bother with ReWire, they wouldn't have deprecated ReWire.
I know Pro Tools has a huge fan base. It's simply unrivaled when it comes to audio recording and engineering for sure! But most home studio "producers" (man, I
hate that term) use other DAW over it (Live, Bitwig, FL Studio, Logic, etc).
I remember you used to be a massive Logic fan. What made you walk away from it?
Hi, thank you for your wishes.. Yes it's very sad what is going on.. Not only devastation for us but for the animals as well.. Just awful.
Yeah, I used Logic from V3.0 in 1997 with windows 95, through to Logic Pro X on mac till about 3 years ago. I still always keep up to date as I have a lot of legacy projects made in it, however the reason I switched was quite simple. I invested my life savings into a hardcore hardware synth setup, as well as an analog mixer and multiple UAD Apollos. Furthermore I threw a few satellites into the mix (2 of them were free with the Apollos.. Octos no less).
I have I think it's 34 UA DSP now, and a total of 88 external inputs including 2 analog mixers being monitored through Apollo console. All channels of the analogs and the Apollos are full
I started to notice a problem when I was adding UAD plugins to my mixes.. Suddenly all my automation of *other* plugins was out of time, unpredictably all over the place! What it turned out to be was that Logic's delay compensation is broken when there are latent effects in the signal path, and every single UAD effect has latency of some kind when used in the DAW as an AU/AAX/VST plugin. Of course the more I used on a track, the worse the timing was out on those tracks. One track might have 1 UAD effect. so the automation is out by 25ms or so, then the other might have 5 UAD effects and the automation is out by well over 100ms. Totally disastrous if it's grid based rhythmic automation (and most of it is, being a 4/4 composer and all).
If it was just the uad effects themselves that had broken automation timing, I would have survived.. but as it turns out, automation on both Instrument and audio tracks of ANY plugin that happens to be in the same insert path as plugins with latency, goes out of time by approximately 2x the total latency of the plugins on that track. There are convoluted workarounds, the issue is even more of a HF on drummer tracks, and it's really unpleasant to deal with. For a heavy UAD user like me, Live, Logic and Reason are the worst DAWs to use. Reason has the same affliction as Logic (unless they fixed it now and automation is latency compensated), however ableton is a whole other beast I won't go into as that will be multiple paragraphs LOL.
So the search started for a DAW that had bang on time automation no matter what was being automated, as well as one that worked rock solid with external synths and was completely reliable with UAD plugins. The other criteria was that I also needed something that made choosing an individual midi input device per track, easy. Little did I know that every other DAW in existence can do that except for Logic
With that many controllers, I don't want all of them triggering whatever track is highlighted in Logic, I want to make specific hardware trigger specific sounds.. And, well, you need to get really deep in the stupid environment to do such a thing in Logic, and even then, it's about as reliable as a politician!
Studio One came into consideration as it has all the features I need and handles the above situation(s) well, however the performance on OSX is STILL abysmal and in raw plugin in instances in standardised tests, S1 can get between about 1/4 to 1/3rd the VI's and effects that Logic, PT and Reaper can (which happen to be the 3 best performing and snappiest DAWs on OSX). S1, to my eyes in any case, became the world's ugliest DAW with the release of version 3, when it was previously so neat and tidy. V4 only made matters worse. It's like a wall of misaligned text in every possible orifice, in low contrast tabbed windows all stuck together without separation. The only time I don't squint when looking at S1 is when the left inspector, right browser and lower mixer or piano roll are ALL closed. Basically when just the clips on the arrange page are showing.
I really find it that uncomfortable to look at and work with.
Reaper was immediately out of the running because I simply hate the workflow and design of it (i'd give up music if that was my only choice), Bitwig is missing too many streamlined audio editing features (oh yeah I forgot to mention that one.. Bitwig is performing really well on OSX these days and has come a long way). DP was also a consideration but I decided I like DAWs with Guis that feel fast and snappy and the workflow.. well.. it's entirely different to how I had been composing for 2 decades.
I tried the PT11 demo, and found it immediately intuitive. I still haven't watched any PT tutorials to this day.. It just clicks with my brain, like Logic did (as far as composition is concerned, Logic was very intuitive to me since day one). It also passed the above "tests" with flying colours. It has a couple midi shortcomings, but really it's a lot better than people give it credit for these days, and because I'd be largely working in the audio domain for editing and arranging the song anyway (after initial segment composition I record large external synth track counts into PT), it really feels like lightning to work with. I more or less love it, it performs great, and I really only have a few wishes for it. Midi *insert* plugins like Logic's MFX, folder tracks (already promised by Avid), a dedicated drum editor, (always wanted this for Logic too), ARA2 (logic's is broke anyway, yep, almost 2 years after release), and some updates to Elastic Audio (Logic is king daw in this regard.. nothing comes close to flex and logic auto tempo). That's it.
I am very happy with the midi in all other ways, it has all the necessary editing functions as well as realtime non destructive options, midi to audio groove quantise and vice versa, a good piano roll and also inline editing which is something that only a few DAWs have. I am able to choose a midi in and out device per track, like a normal DAW, and I can work around the lack of a drum sequencer by using the sugar bytes stuff controlling other instruments, as well as Kirnu Cream.
All the good stuff is in AAX native these days, with very little missing. There are also some wonderful exclusives like HEAT, all the crane song plugins, massey plugins, quiet art plugins (the best wave rider), the Aphex bundle and more. I also love the option of destructive offline processing with audio suite, and the lack of ARA is not too unbearable as I can send audio to and from Revoice Pro offline in an instant. As of the latest version, there are only minor bugs, and honestly, it hardly ever crashes. Like the Reason of old
I also adore the way commit works, I just literally drag a midi clip to an audio track and it's rendered offline on the spot to Audio. The bounce in place options and freeze destroy Logic's, however S1 has the best in that regard with track transform.. can't take that away from it.
Oh, PT also has sample level timing adjustment per midi port, so my external stuff is really tightly synced. The way clip gain works basically means I save hours compared to the suffering I had in Logic. And as a bonus to top it all off, it's a gapless engine when inserting and removing plugins (unless you get a cpu overload). I love the way PDC works.. You can have a plugin with variable latency, say like an izotope one where the latency changes depending what components are activated.. and you see the latency figure in samples at all times in the mixer, adjust in realtime without any farts like Logic..They used to call it Logic Audio believe it or not, which is weird, as Logic is terrible for audio to this day, except for the tempo functions. Logic still has a 2 second delay for any audio adjustment made during playback before the result is heard (clip gain/tempo change/even just deleting clip that is currently under the playhead.. logic keeps playing it for a while LOL). PT is instant as it should be.
The icing on the cake is that, to my eyes, PT has the absolute most inspiring, colourful GUI that promotes creativity. I am SO happy it hasn't conformed to the funeral black or dull dark grey GUIs that seem to be all the rage in DAWs today. It's neat and tidy and it's basically a 2 window workflow. You put the mixer on the second monitor and keep the main page on the first and that's it. It also has 5K support and looks wonderful on OSX. I look at it and never get confused as to where I am or what I am doing.
so.. there's your answer! LOL!
The TLDR; version is:
"I love Pro Tools".
PS the one thing I miss about Reason most is Dr Octorex,, although PT does have real time auditioning of both standard wav and tiff files, as well as acidified wavs and apple loops and even rex files, all to tempo in time with the project
I don't even have to rewire Live as a slave anymore for loop work.. those days are gone
But the way DR Rex can easily muck about with rex files and the individual slices on the fly was always ideal to me, and to be perfectly honest I'd love to use Reason as an AAX just for that and that alone