Future purchase: RE or VST equivalent.

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platzangst
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29 Dec 2019

hurricane wrote:
29 Dec 2019
But the topic asks if one should get the RE or the VST equivalent. I don't know why any sane person would suggest getting the RE at this moment.
I mean, even Mr. Rob "We'll Keep Creating REs As Long As People Buy Them" Papen stopped making REs. Where is the BIT RE?

REs are DEAD. :clap:
Why wouldn't one get an RE, if such is available? If one uses Reason, it's reasonable to assume they do so for its level of connectivity that isn't as easy with VSTs. The question also isn't "is anyone going to make a direct port of some VST right now", it's choosing between two (presumably existing) equivalent alternatives. So yeah, buying the RE, if an equivalent thing is available, would seem to be the logical move.

Now if you hate Reason and don't want to use it, then buying an RE doesn't make sense, sure...

chaosroyale
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29 Dec 2019

But REs and VSTs are not equivalent.

VSTs are lighter on CPU (hard to believe, but true), have the possibility of more features than REs, can have bigger/nicer/more complex UI, and they usually get more after care and updates whereas REs often get abandoned by their developers. And you can actually sell a VST to someone.

Plus of course you can use VSTs on your other DAWs without needing the rack as a wrapper.

The only reason you would benefit from using an RE is if you want to see it at a glance in the rack, or if it has CV implementation that you want, and if those factors outweigh the disadvantages I listed above.
platzangst wrote:
29 Dec 2019
hurricane wrote:
29 Dec 2019
But the topic asks if one should get the RE or the VST equivalent. I don't know why any sane person would suggest getting the RE at this moment.
I mean, even Mr. Rob "We'll Keep Creating REs As Long As People Buy Them" Papen stopped making REs. Where is the BIT RE?

REs are DEAD. :clap:
Why wouldn't one get an RE, if such is available? If one uses Reason, it's reasonable to assume they do so for its level of connectivity that isn't as easy with VSTs. The question also isn't "is anyone going to make a direct port of some VST right now", it's choosing between two (presumably existing) equivalent alternatives. So yeah, buying the RE, if an equivalent thing is available, would seem to be the logical move.

Now if you hate Reason and don't want to use it, then buying an RE doesn't make sense, sure...

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Loque
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29 Dec 2019

chaosroyale wrote:
29 Dec 2019
But REs and VSTs are not equivalent.

VSTs are lighter on CPU (hard to believe, but true), have the possibility of more features than REs, can have bigger/nicer/more complex UI, and they usually get more after care and updates whereas REs often get abandoned by their developers. And you can actually sell a VST to someone.

Plus of course you can use VSTs on your other DAWs without needing the rack as a wrapper.

The only reason you would benefit from using an RE is if you want to see it at a glance in the rack, or if it has CV implementation that you want, and if those factors outweigh the disadvantages I listed above.
platzangst wrote:
29 Dec 2019


Why wouldn't one get an RE, if such is available? If one uses Reason, it's reasonable to assume they do so for its level of connectivity that isn't as easy with VSTs. The question also isn't "is anyone going to make a direct port of some VST right now", it's choosing between two (presumably existing) equivalent alternatives. So yeah, buying the RE, if an equivalent thing is available, would seem to be the logical move.

Now if you hate Reason and don't want to use it, then buying an RE doesn't make sense, sure...
Strange that so many ppl only see advantages of VST and disadvantages of RE. I have more than a dozen authorizers for my VSTs and countless serials somewhere over my HDs. Everytime i touch a VST, it normally takes around 30 minutes until i find a bug and it crashs. All my RE are still working while a lot of VSTs i liked are 32 bit and never got improved and no, no jbridge for me which is also buggy.

Dont get me wrong, i like to have VSTs. But i also like my RE and i have good experiences with RE. And all thos discussions and threads about this is like: "Hey, you are wrong! Bananas taste much better than oranges. I know, i am the only one with the truth in my mind, because i like to eat bananas. Oranges are shit. Oranges will not survive the nuclear winter while bananas will do. So do not eat oranges. I am right, you are wrong." :shock: :? ;)
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MrFigg
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29 Dec 2019

Loque wrote:
29 Dec 2019
chaosroyale wrote:
29 Dec 2019
But REs and VSTs are not equivalent.

VSTs are lighter on CPU (hard to believe, but true), have the possibility of more features than REs, can have bigger/nicer/more complex UI, and they usually get more after care and updates whereas REs often get abandoned by their developers. And you can actually sell a VST to someone.

Plus of course you can use VSTs on your other DAWs without needing the rack as a wrapper.

The only reason you would benefit from using an RE is if you want to see it at a glance in the rack, or if it has CV implementation that you want, and if those factors outweigh the disadvantages I listed above.

Strange that so many ppl only see advantages of VST and disadvantages of RE. I have more than a dozen authorizers for my VSTs and countless serials somewhere over my HDs. Everytime i touch a VST, it normally takes around 30 minutes until i find a bug and it crashs. All my RE are still working while a lot of VSTs i liked are 32 bit and never got improved and no, no jbridge for me which is also buggy.

Dont get me wrong, i like to have VSTs. But i also like my RE and i have good experiences with RE. And all thos discussions and threads about this is like: "Hey, you are wrong! Bananas taste much better than oranges. I know, i am the only one with the truth in my mind, because i like to eat bananas. Oranges are shit. Oranges will not survive the nuclear winter while bananas will do. So do not eat oranges. I am right, you are wrong." :shock: :? ;)
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hurricane
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29 Dec 2019

platzangst wrote:
29 Dec 2019
Why wouldn't one get an RE, if such is available? If one uses Reason, it's reasonable to assume they do so for its level of connectivity that isn't as easy with VSTs.
Well that's according to the way YOU work. And assuming that I want the RE version of an instrument just because I use Reason is ridiculous. I want to use the best instruments inside Reason and more often than not, those are VSTs - whether you all want to admit it or not.
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jam-s
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29 Dec 2019

hurricane wrote:
29 Dec 2019
REs are DEAD. :clap:
They're not dead, they just smell funny. :D - Rewards on the other hand ... :puf_unhappy:

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platzangst
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29 Dec 2019

chaosroyale wrote:
29 Dec 2019
But REs and VSTs are not equivalent.

VSTs are lighter on CPU (hard to believe, but true), have the possibility of more features than REs, can have bigger/nicer/more complex UI, and they usually get more after care and updates whereas REs often get abandoned by their developers. And you can actually sell a VST to someone.
I mean, again, you're sort of shifting the goalposts here - the question assumes an equivalence between two devices, and you're coming in to say "well it can't be so because the classes themselves are not equivalent". So if one was more CPU-efficient than the other, they wouldn't be actually equivalent and the question would be moot. If the UI was a significant advantage (and "nicer" is in the eye of the beholder, I've seen plenty of UIs that sacrifice functionality over design or hide a lack of clarity and efficiency over multiple pages), then you'd get whichever one was better.

As for care and updates, I guess I'm not as impressed with a VST that may stop working and need to be updated as operating systems get updated, over REs where, even if they're abandoned and don't get updated or bugfixed, at least will work exactly that well as long as Reason is still around. In other words, they won't regress. Some larger VST-oriented companies may be around for a long while, but that's no guarantee they won't stop updating a product if they make a newer, fancier plug-in. And if they go out of business entirely and I dunno, the next Mac update borks your plug-in, well, you're just totally screwed.

Anyone who's ever read my past posts knows I'm unconcerned with the ability to resell plugins, so that's not an issue for me, at least. And so all other things being equal, which was kind of the point, I'd choose an RE over VST.

The whole reason I fell into using Reason way back when was that I pretty quickly could grok the way everything worked, while I remember staring at a copy of Ableton at about the same time and not being able to figure out how to get an instrument to do what I wanted. I like the way the Rack is organized, the CV is great, and yes, I can see multiple devices at once and adjust settings and connections between them without having to swap between windows or pages. So while I'm not a purist in this regard (I do have VSTs that I use), I still prefer REs - when available.

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platzangst
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29 Dec 2019

hurricane wrote:
29 Dec 2019
platzangst wrote:
29 Dec 2019
Why wouldn't one get an RE, if such is available? If one uses Reason, it's reasonable to assume they do so for its level of connectivity that isn't as easy with VSTs.
Well that's according to the way YOU work. And assuming that I want the RE version of an instrument just because I use Reason is ridiculous. I want to use the best instruments inside Reason and more often than not, those are VSTs - whether you all want to admit it or not.
I assume the connectivity is a thing because lord knows there's a veritable chorus of people griping about the sequencer and just about everything about Reason that isn't the Rack, so I figure the Rack is Reason's big draw. I wonder sometimes if half the people on this very forum actually like working in Reason.

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orthodox
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29 Dec 2019

hurricane wrote:
29 Dec 2019
platzangst wrote:
29 Dec 2019
Why wouldn't one get an RE, if such is available? If one uses Reason, it's reasonable to assume they do so for its level of connectivity that isn't as easy with VSTs.
Well that's according to the way YOU work. And assuming that I want the RE version of an instrument just because I use Reason is ridiculous. I want to use the best instruments inside Reason and more often than not, those are VSTs - whether you all want to admit it or not.
Could you categorize your arguments? It's hard to follow your thought, everything bad about REs is piled up on one another.
Either you compare RE and VST versions of the same device, or you're saying there is no RE equivalents for VSTs you like.
By the way, there are no VST equivalents for many REs I like.

boomer
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29 Dec 2019

chaosroyale wrote:
29 Dec 2019
But REs and VSTs are not equivalent.

VSTs are lighter on CPU (hard to believe, but true)
Yes, It's hard to believe. Can you cite some data that backs that up?

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hurricane
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29 Dec 2019

From that other thread, Synapse themselves said:

"Synapse Audio wrote:

On the one hand the native RE integration is better in the rack (& we can add CV inputs), but on the other hand, the lack of native AVX support will cause a CPU penalty, and there may be some minor features not portable."
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orthodox
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29 Dec 2019

hurricane wrote:
29 Dec 2019
From that other thread, Synapse themselves said:

"Synapse Audio wrote:

On the one hand the native RE integration is better in the rack (& we can add CV inputs), but on the other hand, the lack of native AVX support will cause a CPU penalty, and there may be some minor features not portable."
Not that many designs make use of AVX, so this is a minor flaw. By the way, some elements of vector arithmetic is possible in REs.

Steedus
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29 Dec 2019

I don't know if I'd say the RE format is dead per se, but it certainly feels like they've slowed to a crawl - and dare I say it, feels a bit boring to me (as someone who doesn't care about CV automation).

This year I bought 10 VSTs (probably a 100% increase on last year), none of which are available as REs, and just 2 REs, The Animus, and the Synapse bundle (admittedly I bought this largely just for The Legend - and mostly to cross-grade to the VST).

I definitely have more 'excitement' or interest in VSTs than Rack Extensions. And yes visual presentation does factor into it for me. Reason just can't look as good as modern VSTs (especially in good old "Low Resolution Mode" which is pretty much required for Macs)

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hurricane
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29 Dec 2019

orthodox wrote:
29 Dec 2019
hurricane wrote:
29 Dec 2019
From that other thread, Synapse themselves said:

"Synapse Audio wrote:

On the one hand the native RE integration is better in the rack (& we can add CV inputs), but on the other hand, the lack of native AVX support will cause a CPU penalty, and there may be some minor features not portable."
Not that many designs make use of AVX, so this is a minor flaw. By the way, some elements of vector arithmetic is possible in REs.
Yes, but in this case Synapse's OB-X will make use of AVX, so the RE would be less efficient.
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QVprod
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29 Dec 2019

I think this is a rather odd thread topic considering Reason 11. The main argument for VST over RE was not being locked in Reason (DAW). That’s pretty much been eliminated with the rack being a plugin

What’s left as far as RE and VST versions of the same exact product, is ability to sell if that matters to you. Otherwise, RE have a slight logistical advantage with authorizing. There are some instances where the RE version is less efficient but I’m not quite sure it’s across the board. Ultimately, it’s preference, do you prefer a rack device or a pop up window. That’s the main difference one would notice and what you should probably base your answer off of as capability wise they’re about equal.

Rackman
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29 Dec 2019

QVprod wrote:
29 Dec 2019
I think this is a rather odd thread topic considering Reason 11. The main argument for VST over RE was not being locked in Reason (DAW). That’s pretty much been eliminated with the rack being a plugin

What’s left as far as RE and VST versions of the same exact product, is ability to sell if that matters to you. Otherwise, RE have a slight logistical advantage with authorizing. There are some instances where the RE version is less efficient but I’m not quite sure it’s across the board. Ultimately, it’s preference, do you prefer a rack device or a pop up window. That’s the main difference one would notice and what you should probably base your answer off of as capability wise they’re about equal.
It seems to me the main argument seen here and elsewhere is that nobody has confidence in Propellerhead as a company and therefore in Reason's future and the future of REs.

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VIVIsect
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29 Dec 2019

QVprod wrote:
29 Dec 2019
I think this is a rather odd thread topic considering Reason 11. The main argument for VST over RE was not being locked in Reason (DAW). That’s pretty much been eliminated with the rack being a plugin
This. I've mentioned this a couple times before, but I've never bought REs before because the limitation of them being accessible only within Reason didn't appeal at all to me, especially since Reason isn't my main DAW. But with the Rack plugin, I've come around to them, since now I can use them wherever I want, like any VST.

Not being able to sell REs is still a bit of a negative to me, though. I've bought and sold numerous VSTs over the years that I ended up not using as much as I thought I would, and I almost always got back most of what I originally spent. I guess with REs I just have to be a bit more selective with what I buy, but the generous trial periods help with that.

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QVprod
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29 Dec 2019

Rackman wrote:
29 Dec 2019
QVprod wrote:
29 Dec 2019
I think this is a rather odd thread topic considering Reason 11. The main argument for VST over RE was not being locked in Reason (DAW). That’s pretty much been eliminated with the rack being a plugin

What’s left as far as RE and VST versions of the same exact product, is ability to sell if that matters to you. Otherwise, RE have a slight logistical advantage with authorizing. There are some instances where the RE version is less efficient but I’m not quite sure it’s across the board. Ultimately, it’s preference, do you prefer a rack device or a pop up window. That’s the main difference one would notice and what you should probably base your answer off of as capability wise they’re about equal.
It seems to me the main argument seen here and elsewhere is that nobody has confidence in Propellerhead as a company and therefore in Reason's future and the future of REs.
That's a relatively new argument. This comparison has been going on since Reason 9.5. REs were still being released relatively frequently around then. Plus, the OP already addressed that Reason going under isn't much of a concern
Recent discussions on the forum have made me personally think about in which format I’ll make future purchases. Now I know that the whole Props infrastructure isn’t going to come crashing down leaving a black whole where no one can access their REs. I also know that if something were to happen there would probably be safeguards such as Legacy Servers for users to continue to download licenses.
Also, the lack of new RE from 3rd part devs doesn't signify that RE as a product would be abandoned and cease to work. It's not as if Reason Studios doesn't make REs themselves.

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hurricane
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29 Dec 2019

QVprod wrote:
29 Dec 2019
Also, the lack of new RE from 3rd part devs doesn't signify that RE as a product would be abandoned and cease to work. It's not as if Reason Studios doesn't make REs themselves.
This reminds me of why the Sega Saturn ultimately failed (the Dreamcast too come to think of it). Minimal 3rd party support, zero support from the huge developers like EA, Squaresoft, and Namco, and Sega desperately pumping out their own games trying to keep the system alive. Meanwhile the shiny new Sony Playstation was getting all the big publishers on board. Sega's hardware was also harder to develop for, and the early SDKs were basic, resulting in inferior titles when compared to their Playstation counterparts.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. The writing is on the wall, fellas.
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decoder
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29 Dec 2019

Writing on a wall or otherwise, nothing lasts forever.
We won't last forever.
We argue for nothing other than to say we're right.
Its pixels on a screen.
Nothing more.

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orthodox
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29 Dec 2019

hurricane wrote:
29 Dec 2019
Sega's hardware was also harder to develop for, and the early SDKs were basic, resulting in inferior titles when compared to their Playstation counterparts.
Nothing in common. RE SDK is actually easier to develop for. And the world of DAWs is not limited to 2-3 players. Tens of DAWs have been co-existing peacefully for decades. None of them is about to croak.
hurricane wrote:
29 Dec 2019
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. The writing is on the wall, fellas.
Actually, you're the one writing it there. And derailing the thread.

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aeox
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29 Dec 2019

hurricane wrote:
29 Dec 2019
Why would you invest in Rack Extensions that you can only use in an app with a questionable/shaky future? Reason has a temporary CEO who hasn't even said a thing yet, and a temporary owner who is looking to sell as soon as it gets a good offer. What happens when it gets sold to Apple and they drop windows support? You can revisit your decision after it gets sold off, until then the wiser investment is VST. You have been warned. So when shit goes down, no one better complain.
You're full of shit dude just stop lol

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EpiGenetik
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30 Dec 2019

aeox wrote:
29 Dec 2019
You're full of shit dude just stop lol
This ^^^

Best post of the thread so far.

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hurricane
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30 Dec 2019

The truth hurts, suckas!
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MrFigg
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30 Dec 2019

:shock:
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