Propellerhead Reason 3 - your opinion

[Stairsteps]

To adress you more on the hip hop drum&bass and R&B stuff which is what I produce btw, Reasons is perfect for it. No matter your skill or talent Reasons will make you a better musician esp with the way you can set it up and go and retain your ideas in your head quicker than any other host and get them down quick so you dont loose your feel, thats what makes reasons so great its a quick get up and go type of thing and its very intuitive in that regard.
Dont be put off by some others that find it hard to maintain 2 files with Rewire its a snap, all you have to do is name both files the same in each host ie Sonar, Cubass, Live that way you dont forget and thats common sense anyway, But its not a hassle or a problem maintaining 2 files for your songs this way, cause when you save it all it takes is a extra mouse click, which dosent bother me one bit esp sense the results I get for using reasons with Rewire is great.
Put it this way I would cry if they took out the rewire capability and probley wouldnt use it much if they didnt have that feature.
For your type of music I would look into the Refex machine in reasons as it can really suprise you with all it can do for that style of music Hiphop House and stuff like that even Trance.

[blueSky]

Ok, but what about Reason and FL-Studio. s.o. mentioned it would be able to connect it with rewire?

[Stupid American Pig]

Yes, you can use rewire in FL studio...

[blueSky]

Thanks, i will try. I trust on you...

[spuddle]

Reason gets my hearty recommendation, I've been using it for about 2 years. Great package. If you get frustrated with the limitations then that is what Rewire + external package is for.

Check out my stuff in the link below, click on 'mylestronica' when the player loads up for my Reason based noodlings.

[FaX]

I only use Combinators now myself but NEVER use the Reason sequencer (quite frankly I have never liked it).
In Ableton LIVE I can have an paired midi rewire channel and audio in for EVERY Combinator I use and sequence all of them from within Live instead.
So I just save the combi rack + ouput channels as a standard Reason file with the same name as the file I'm working on in Live.
Very cpu efficient.
Even with rewire and Combinators I get better CPU overhead than most individual VSTi's I use.
Usually anywhere from 3-10% CPU use per Combinator depending on the structure of that patch.
Though I will use the Odd Maelstrom / Subtractor and NNXT on it's own.
So I can in all reality get some 16-17 midi tracks send too Reason and have the audio pumped back on corresponding midi channels per device + extra audio tracks going on in Live.
It's very easy to then render the Reason Audio channels to Audio.
Drop the midi channels out / resave the project as "XXXXXX- V2" and then use a swag of VST based effects at the production stage.
There's plenty of good freeware VST effects available out there I might add.
IMHO Reason 3 has alot more meat than 2.5.
It sounds alot bettetr (no thanks to the new compressors / eq's and McClass processing tools).
I tend to use the Subtractor more for glacial / metalic and icy cold style drones and pads (which IMHO it excells at).
Very stable application from my experience.
I think it's a very love it or loathe it kind of application.
I'm still of the opinion that Ableton Live has the BEST rewire implementation for use with it as a working combination.
For the styles of music you like you'll be fine.
Adam Fielding does some killer soundtrack style stuff with Reason IMHO .
Bang for the buck it an't be beat.
I love it's semi-modular architecture also.
And being a late 30's something hardware boy from way back it reminds me alot of working in an oldskool - device / patchbay / mixer / routing / recording workflow etc etc.