R13 (.1) Browser woes

[joeyluck]

The only instance in which I've found two browsers to be useful is when I'm sample digging, and I find something that I like, I can then conduct a separate, second search for a sample based instrument and drag that in without disrupting my sample search. I suppose this could be replicated from a single browser though if it just had a 'back' button, or separate tabs for devices and presets/samples with their own states.

Yeah this has indeed been helpful

I do still miss browsing devices and content together, as well as making lists comprised of devices and content like ReFills. Maybe one day they do merge back together in some form? But I would also hope that the current benefit you mention could be preserved in some way.

Another thought I've had and mentioned here before would be incorporating an app-wide search that would look at everything whether it's in the Device palette, Browser, and maybe other places like labels and track names. Something along the lines of Spotlight and in some ways the Help menu search. So then you could create the same tags in the Device palette and Browser and then be able to search that tag across both at the same time...with options to "show in Browser" or "show in Device palette" or whatever. And then the other ideas of it including results for labels and such would help with navigating a big project.

[Arrant]

On another note, what do people get out of coming on here and being dismissive of other users' problems just because something is working for you?
It's not like those problems don't exist. I have massive problems with the new browser and so do plenty of other people.

I just reviewed the thread and didn’t find anyone dismissing your issues. Some folks here are questioning other issues and providing possible workarounds. One guy thinks the new browser is fantastic (despite removing device favorites from the device browser), but wasn’t responding to your specific issues (many folks are talking among themselves in this thread rather than talking to you directly).

I can’t speak for others, but if I’m complaining about something I like to know if it’s just me or if others are having the same issue (and how many others vs those not having the issue). I find it helpful, but I could see how it might come across as suggesting you are crazy (imagining things) for having a problem someone else doesn’t have.

However, the number of times folks come and complain about something, only to have someone else point out what they are doing wrong, is a non zero number. Which is helpful because it is a solution to the problem, which is the goal right?

A post was deleted and I think we're all friendly apart from that.

I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say with the rest of your post, of course I started the thread to hear other people's experiences and ideas.

[Arrant]

Yeah that sounds super borked!! Where do you keep your samples, out of interest? And are you adding the entire drive as a location or individual folders? I imagine there are SO many variables that determine what kind of experience users are having. Me, I just have a single internal 8TB drive and I point to folders on it. Others might be using USB mechanical drives, or SSDs (which are certainly not created equal), or NVME, or PCIe. I'd hope that with enough user reports they'll focus in on the problem! But sucks you've been having a rough time, and I hope you get a helpful response soon.

Thanks Chimp (or is it Spanner, not sure)

I keep my samples on G:\Samples, which is an SSD, and I'm adding the Samples folder as a shortcut.
To make thing a bit more confusing for the ol' browser, I have my refills in a subfolder of my samples folder.
Meaning I have shortcuts to different folders within the same G:\Samples structure.

[PhillipOrdonez]

Kumbayaaa 🪇🪘🪘🪘🪇

[chimp_spanner]

Yeah that sounds super borked!! Where do you keep your samples, out of interest? And are you adding the entire drive as a location or individual folders? I imagine there are SO many variables that determine what kind of experience users are having. Me, I just have a single internal 8TB drive and I point to folders on it. Others might be using USB mechanical drives, or SSDs (which are certainly not created equal), or NVME, or PCIe. I'd hope that with enough user reports they'll focus in on the problem! But sucks you've been having a rough time, and I hope you get a helpful response soon.

Thanks Chimp (or is it Spanner, not sure)

I keep my samples on G:\Samples, which is an SSD, and I'm adding the Samples folder as a shortcut.
To make thing a bit more confusing for the ol' browser, I have my refills in a subfolder of my samples folder.
Meaning I have shortcuts to different folders within the same G:\Samples structure.

Haha either is fine, but my parents call me Paul Interesting. Has support suggested anything to you? In the past - and I'm talking a fair while back now - I have had to exclude content directories from my antivirus and firewall. I wonder if there are any utilities you can run to test performance/throughput or see if there is a bottleneck or some kind of process that could be holding things up? Like backup/mirroring. Also do you have other DAWs that you can compare indexing performance against? And are your sample folders linked to cloud services or anything like that?

[AnotherMathias]

Here's how I view the problem with the browser. Short version - it gets in the way. All the time!
I use it by necessity, but generally I try to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible, so I can get back to seeing the stuff I asked to see in the first place..

An analogy, from an imaginary kitchen:
There's a built-in microwave in the cabinets. It's a bit small and old, not a lot of fancy features. But it's quick and easy to use, always within reach, and just simply works.
Then we buy a whiz-bang super oven that we are convinced will be more useful. The old one goes in the trash. But the new big one sits behind a door under a cabinet, and needs to be lifted up onto our cramped countertop every time you use it. Need to melt some butter? Great, let's get out the new oven! Now the countertop is unusable until the task is done, and you can get the oven out of the way. But wait, I need to thaw some peas. Fine, let's get out the oven again, taking the kitchen out of commission again, until those peas are thawed. And again and again.
Kind of wish we just kept the little built in one instead. Sure, the new oven is better in every way, apart from that it isn't.

I might be a non-typical Reason user, in that I don't do any tagging. And I don't do any searches - I know where all my sounds are, I've kept them organized over all these years. All I really want is quick access to my own file system.

[selig]

I just reviewed the thread and didn’t find anyone dismissing your issues. Some folks here are questioning other issues and providing possible workarounds. One guy thinks the new browser is fantastic (despite removing device favorites from the device browser), but wasn’t responding to your specific issues (many folks are talking among themselves in this thread rather than talking to you directly).

I can’t speak for others, but if I’m complaining about something I like to know if it’s just me or if others are having the same issue (and how many others vs those not having the issue). I find it helpful, but I could see how it might come across as suggesting you are crazy (imagining things) for having a problem someone else doesn’t have.

However, the number of times folks come and complain about something, only to have someone else point out what they are doing wrong, is a non zero number. Which is helpful because it is a solution to the problem, which is the goal right?

A post was deleted and I think we're all friendly apart from that.

I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say with the rest of your post, of course I started the thread to hear other people's experiences and ideas.

I'm saying I didn't see anyone dismissing your specific issue, and agreeing with you about opposing views and respecting different ways of working.
I'm not sure how to be more clear about the rest of what I said, but if it doesn't apply to you then please ignore it (I won't be offended).

[selig]

The only instance in which I've found two browsers to be useful is when I'm sample digging, and I find something that I like, I can then conduct a separate, second search for a sample based instrument and drag that in without disrupting my sample search. I suppose this could be replicated from a single browser though if it just had a 'back' button, or separate tabs for devices and presets/samples with their own states.

That is a helpful use case, which suggests a way to do both patch/audio browsing and device browsing in parallel, but doesn't require separate windows/locations.
All "browsing" should ideally (and IMO) be under one roof, with a bit of flexibility for folks like yourself and Joey that have specific workflows in mind.

[Arrant]

Haha either is fine, but my parents call me Paul Interesting. Has support suggested anything to you? In the past - and I'm talking a fair while back now - I have had to exclude content directories from my antivirus and firewall. I wonder if there are any utilities you can run to test performance/throughput or see if there is a bottleneck or some kind of process that could be holding things up? Like backup/mirroring. Also do you have other DAWs that you can compare indexing performance against? And are your sample folders linked to cloud services or anything like that?

I just contacted support today, not expecting anything for a few workdays.
There is no cloud synced storage or backups going on, it's just too many disks and too much data if the browser has to scan my entire file system. I know it excludes a few directories like c:\windows, but that's just a drop in the ocean. I think the best solution would be to make the scan user configurable, so I can set up my own excludes (or rather, includes, as I only want a small part of my storage indexed). This is also what I've suggested in my support ticket.

Studio One has a normal browser with no indexing, which obviously works. The only comparable software I use is the ADSR Sample Manager plugin, which scans my whole sample directory. That takes some time, but since I can point it exactly where I want it to scan, incremental scans are fast. It's also much more visible what's going on. In Reason there's not a clue to what's happening, I think they went too far with the Mac philosophy on this.

I also see you mentioned a back button in one of your other posts, that's another thing I'm missing. I've linked the Windows back function to a custom mouse button and it works in most programs which has a browser. The "up" button just isn't the same.

[PhillipOrdonez]

Doesn’t reason only scan the directories you’ve placed on the shortcuts area? Whooo would put there a whole disk or disks with irrelevant stuff and not the “samples” or “production” or whatever folder structure where you keep any relevant stuff?

[chimp_spanner]

Yeah I was under the impression that only your added locations get indexed too!

[Arrant]

No, from reading the docs it scans everything:

«To avoid that the Browser should “choke” from scanning a huge amount of irrelevant files, some folders are blacklisted by Reason, i.e. the Reason Browser won't look in those folders.
..
The following folders are disregarded by Reason on Windows, so make sure you don't store any Reason related content/files in these:
C:\Windows
C:\Users\<youruser>\Music\Propellerhead Content (in your personal Music folder, where the old Optional Rack Extensions and ReFills in Reason 12 were located)»

[moneykube]

It scans my entire internal and external drive EVERY TIME including the shortcuts that come from that drive... constantly > without any changes being made. It slows my workflow 1000 percent and is not a work flow improvement. My audio drive that never had a problem with the amount of files on it> now does. Even after it has supposedly finished indexing, and then starts scanning again when I browse for files. Folders on my external drive that have been indexed disappear and I have to choose reason content and then return to my drive multiple times to see the stuff in the folders and refills I know are there... The process is very slow when opening folders or waiting for the patches loaded to finally show what else is in the folder from the device loaded. Takes about 5 minutes to start up and 5 to 15 minutes to close. (IF it does indeed close and I don't have to force quit the program.) This is not a work flow improvement at all in it's present state.
The VST 2 folder WAS 19.37 GB and contains some samples as well.
The VST3 folder WAS 18.52 GB which also contains some samples
I have 508 Rack extensions installed on my Internal drive. Reason 12 has no problem with this.
A lot of the files on my external drive are wave files, refills and patches.
The Wave and AIFF files are two TB in size alone.
I don’t necessarily need to have this audio files indexed because they are well sorted and to categorize them all would take a lifetime.
I worked in the film industry as a filmmaker and audio engineer at a number of professional studios.
I like all the audio files with my reason files because I use them both when composing.
The Ext flash drive the shortcut is on is also indexed by reason, and contains Kontakt files and corresponding wave files and was using 3.43 TB of space >>> including the reason folder. It had 571.91 GB available of free space left open on the drive.
My Internal flash drive had 228.42 GB available and used 1.78 TB
The VST 2 folder now 7.88GB
The VST 3 folder now 17.85
Available space on Internal hard drive now 255.94 after a severe clean up which was unnecessary but was indeed a vague suggestion from Reason Studios. EXT drive now 585.51 GB because I have added content after removing much content to try to fix this BUG.... also cleaned extensively over THREE days. Reason studios suggested I had too many VSTs but this was not the case after THREE solid days of cleaning up VSTs and my external drive, hoping things would speed up . There was absolutely no difference. Some of the VST files needed to be reinstalled due to refills and or patches that use them. This has waisted much of my time.
I am still waiting for a coherent and workable solution from Reason Studios with my support ticket. Reason 12, 11, 10, 9 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2.5 had no such problem with my files. To work at a normal pace, I am forced to use reason 12.7.4 until they fix this major disruption in my work flow. I use reason 13 only when testing reason 13 files purchased or requested to be tested by a developer >>> and it is total agony. Perhaps this browser indexing works if you only use factory reason content, but that is not how I work at all. My folders are well organized and I know what is in a large selection of them. This needs to be fixed period. I am thinking of requesting a refund even though I purchased some reason 13 stuff. Don't shoot the messenger. I am no whiny hoe, as one person stated for those with browser woes. This is simply unacceptable.

[moneykube]

Here's how I view the problem with the browser. Short version - it gets in the way. All the time!
I use it by necessity, but generally I try to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible, so I can get back to seeing the stuff I asked to see in the first place..

An analogy, from an imaginary kitchen:
There's a built-in microwave in the cabinets. It's a bit small and old, not a lot of fancy features. But it's quick and easy to use, always within reach, and just simply works.
Then we buy a whiz-bang super oven that we are convinced will be more useful. The old one goes in the trash. But the new big one sits behind a door under a cabinet, and needs to be lifted up onto our cramped countertop every time you use it. Need to melt some butter? Great, let's get out the new oven! Now the countertop is unusable until the task is done, and you can get the oven out of the way. But wait, I need to thaw some peas. Fine, let's get out the oven again, taking the kitchen out of commission again, until those peas are thawed. And again and again.
Kind of wish we just kept the little built in one instead. Sure, the new oven is better in every way, apart from that it isn't.

I might be a non-typical Reason user, in that I don't do any tagging. And I don't do any searches - I know where all my sounds are, I've kept them organized over all these years. All I really want is quick access to my own file system.

^^^^ THIS

[jam-s]

I think the main issue for the new browser still are large collections of anything (be it REs, VSTs, Refills or R+ packs). If your collection is rather big this breaks the camel's back with long loading times before the contents of any folder show up even after the initial indexing is done.

For example to test R13.1 right now I only installed all the Reason Studios REs, most ujam, NI and Melda VSTs, and added a big part of my sample collection (1.2TiB in 560k files) to the shortcut locations and the resulting AppData\Local\Propellerhead Software\Reason\__ReasonIndex_v7.dat now already has a size about ~1GiB.

I suppose once the file index gets large enough to not nicely fit into RAM any more the performance of the browser will plummet. Right now for me it seems to be OK with just a few seconds of delay when changing browsing locations, but I fear that adding the remaining parts of my Refill/Sample/VST collection might push it over the edge.

[PhillipOrdonez]

Why add vsts to the shortcuts? Is that something I should be doing?

[Arrant]

I don't think VSTs are relevant are they? They are added through plugin scan at startup, not indexed via the browser.

[jam-s]

I partially agree with both of you as VSTs seem to be indexed in their own database.
Still having a lot of those installed could lead to higher RAM pressure and depending on the implementation of the browser/device palette cache it could also influence the performance of the browser, thus I included it into my considerations.

[PhillipOrdonez]

Maybe if they’re loaded on a heavy project they would play a role, if the index is loaded into the ram and thus having heavy ram plugins on the project would negatively impact performance of not just the browser but the entire system. Wanna test it out?

[Mataya]

It scans my entire internal and external drive EVERY TIME including the shortcuts that come from that drive... constantly > without any changes being made. It slows my workflow 1000 percent and is not a work flow improvement. My audio drive that never had a problem with the amount of files on it> now does. Even after it has supposedly finished indexing, and then starts scanning again when I browse for files. Folders on my external drive that have been indexed disappear and I have to choose reason content and then return to my drive multiple times to see the stuff in the folders and refills I know are there... The process is very slow when opening folders or waiting for the patches loaded to finally show what else is in the folder from the device loaded. Takes about 5 minutes to start up and 5 to 15 minutes to close. (IF it does indeed close and I don't have to force quit the program.) This is not a work flow improvement at all in it's present state.
The VST 2 folder WAS 19.37 GB and contains some samples as well.
The VST3 folder WAS 18.52 GB which also contains some samples
I have 508 Rack extensions installed on my Internal drive. Reason 12 has no problem with this.
A lot of the files on my external drive are wave files, refills and patches.
The Wave and AIFF files are two TB in size alone.
I don’t necessarily need to have this audio files indexed because they are well sorted and to categorize them all would take a lifetime.
I worked in the film industry as a filmmaker and audio engineer at a number of professional studios.
I like all the audio files with my reason files because I use them both when composing.
The Ext flash drive the shortcut is on is also indexed by reason, and contains Kontakt files and corresponding wave files and was using 3.43 TB of space >>> including the reason folder. It had 571.91 GB available of free space left open on the drive.
My Internal flash drive had 228.42 GB available and used 1.78 TB
The VST 2 folder now 7.88GB
The VST 3 folder now 17.85
Available space on Internal hard drive now 255.94 after a severe clean up which was unnecessary but was indeed a vague suggestion from Reason Studios. EXT drive now 585.51 GB because I have added content after removing much content to try to fix this BUG.... also cleaned extensively over THREE days. Reason studios suggested I had too many VSTs but this was not the case after THREE solid days of cleaning up VSTs and my external drive, hoping things would speed up . There was absolutely no difference. Some of the VST files needed to be reinstalled due to refills and or patches that use them. This has waisted much of my time.
I am still waiting for a coherent and workable solution from Reason Studios with my support ticket. Reason 12, 11, 10, 9 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2.5 had no such problem with my files. To work at a normal pace, I am forced to use reason 12.7.4 until they fix this major disruption in my work flow. I use reason 13 only when testing reason 13 files purchased or requested to be tested by a developer >>> and it is total agony. Perhaps this browser indexing works if you only use factory reason content, but that is not how I work at all. My folders are well organized and I know what is in a large selection of them. This needs to be fixed period. I am thinking of requesting a refund even though I purchased some reason 13 stuff. Don't shoot the messenger. I am no whiny hoe, as one person stated for those with browser woes. This is simply unacceptable.

THIS.

Almost the same situation here.

M

[bieh]

Doesn’t reason only scan the directories you’ve placed on the shortcuts area? Whooo would put there a whole disk or disks with irrelevant stuff and not the “samples” or “production” or whatever folder structure where you keep any relevant stuff?

Are you simply incapable of speaking without being dismissive? Did it ever occur to you that very large numbers of producers have entire drives of relevant stuff?

[PhillipOrdonez]

Doesn’t reason only scan the directories you’ve placed on the shortcuts area? Whooo would put there a whole disk or disks with irrelevant stuff and not the “samples” or “production” or whatever folder structure where you keep any relevant stuff?

Are you simply incapable of speaking without being dismissive? Did it ever occur to you that very large numbers of producers have entire drives of relevant stuff?

🤭

[bieh]

Almost the same situation here.

M

And here.

"Reason studios suggested I had too many VSTs". Not an acceptable response from Reason Studios. Any DAW should be able to handle the software Mataya is describing.

[joeyluck]

Everybody please remain civil

Anybody having issues, it is highly recommended that you report it. I would also suggest that you join the beta. Help make Reason be the best it can be!

I don't recall seeing any issues as terrible as the ones mentioned here during beta. I'm on a 2015 MacBook Air and I have a few issues being looked into, but nothing like what some other people are mentioning here. I'm not dismissing it, but just saying that if there isn't someone testing with your particular setup, who is to know? That's always been one of my motivations for beta testing anything—making sure I can help make it work as best as possible on my system.

[moneykube]

Why add vsts to the shortcuts? Is that something I should be doing?

Nope> not in shortcuts, but constantly scanned anyway > as it was in the before times , on steroids. Once should be enough. Nothing changed.