Your Upgrade History?

[platzangst]

Started with 4, and upgraded consistently (including Record) all the way up to 10. I might have gone to Suite on 11, but I already had most of the added REs that were of any interest to me, and vanilla 11 just didn't offer me enough of anything I wanted to upgrade. So I skipped 11 - not enough cost/benefit ratio. Been patiently waiting for 12. I won't go for Reason+, ever, as I've had financial ups and downs in my life and I don't ever want to be in a position where I have to downgrade or give up a program due to not being able to pony up a subscription price in the future.

[LongFist]

Started with ReBirth (as a lot of us have) and when it went out of production, discovered Reason (late!), bought a copy of v2 off of eBay (it was bogus! But PropellerHead helped me "get legal" by upgrading to 2.5). From there I upgraded to 3, 4, missed 5 due to an extended time between jobs, 6, 6.5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and finally here we are at 11 Suite. I've always loved even the smallest advances that they came up with, and always sought to keep my software current, so that remaining bugs may be easily eradicated.

In days of old I was a Sound Engineer at a Local Recording Company, and Reason was the first (and currently only!) DAW that works the same way my age-old mind does: it is incredibly easy to manage the signal path and apply the flexibility offered by the CV system. Gone are my worries of impedance and signal-range matching (1V? 9V? 12V?), replaced by a simple, unified set of compatible interfaces. Less time fooling with tech, more time creating music and sound effects! If you can imagine it, you can make it happen in Reason!

[bangaio]

I am a bit sad that I don't have my full upgrade history as I sold my first ever and upgraded license a few years back and then bought into Reason again. I do have my order record though so I have been:

Rebirth (does that count)
1.0 - blew my mind £1000s of gear for £300 or whatever I paid.
2.0 - the NNTX was a game changer for me. Oddly it took years to warm to the Malstrom. The upgrade code £59!
2.5 - all about the unison to make the subtractor phat!
3.0 - I remember being super hyped about the combinator which was truly creative and made the playground possibilities far greater. This opened the door to some amazing refills.
4 - Was excited by Thor but the arpeggiator was the main draw here.
6 - As I skipped 5 this was a huge upgrade for me. I still love the mixer more than any other software that I use and using kong was brilliant but the echo effect for me won t he day here and I still have it as a send in every project I work on.
7 - From here on in I am wondering more why I upgraded.
8
10 - wasn't fussed about VST. I have still never used a VST in a project but grain Klangm Europa. What an amazing upgrade but the rest if the program isn't really feeling up too the job of supporting these amazing devices.
11 - I try it in other DAWs but it just isn't the same. Reason works best with that super tight integration of the sequencer and rack devices.
11 suite - it was on offer that was too good to miss and worth it just for complex alone.

[mooseharris]

Hoping that 12 will be available as a no strings upgrade.

I'm hoping 12 has lots of strings, particularly Friktion.

[Karim]

I bought R1 from day 1 and have upgraded every single version to date.
It's the only software I've bought and upgraded constantly while other DAWs I've made occasional purchases

joeyluck shared this link elsewhere in the forums https://www.reasonstudios.com/en/reason/upgrade
On it, you can view the main features that were introduced to each version of Reason, and I'm just wondering which features made you take the leap to which version upgrade?

In my own case, I started with Reason 1, and Reason 2 was a no brainer with the killer feature for me being the Malstrom (2 also introduced the Orkestre soundbank, which they neglect to mention on that page).
2.5 got me with the RV7000 and Scream-4.
3... I didn't quite grasp the importance and usefulness of the Combinator when R3 was announced, but I did upgrade, as more was still certainly more for me back then, and I definitely did not regret it.

4. I skipped 4. Thor was an amazing killer feature that almost got me over, but the changes to the sequencer alienated me. I've no problem admitting I was resistant to that change, but FYI, it did break backward compatibility slightly. I often get the impression that I'm the only person who knows this fact. The break in compatibility is the way pattern sequencer behave has altered. The most direct way to explain it is that if you start a single 1/16 bar pattern playing at 1.2.1 on the sequencer, it used to start at the 5th step in R3 and before, and since R4 it starts at the 1st step. Was that an improvement? Perhaps, but it did 'break' a few older songs.

Then came Record, and somehow, allowing me to sing (without a lot of workarounds and 3rd party software) made an honest woman out of me, because that's the point I bought Reason+Record duo. (Record also brought in the Line 6 amps, which I dearly miss nowadays)

5 got me too, and Kong was the reason for that. I so very wanted a drum synth in Reason, but looking back now, I hardly used it over the years, having become so used to Redrum that it was always just quicker and easier to set that up instead of a Kong+Redrum. Neptune shows up as a new feature for Reason 5 in that list, but that was actually a Record 1.5 feature (that I got, it was a free upgrade) before the duo was merged.

R6 was the pay-what-you-want upgrade, and its killer feature for me was the Echo. Got that too.

R6.5 was the free upgrade that opened the RE format, definitely a killer feature, and at an unbeatable price to boot.

I did not get R7. It's killer feature for me was the Midi Out device, but I had my doubts that it'd slow me down overall. To this day I've only used it once. I should have got it for the audio slicing, which has been very helpful, but I didn't realize how useful it would be at the time.

R8's killer feature for me was the RV7000 Mark II, the brought over IR support, It almost got me to upgrade, on the other hand, I didn't want to lose the Line 6 amps.

R9... didn't have a killer feature for me. The players were mildly interesting, but hardly enough (though nowadays I *love* the Dual Arp, but that's mostly thanks to Lectric Panda's refills for it)

R9.5 came with the VST support, and while in the early years I clamored for VST support, by this point, I had become so familiar with Reason that I didn't need it. This is a feature that would've gotten me to buy had it been introduced years earlier, but at 9.5 it was too little, too late.

10 did get me though: Europa and Grain were the chief culprits, with the assistance of Radical Piano, Humana, a new factory sound bank, VST support, players, RV7000 MKII, and support for newer RE's that I wanted.

My story ends there, because 11 had nothing of interest to me. I'm very happy with R10, but I still look forward to the next killer feature, if there ever will be another.

[Karim]

An Orkester Refill Vol.2 would be welcome ......

Hoping that 12 will be available as a no strings upgrade.

I'm hoping 12 has lots of strings, particularly Friktion.

[ECHLN]

Pirated 5
Bought 7
Upgraded to 8
Upgraded to 9
Upgraded to 10
Upgraded to 11 via Reason+

I remember the Reason Studios team in the livestream being very excited about having a subscriber from South Africa (as if everyone in SA are poor). If they were referring to you, they 'neglected' to mention the versions you've bought previously.

This quite funny actually. It has to be me because I got Reason+ immediately

[ShelLuser]

Interesting thread!

I started with Reason 4 around 2010; I had just purchased Live (my first DAW) together with Max for Live (which had just launched) and the APC40 controller and was very much impressed with it (I was also quite a newbie back then). Newbie or not: Max for Live taught me that having a second sound engine could provide a bit of an advantage with regards to sound differences, and despite the fact that I was very much impressed with Live and all its instruments I also learned that a different workflow within this line of work could also provide advantages.

At first I didn't even like Reason! True story: because the demo options didn't cut it (ReWire stopped working after 15 or 20 minutes) I eventually ended up grabbing an "alternative" (ahem) copy and I used that for most of the evening to check out the software. Once I got my fingers behind the workflow and understood more about the whole ideas behind Reason I quickly became a believer and got my license the very next day. Funny thing is that this also gave me access to a free upgrade to Reason 5 which I've never used.

After 4 I upgraded to 6. I didn't have much use for the Record features because I mostly used Reason rewired into Live, but the new instruments and effects were plain out impressive!

From there on I somewhat stopped paying attention to the different versions because... so many versions hardly provided anything interesting for me. I was interested in the RE's (mostly those made by the Props) but RE's made for Reason 8 or 9 wouldn't work on 6; at least that's what they told you in the market: that you had to upgrade. During this time I had upgraded to Live 9. but also left my Max license back to 5.

Well... then I got a bit of a financial break which allowed me to upgrade my whole setup!

Out went the APC40, replaced by the almighty Push together with Live 10. I also upgraded my Max license and... I obviously got Reason 10 (which was quite a mindblower coming from 6!) and also bought all the RE's made by the Props together with a few cool bundles (I'm still quite impressed by the Rigs; though only one remains in the store at this time).

Just as with Reason 4 I had bought my upgrade at the right time because it gave me free access to the Reason 11 upgrade.

And that's where we are now... So I went from 4 to 6 and from there to 10 which gave me access to 11. I really had to get used to the idea of the rack plugin but eventually it grew on me and that's what I'm mostly using today, also because of the loss of ReWire. It took me quite a while to adjust not having the Reason sequencer as backup anymore, but that gap has been filled with the Maschine controller & software.

It's a bit ironic I think... if it wasn't for the Props dropping ReWire I might not have become so invested in Maschine. Maschine also led me to Komplete and that was also quite the mind blower for me. But... this is also why it remains to be seen if I will even upgrade to Reason 12. Right now Reason 11 provides me with everything I want from it, several of the RE's also provide me with a bit of an edge because of their specific workflow (here's looking at the Jittery Pockery oscillator collection) and I have 0 interest in subscription models. A new high res interface doesn't mean much to me anymore within the context of the rack plugin so... yah.

Reason still has a solid and rooted place within my "Power trio setup" as I like to call it (Live + Maschine + Reason). But it's also fair to mention that they have dropped from the 2nd spot to number 3, for the simple reason that I heavily rely on having a second sequencer within my workflow. And ironically enough it was Reason which has taught me this, back when I was still using ReWire.

[Steedus]

R3 - pirated from a friend
Whether or not it justifies it, I genuinely think without this first step I wouldn't have ever started using Reason, as throughout my experiences since (playing in bands, studying audio-production, being an amateur music maker etc), I have never come across another person actually using Reason. Most have do the old "Reason? Ohh yeah I've *heard* of that one ...". So I just wouldn't have been exposed to it.
R4
First legitimate purchase and a BIG investment for me at the time (R+ probably would've been helpful to me back then)
R5
Record
I was heavy into recording guitar and making non-electronic stuff a the time so Record was an instant buy.
R6
As I already had all the Record stuff I chose to pay USD $60 ($20 for each new effect)
R9.5
Jumped on for VST support, and all the cumulative features from updates 7 to 9.
R10
I think this is by far (for me) the biggest value standard upgrade of the lot. I think I had only finally upgraded to 9.5 about a month and a half before 10 was announced. For almost any other Reason upgrade I probably would've just skipped it.
R11 Suite
Having only a few of the Reason REs the Suite upgrade was a bit of a bargain. I looked at it (and still do) as just a regular upgrade, with a discounted RE bundle attached.
R12
Will probably upgrade just for the high-res support. I like pretty things.

[illlumen]

Started on 2.5, the upgraded to 5. Since then I upgraded almost every time, skipping 8. Currently happy with 10, no reason to upgrade to 11 at all. May have a look at 12, if there will be more than hires and more marimba patches.

[miyaru]

When I bought my music PC 12 years ago it came with Reason 4 installed, used that for a very short time - mostly used Cubase 5 at the time. November 2019 I upgraded to 11 suite, and am very happy with it!!!! I don't use Cubase anymore, traded that for Ableton Live in 2017, have Suite 10 now from Live.

[syncanonymous]

R10
I think this is by far (for me) the biggest value standard upgrade of the lot.

I agree that R10 is great. Having fab filter plugs along side Europa and Grain is excellent.
I also didn't realize how much I'd dig the players, too.

I'm on 10.4d4 so don't know about 11.

[moneykube]

rebirth. 2,5 adapted. 3,4,5,7,9,10,11 suite

[Faastwalker]

Bought Reason V2. Bought every upgrade since .......... except 11.

[Carpainter]

1 - 5, 9 (for VST support), 11 Suite.

Thought I was done with Reason after 9, but Suite 11 was an incredible value for someone like me who skipped 10.

I have a feeling they won't be doing anything like that again.

[ulaw]

I bought in at 7 for the audio, upgraded at 11 suite.

[drno]

Rebirth/Recycle
Reason1
Reason2.5
Cakewalk-Sonar+rewire+Reason2.5
Reason7
Reason8
Reason9
Reason10

[dvdrtldg]

Started with 4, and upgraded consistently (including Record) all the way up to 10. I might have gone to Suite on 11, but I already had most of the added REs that were of any interest to me, and vanilla 11 just didn't offer me enough of anything I wanted to upgrade. So I skipped 11 - not enough cost/benefit ratio. Been patiently waiting for 12.

My story exactly

[Despondo]

Started with Reason 1 and bought every upgrade since, no questions asked. I just want to support the only DAW I've ever used.

[tobypearce]

Started with Reason 1 and bought every upgrade since, no questions asked. I just want to support the only DAW I've ever used.

Exactly the same for me, except that I started on v3.