Reason - I just love the workflow in that program!

[Nestor]

I would like to try it, at least, to get the new sound of version 3.

When I tryed version 2.something, the sound was like a toy box to me, very plastic, lifeless.

I'm sure there are at least a good number of presets and samples that may inspire everybody, so they say.

[braincell]

Nestor;

Reason is more easily MIDI controlled from your keyboard than Creamware is.

At0m:

I don't notice any delay when using Reason. I do notice a delay when using my Creamware cards. This is because I have it set to the lowest latency. I must have it set that way because of performance issues.

I don't use Reason as my only option. I use Creamware too and a lot of VST instruments and hardware synthesizers. I love to use my laptop though because I can use it in bed, also my laptop is more stable probably because there is no load on the PCI bus.

[Nestor]

Interesting Brain, I'll download a few demos and see how it sounds, I am intrigued for it Cheers

[arela]

Delay:
Since i record all tracks to audio, i can share my "trick".
Even if i record from my yamaha xg box,
noah, vsti or reason
i always start with a ping at bar 2:0:0
so i can delete delay when editing audio.
(yes, its difficult when recording some kind of synths (textures, etc)
Also use your ears (very helpful - heh)

Reason
The first refill i got, was Proppellerheads Drums refill (i use the 24 bit version included), and i have to say, they sound as good as my yamaha box.

My band
Me on guitar and synths
Reason on drums and bass
+ Reason and/or vsti

I started with Reason last summer (v2.5), but it is the v3 that make me a "Propeller"
Just installed v 3.03, som improvments they say!

But talking about sound quality,
Reason sounds bad out of my laptop,
and good on my daw.

....reason will never replace good hardware.
....................or....i'm wrong.

[Nestor]

....reason will never replace good hardware.
....................or....i'm wrong.

Of course not, that would be "unreasonable"

[hubird]

[Nestor]

I’ve tried Reason for three days, a few hours a day before going bed, I wanted to see by myself, first hand, what’s all about it

This is my little review:

It looks great, but would like to be able to see everything full screen. The idea of detaching the sequencer from the rest of the studio components is of course, very useful, but I would like as I said, to be able to work with the full window opened, as this is a waist of space and resources for the user. We all want big screens to see better and in more detail, but what a big monitor is for, if you cannot use it full screen? I think it is a good idea and that would improve the way you interact with so many little knobs.

The sequencer is extremely easy to use, but of course, it lucks many important features for somebody used to work with any VST, SX, Cake or Logic version. It seems to be precise nevertheless and enough for somebody doing straight, simple things.

No audio… mmm why not? It’s so evident that it’s bizarre! I guess there is a commercial reason of some sort, I haven’t discovered yet.

The workflow so many admire, is truly simple and straight, so you can change instruments very quickly and you can have a set of instruments in no time, that’s a good thing.

Sounds:
With due respect to Reason users, I’m sorry but, I didn’t like how it sounds in general, still very plastic, lucking deepness, interest. I don’t know how to describe it, but I could say that is far away from being a HOT!, engaging sound, all on the contrary, it is lifeless to my ears. Tweaking the synths I’ve got pretty nice sounds, but so wide spread that there is no reason to have Reason for its synths. I agree with Atom and Astro that the sound of Reason is like quite uninspiring, targeted rather to non professional musicians rather than professional. Of course you can make good use of it if you want, as you can rescue the best from this pack mixing it with the rest of your setup, but I would never spend money there, I would instead get a good SFP plugin like MiniMax, Vectron and so forth, or at least a good VSTi from NI if you already have the latter.

FXs are quite nice but in no way they blow your mind. Particularly the delay...

Drums are the worst of Reason sounds.

Comparing the sounds or Reason synths with Pulsar synths it’s like comparing a piece of plastic simulating wood with a real tree! No way! If you would say to me: “hey, I give you Reason for free if you give up a synth from Pulsar” I would answer: “I don’t give up even not EZ Synth for the whole package of Reason”.

Conclusion:
At least for me, Reason is Unreasonable

[marcuspocus]

Forget reason synths, think more 'sampler'

This thing can load up akai disk super fast and have alot of polyphony with less resources used that any other sampler i know of. Alot, look on internet for refills (reason sound bank format). LOTS of them for free exist, including some made by dorumalia that is coming here on planetZ every so often.

And no audio is on purpose, have you tried rewiring reason into your beloved Nuendo? Why reinvent the wheel, nuendo is good at audio, let it manage your audio

And you didn't like drums from reason, first i have to agree on one thing, included sounds are crap, but again, try loading stige's ambient kit into reason magic !

I'll give you my setup details, and then you will probably see what the real purpose of reason :

Ok, STS are clumsy, to much dsp use for real life usage, and, well, i find that this is dsp waste, i prefer to keep dsp power for real synth (Oh yes! we agree, cw synths are the real things), and effects.

So, using reason's sampler here, is fantastic, and i can route as much as 64 channels if i want directly to sfp mixer. And apply SFP effects on any number of sounds coming from reason.

Also, i'm using an external hardware sequencer for precision, workflow and speed. This way, i can drive reason's sampler again + all cw synths and record automation or whatever i need on it.

When i'm done with sequencing, i can use any software to record audio, like nuendo, that is slaved via MMC/MTC to my sequencer, rewire reason into it. Or better, and that's what i'm doing recently, i keep the same exact setup i used to compose, but i record with vdat into sfp. Slaving my hardware sequencer to vdat. This is excellent and i have the best sound possible.

You could use also any today's sequencer though, Ableton live, tracktor (pretty good and cheap sequencer/recorder! ) Even fruity can host rewire for people who like it.

Nah, i say bad synth in reason isn't really a problem for us, like me, you're using cw synths, and this nobody can beat. But if used for it's real strentgh (sampler, quick midi composition, import/export of midi or audio loops), reason is totaly reasonnable

It integrate so well in sfp, adding real strength where sfp lacks (sampling area), that for me, it's really worth it.

[astroman]

On 2005-08-11 01:16, marcuspocus wrote:
Forget reason synths, think more 'sampler'
...
So, using reason's sampler here, is fantastic, and i can route as much as 64 channels if i want directly to sfp mixer. ...

isn't 449 Euro a bit heavy for that purpose ?

just downloading the mid sized GURU demo from FXpansion - half the price and the basic programming is by the dudes from Devine Machine

Reason 3 didn't convince me either - I found this anything but easy to operate
on a notebook it's of course ok as a scratchpad if you have nothing else with you...

cheers, Tom

[pseudojazzer]

Yeah, reson is mildly lacking in sounds - but when you get the hang of it it can be very quick and easy to operate - there are no latency probs - integration to audio sequencers couldn't be easier, and if the sounds don't inspire immediately, you can bounce them to audio and efffect them in your sequencer (in fact you don't even need to bounce!) and then punch them up in scope, with all the goodies in there. The initial sounds are a bit lacking - but cubase and/or scope for after effects/tweaking/modding/fattening etc considerably improves this ... personally i'm loving it at the mo - its quick and easy and if you don't like the sounds you can export the midi and use scope synths, and so long as everything is running through scope on separate channels it should sound alright, if not good!

[braincell]

I agree with this. Creamware is lacking in the drum sampler machine area. How could they overlook something so vital to electronic music? The effects and sequencing don't matter. I use it with Cubase and not as a stand alone device. You have to fly tracks into Cubase and use it for more than 3 hours to really love this thing.

It looks great, but would like to be able to see everything full screen.

Yes full screen would be wonderful. I would love to see the Creamware modules full screen too. Ever use the STS series samplers? Why the hell is everything so small?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: braincell on 2005-08-11 07:56 ]</font>

[pseudojazzer]

Exactly braincell - is there any software/hardware out there that doesn't have any limitations? I think not! there are many limitations to reason but all i was saying was that with the capacites of scope - on top of good knowledge of reason then - one could have a good sound, potentially. I totally agree with the fact that many interfaces are too small - sts and reason included - all these should be expandable so that the user can see what is going on!!

[Nestor]

Truly interesting points guys, particularly the one about using Reason as a sampler machine, but as Astro said, it is quite expensive if you are going to use it just for it. You could perhaps buy more RAM for this price, and off you are.

How do you connect everething people, can you tell please? I would like to see the different setups you use. What is yours Brain?

[braincell]

How do you connect Reason and Cubase? Or how do you connect everything in Reason? The answer for both is that all connections are made automatically and in a logical way. In Cubase you just have to make sure that at least one pair of Reason audio channels is turned on under the Devices/Reason tab. You then can select any Reason module which are all visible where your midi ports are on a midi track and start playing it from your midi keyboard. To turn it into audio, you use the export command (with that track on solo). Cubase will render it to disk and automatically import it to a new track.

[Nestor]

Well, I was more into "what kind of ASIO" do you use, how much delay you have.

I would think most people would connect it through a pair of stereo, but it is interesting that through rewire you can have so many channes separately, as this gives you the oportunity to tweak every single chanel later with effects in Cubase. Great!

[pseudojazzer]

Nestor, i really can't rave about rewire enough... all you have to do is first load cubase/or live etc.. then reason, open the devices tab - and select as many channels as you are running - and you have to connect all the modules in reason to separate channels on the hardware interface (top unit in reason) - from there the audio gets fed to cubase - with no latency! (just like using a VSTi)
there are other ways to do it as well - for example if you just want to use on synth - or sampler! - from reason, you rewire it then select the synth from any midi channel in your sequencer - just as you would the creamware synths - instead of selecting creamware midi, you select reaon NNxt for example.. then you don't need to learn to use the reason sequencer, but just use it as a pile of synths etc - kinda like one big supertasty VSTi - with all the sequenceing done in your host program.
For those who like working in audiothere are probably three ways of bouncing (in SX3) all of which are easy, but unfortunately in real time..
Reason acts as a slave (to the cubase clock)- and once rewired has its own channel in cubase - then using the cubase mixer you can send it via asio to scope - with as much latency as you normally have between the two (a cool 7ms or even less for me!!)
It does take a while to get used to all you can do in Reason, i've had it for about two years, and used it on and off - but now i feel that now i can really get the most out it quickly, i only use 2.5, and three looks great - the combinator is a great idea - with it you can (apparently) merge multiple synths and effects - then save them as one setting - you can't do that with a normal VSTi (as far as i know, although i heard NI might be doing something similar).
Cheers
Tom

[Nestor]

Thank you Mr Jazzer! that was a cool explanationg I now understand better how you use it. Wow! I didn't know you could use it as a huge VSTi. I look at it quite differently now, as I sow a bit complicated to be constantly switching sequencers to work in a song. Using all this posibilities gives you: Synths, Samplers and Effects in a single VSTi super host, wow, that's differnet now... I see the advantage no doubt.

[braincell]

I used the fretless bass in the Reason sampler recently played from Cubase. I thought it sounded good but I'm not a bass player. It has a huge amount of samples which are manditory to have because the samples are the copy protection. If you don't install the samples then you must have the CD in the drive to run it.

[Nestor]

I see...

But Brain, which ASIO do you use yourself to run Reason?

[braincell]

Reason uses something easier than ASIO when used with Cubase. It is Rewire. There is no ASIO to connect or MIDI, furthermore connections are made automatically. Instead of MIDI you use the name of the device which in Reason might be something like Redrum 1, Redrum 2, or you can alter the name to be anything you want it to be. When using Reason in a standalone mode, the ASIO is asigned in the audio preferences. I use the same ASIO as I do for Cubase which is ASIO 64 I think.