Reason - I just love the workflow in that program!

[siriusbliss]

I still prefer to be able to put things where I want them.

G

Well with the SLL mixer you can at least drag and drop the channel strips to any position left or right. You cant do that with STM !

But I CAN do that in Samplitude, so it's not an issue to simply use the 4896 or 2448 as big submixers
Maybe somebody will come along (like what SpaceF has already done) that has more modular-based approach to the mixers.

Greg

[braincell]

I like the Scope mixer more than Reason because I can see more. Reason isn't good for large projects. I still don't understand why you can't make it full screen. Well I have Reason 3 so maybe you can now. Maybe that's a "feature" they added. I haven't been using Reason because it doesn't work for the kind of music I have been doing, also I don't like the sound of it. Waiting for the Scope 64 bit drivers so I can use my SFP again. Hopefully there won't be any major issues with it.

The SFP mixer has a sound. I think it's modeled on a specific mixing board. I would not call it transparent but it's going to be good for my saxophone. I wouldn't use it for everything.

[valis]

I like the Scope mixer more than Reason because I can see more. Reason isn't good for large projects. I still don't understand why you can't make it full screen. Well I have Reason 3 so maybe you can now. Maybe that's a "feature" they added. I haven't been using Reason because it doesn't work for the kind of music I have been doing, also I don't like the sound of it. Waiting for the Scope 64 bit drivers so I can use my SFP again. Hopefully there won't be any major issues with it.

The SFP mixer has a sound. I think it's modeled on a specific mixing board. I would not call it transparent but it's going to be good for my saxophone. I wouldn't use it for everything.

Funny your first paragraph mirrors what I was saying about working 100% in Reason before, I can agree with the cramped feeling. I agree about the mixer too, and I know a lot of people who use Reason as a sampler since it's very low on cpu and set it up via rewire, but it has a fair bit of aliasing if you're sampling real instruments even playback close to root pitch will have added 'grain' and drums tend to suffer from being overdone in it as well. So yea probably not the best tool for orchestral/piano rompling...

But there's a fair number of people who have access to plenty of 'real' tools in hardware & software that have written entire albums in it. Sasha's first Involver was maybe not final mixed but certainly composed largely on it, and I still enjoy that more than I do most of his other stuff.

[dante]

I like the Scope mixer more than Reason because I can see more. .

I agree - Reason is a bit inflexable real estate wise. But Reason + Record is a whole new ballgame, especially in a dual screen scenario. Sequencer on one screen, SSL on the other, and Reason Rack now dual stacked. Nice.

[braincell]

I have been using the Beat Designer in Cubase. It's good. In some ways better than Reason drum sequencing. Using your own sounds is more complicated but more options are available. I would rather have the ability to import sounds directly into the Beat Designer rather than having to use Groove Box and the Drum Map but Beat Designer isn't a VSTi, it's a midi plugin. That's why it works that way but it makes it tedious unless you use the preset kits.

[dante]

I have Beat Designer (having recently upgraded to full Cubase 5.5), but haven't tried it yet. I wonder how it will stack up against OctoRex....

octorex

dr-octo-rex.gif (95.84 KiB) Viewed 2143 times

[braincell]

That is for audio loops. Beat Designer is midi. I make my own loops not use other peoples loops.

[dante]

You dont need to use other peoples loops, take any audio of your own perfomance. The new Reason will let you record direct into its samplers and players etc. What I'm not sure about is whether you'll still need Recycle to detect the hitpoints, but if not, then I really will 'love the workflow in that program'.....

[braincell]

It's a lot easier if you just use one program.

[dante]

Sure is - thats why I'm hoping Recycle will be taken out of the loop ( so to speak...). But I'll still be using the big 3 together....

[valis]

DrOctoRex seems to have a 'slice edit mode'.

Personally I like Recycle but Logic, Ableton, Cubase etc all have their own built in methods now as well. One aspect of recycle that I didn't like as much was the fact that people tend to go through and preslice entire libraries of loops with the 'one slice per drum hit' approach which I find doesn't work very well for dnb/dubstep/downtempo when the loop isn't already close to the tempo. I find I prefer keeping groups of hits together for their natural 'roll' and then using a combination of subtle pitch shifting (up or down), slicing the larger 'hit groups' in my slicing app (recycle, ableton etc) and just using my ear to toggle the slices as I go until I get the right 'feel'.

I can see where having that integrated into Reason would be a workflow improvement for users. However I just set Recycle to the tempo of my project and hit the spacebar by hand so that I can get it 'mostly on' by ear while looping the 2 apps together and then do 'final tweaks' once the rex/rx2 is loaded into the project. Old habits die hard....

[dante]

Yeah I would often tweak the Recycle hitpoints after finding the sensitivity setting. You're right regards rolls. I've been using some Timpani rolls and there's no way I would want to spend the time making up a roll out of single hits.....

I consider my role is to leave the rolls 'pre-rolled' instead of rolling my own........heh heh

[braincell]

I hope John Tesh has permission to use this!

[dante]

Yeah if it was me I'd do something original and at least photograph the back of my own rack.

Brain, I tried Beat Designer - it looks good in its simplicity - eg I had a beat goin in the first 2 m inutes of using it. I like the way you drag the mouse over a beat to increase/decrease the velocity. The Reason Drum machine only has 3 levels of velocity.

Not sure I'd use it either in preference to the Reason drum machine (which is more TR808 style programming than grid clicking), or instead of recording midi drums via keyboard in Cubase, but thats probably out of laziness to learn more about it rather than shortcomings in the beat designer itself.

Good tool though.

The times I use DrRex loops are the times I want to come up with a beat that I wouldn't normally program, then compliment it by tweaking certain hits out or adding others with other machines. Quite often I'll use a Drum Machine / Dr Rex combo in Reason...synced together. So its purposely to come up with a beat I wouldn't normally come up with by myself ... forcing me to think outside my own square so to speak....

[braincell]

Reason has 3 levels of velocity because it's made to mimic ancient hardware. I always found that to be a really stupid philosophy. A lot of the Scope modules are that way.

The Beat Designer also has way more advanced swing than any drum machine I have used and it's easy to get a cool feel unlike the groove quantize feature. I wish Beat Designer was a VSTi so you design kits like in Reason. The way they have it now is annoying.

[dante]

Cant you feed the MIDI output of Beat designer to that other sampling drum VSTI in Cubase ? (sorry forgot the name of it)...that way you could load whatever sounds you wanted per drum. Or you could feed the MIDI output of Beat Designer to the Reason one or an STS kit that responded to velocity.

I guess like you say though, its good to do this sort of thing in one program....