Waves Studiorack vs Combinator

[animism]

Greetings all. I can't believe this is my first post on here. It seems I didn't activate my registration for a long time. Yet I've been on Reason since 2.5... and then a diversion in life until I came back around 8.5, and now nearly-full-time back into music with the impressive 11. Anyway, hello!

I didn't see much talk on here about the recently released/upgraded Waves Studiorack. My initial impression - other than it works adequately - was that it's not much different from the Reason Combinator.



Waves Studiorack pros: Easy Multiband separation / processing, easy mono monitoring, easy customisation and master macros, good visualisations
Cons: Can only use Waves plugins. As far as I'm aware, still unable to sidechain properly with their VST3 plugins. Additional expense to renew annual support licenses / upgrades.

Combinator pros: Can use ANY plugin. Inherently faster / less resources

Combinator's cons could be opportunities for big new features - for instance, integrated multiband and M/S support, without separate devices. And a built in spectrum analyser showing the impact of dry/wet signals on audio bands would be awesome.

There were two aspects of Reason I didn't start using until recently - Blocks and Combinators - and now I'm starting to see their power. In learning and life, it's a marathon not a sprint.

Have a lovely week! Peace from lockdown in Goa.