i know it is still early but has Rack Extensions taken of yet? they look pretty cool and i have tested a few but there is nothing that jumps off the page for me. what are your views of the Rack Extensions so far? pass, fail, or jury is still out?

No, but threads on the subject have.

I think that unless you only use Reason it is a bit of a waste of time.

This is KVR- 99% DAW and Plug In users....Reason Forum may have people who think its cool, developers may like having another user base to sell their plugs to...

I have Cubase, Live and Reason, I wont be buying rack extentions unless someone bring something out that is a 'must have' and Re only...somehow, I cant see that happening....

i disagree because even though i haven't bought them yet it makes it easier TO use reason as your one stop music thing.

True.
But mostly for Reason Only users, hence, no much for the rest of us.
I wonder how much juice ($$$) you can squeeze from the same old lemons.

Not at all. People who use Reason with other hosts haven't hesitated to buy ReFills, and many of the REs can be bought/used the same way. Pulsar is a ton of fun with any old Reason instrument/combinator (and makes some nasty VA-esque sounds). Radical Piano is the same in use as any piano refill (sequence in your host of choice and use the Rack like a glorified rompler).

I'd skip many of the mixing/mastering effect REs (EQ/comp/verb) if I weren't trying to use Reason as more of a one stop shop, but that still leaves a lot of useful territory for "Reason + host X" users. There are some nice CV toys on the way and if you dig the modular concept, you might want to "host" more of your synths there. There's plenty of room to mix and match with another host via ReWire.

perfectly put, saturday saint. for me reason is the perfect modular workstation that i use in cubase via rewire (now 64bit). and now that the rack extensions have come out, this great modular host is even expandable

I havent used reason 6.5 once yet, not even installed. All because my computer isnt hooked up to internet and I cant be bothered to get a usb internet or connect it up. Its my dads internet computer I am on so when I found that out I cant install without internet connection I thought Feck it. I only got it for the ssl mixer and thought Rack extensions would be the icing on the cake. After careful examination and thought to the subject I decided bollocks to it and will probably use reason for something to play on when I get bored with the rest. The only thing I really want it for is the Kong drum designer.

I really like Polar, so I bought that. Buffre is also very cool and I'll probably be buying that one too. I think that REs are a big deal for people that only use Reason and surprisingly (to me) there are a lot of people who only use Reason. Ultimately, they have only been around for a month so it's tough to say how successful the launch has been.

People are still talking about REs a month after launch, so they must be doing okay.

Being a person who uses Reason in addition to other DAWs, I'm going to wait and see how this plays out before buying a bunch of stuff. Reason is a great environment for sound design and REs have definitely opened that environment to a lot of cool new ideas, I just have a feeling that the really exciting stuff won't be coming until the SDK matures a bit.

That's what I'm saying: how much juice ($$$) you can squeeze from the same old lemons. Not from me man. Sorry.
There are amazing stuff out there (toys are you call them) to invest time and money. I'll keep Reason "as is" since I have a fair amount of music in it but to spend based on rewire slavery... No thanks.
And BTW the PH can still get away with such deals thanks to users like you and many others. Don't tell me you are 100% OK with their Resell/Coupons/etc policy. If you are then "Long Life to the PH". What can I say.
Whatever makes you happy.

Whether or not you want to use REs is none of my concern - I was just addressing the contention that RE's are somehow only good if you're "Reason only" which is flatly untrue. Perhaps the classic use for Reason was as a kind of powerful rompler/sound library augmenting Pro Tools, which RE's, like ReFills, can clearly enhance. If you're so against Rewire, I don't know why you made the distinction that REs are for "Reason only" users in the first place.

Flatly untrue in particular but it may be not in general under the argument of pouring double money in the RE so that you can, and must, use rewire in order to use your investment in other DAWs. It all comes down to pay twice for the same VST (and I like to see how many will do that when finally some heavy duty synths will be ported to RE way above $100 from what we see now in the "Shop"). Never mind the CPU issue for both as new non-optimized RE show up.

No coupon, no resell, pay it again SAM, and use all my new RE Papen U-he in rewire to play them with my Papen u-he in my DAW...
I'm beginning to believe that the PH have studied with Milton Erickson.

The area above is the point of your consternation. I don't believe that RE's were ever marketed as a replacement for anything you already have. There are new users every day that don't have VST's or any desire to work outside of Reason. That is the main focus of the Props, as it should be. Their thoughts should be, "How can we maximize our product implementation while still developing products on a platform that we believe in?" There is a big enough market of PAYING customers to where they don't have to worry about the VST market.

The PAYING customer base is extremely important. While a user base may complain about the lack of VST's in Reason, what do you think the percentage or 100% legitimate VST's users is?


If you are already entrenched in another platform or DAW, why would it be expected that someone would spend more on the same thing? Would you buy a Samsung TV after just buying a Sony simply because it's a Samsung? You would buy it because you have a need for it or a strong WANT for it.

This goes back to an opinion I've had for years in that Reason is such a stong and unique environment for a lot of people, even those with VST's. They would rather work in Reason but like what had been developed, to that point via VST's or AU's. That was the only option.

At the end of the day, ALL VST's can be used in conjunction with Reason if that's what a user chooses to do.

It will be very interesting to see the development of Re's over the next year or two. All platforms will continue to do well. I don't expect anything different for Reason and Re's.

Choices are great!


To the OP, it seems like a handful or more are really popular with the others fitting a need or desire to lesser extent. Similar to VST's. I'm guessing the U-He stuff will be extremely popular.

PB2000, I believe you summed it up perfectly.

Excellent post.

Let's see...

If you buy the DVD versions of your favorite movies, are you then going back to the store and demand that you get "coupons" for buying the Blu-ray version of the same movies? No? Why not?