Storm Studio, Reason, FL Studio, and Orion Platinum

[Wopelka]

Just quickly, FL is full of little toys, ORION has serious, professional [that word] instruments and effects.

I'm not talking about putting this reference tone through the signal path and see how it comes out. I'm sure that most hosts would do marvelously, given that the entire process takes place in the digital world.

What I am talking about is the sound quality of the included instruments and effects.

All the little things that I used to have to spend thousands of dollars at a studio, just to be able to use.

I never even thought of owning any of them. Sure, you can buy some pretty cool VSTi that do a reasonable job but that all costs extra and kind of defeats the purpose of having native generators/effects, doesn't it?

I have come to realise that I am severe on a lot of popular VSTi largely because in a host with as many high quality things in it as ORION, it is very difficult indeed to justify spending money.

The only reason I use any VSTi at all is to make up for a few features absent from ORION's generators like Hard Sync and big, fat Unison.

Plus I use Classic Chorus because I think it works better on Strings than ORION's, but it and PSP MixSaturator are the only plugin effects I use.

We have released two albums where 90% or more of the sound, not including vocals, has come from ORION itself.

Point me to another commercailly available CD that can say the same of Fruity or Reason.

[snooky]

iiiih!

[l33troll]

CM notes are irrelevant.
About any big boy: 9/10.

[arke]

Well, there you go. Fruityloops v2.7 was no more stable than ORION v1.7 when I made the switch. Not that reliability was the main issue, it was about getting work done.

*cough*

Alright, how nice. You made the switch to Orion when FL
- Did not have a Piano Roll
- Had 8 mixer tracks, 4 effects each, and no sends
- Did not have an arpeggiator
- Did not have the 3xOsc
- Still had per-song automation instead of the much more flexible and powerful per-pattern automation
- Did not have a granulizer (does Orion have one?)
- Did not have an included slicer
- Did not have portamento
- Did not have ASIO support
- had a limited Playlist
... and the list goes on. You are still judging it mostly on its origins as a toy music app, like Rebirth with a friendlier interface.

Have you even tried FL for longer than 3 seconds since? It's matured to be quite a beast. It's easy to make a song - add a synth, lay down a line, add some kick, add another synth, have it play bass, fiddle with that until you like it, and thats your reference pattern. Put instruments in separate patterns, start arranging in the play list.

Give meaningful names to your patterns so that you can remember what they are - I'd rather see "arp single" or "bass melody accented" than A1, C4, or whatever. Can Orion do that? I didn't think so.

Add automation as separate patterns, reuse automation, add automation, layer automation, move automation with the rest of the song without any hassle, because its just another pattern like everything else. If its part of the pattern itself, include the automation in the pattern. If not? Make it a separate pattern. Give names to the automation - "arp lp out 12", "tempo 120 to 104", "fade out". Can Orion do that? I didn't think so.

Keep your workspace organized - have only those windows open that you need. LAying down a fat drum line? Step sequencer, mixer, channel settings. Rearranging the song? Fullscreen playlist. Adding effects as the song is playing? Step sequencer, mixer, and the effect windows. Close everything else, because you can reopen it if you need to. Don't click around 13 million windows to find what you need, just keep open what you need at that precise moment and close the rest, without losing anything. Can Orion do that? I didn't think so.

Open up the Piano Roll, and lay down a synth part. Then, add a second synth part in the same pattern. Turn on ghost channels, if you haven't already. Hey, you get to see the other pattern at the same time! Neat. Add a chord, then have just one note slide by giving it a different group. Have another one slide in the other direction by giving it yet another group/color. Split the entire chord at the same time with the knife, no matter what color it is. Can Orion do that? I didn't think so.

Make a cool synth sound with the 3xOsc. Make another cool 3xOsc sound. Make yet another, this time with the TS-404. To round it off, add a part with the DX-10. Add a layer channel, and layer them all. Guess what, they all are triggered at the same time with the layer channel. Since they're selected already, go to the mixer, press ctrl+l, and they all route to the same track. Or in the menu, say "Starting from", and they're assigned to sequential tracks. Make the fattest synth lines by layering as many synths as you want, and hide them all by zipping them up and putting them in a channel group. Can Orion do that? I didn't think so.

Pick out the select few plugins that you actually use, put the F in front in the "More..." dialog, and clear it on all others. Voila! You have a concise list of plugins - exactly those that you will want to use, and if theres one not in the list for that special effect you can always still click on more. No navigating through endless lists of installed plugs. Can Orion do that? I didn't think so.

That being said, FL isn't perfect. Assigning effects to numbers isn't nice, neither is the pain of moving it around. Copy and Paste aren't the easiest operations in the world, and it would still be nice if we could drive _any_ plugin through the sampler processor like the 3xOsc. But, FL6 is coming out soon, and they might have added that. Or maybe not. It's still a very satisfactory product that's evolved from a toy drum machine to a professional-quality virtual studio with lots of toys in it. If you look at the Power Users example project, you'll find them all using some sort of toy like the Peak Controller or Formula Controller or Fruity Scratcher or any of those that is just a "toy" in your eyes.

Hey, it's great you like Orion. Congrats on the label too. Orion works for you, and thats fine. I'm not trying to "convert you to the fruits". Hey, I myself am starting to use Reason much more these days. But please - before you bash on something, make sure its not made out of steel because it'll just end up hurting YOUR hand. Orion is not The One Host, and neither is FL, or Reason, or Live, or .. or ... or ... all of them have strengths and weaknesses and its up to the individual person to find what tradeoffs suite them the best.

[jmh]

*trr-kss*

[blurk]

We have released two albums where 90% or more of the sound, not including vocals, has come from ORION itself. Point me to another commercailly available CD that can say the same of Fruity or Reason.

Does an ARIA award winning film soundtrack count? (Yeah, well the less said about awards, and ARIA awards in particular the better.) BTW, does the 90% include or exclude your killers? If it excludes additional plugins, then I retract my claim.

[BONES]

Yeah, that's right, Tom only used included instruments. I doubt he even owns any VSTi. Needless to say, it excludes them. That's what the other 10% is [and one instance of PlastiCZ! in one song].

[BONES]

Alright, how nice. You made the switch to Orion when FL
- Did not have a Piano Roll
- Had 8 mixer tracks, 4 effects each, and no sends
- Did not have an arpeggiator
- Did not have the 3xOsc
- Still had per-song automation instead of the much more flexible and powerful per-pattern automation
- Did not have a granulizer (does Orion have one?)
- Did not have an included slicer
- Did not have portamento
- Did not have ASIO support
- had a limited Playlist
... and the list goes on. You are still judging it mostly on its origins as a toy music app, like Rebirth with a friendlier interface.

Wrong, they didn't ban me until around 3.4, I was still beta-testing for them well after v3 was released. The thing was, the new stuff made things worse, not better. Workflow just spiralled down the toilet at an ever-increasing rate. Interestingly, the other half of the band still uses Fruity most of the time but, despite having the latest version, he still prefers doodling in 2.7. When he's ready to take his ideas and get serious with them, he moves them to ORION, not FL. To be fair, that is probably in part so that I can easily access them, although I do have an FL demo version sitting on my machine so that I can open his files and copy patterns and stuff over.

Have you even tried FL for longer than 3 seconds since?

See above.

It's matured to be quite a beast.

A bloated beast.

Give meaningful names to your patterns so that you can remember what they are - I'd rather see "arp single" or "bass melody accented" than A1, C4, or whatever. Can Orion do that? I didn't think so.

ORION doesn't need to as Patterns are tied to a specific generator. In FL's playlist, a pattern can contain as many different instruments as you like so naming them is absolutely essential [and its always been there].

Add automation as separate patterns, reuse automation, add automation, layer automation, move automation with the rest of the song without any hassle, because its just another pattern like everything else. If its part of the pattern itself, include the automation in the pattern. If not? Make it a separate pattern. Give names to the automation - "arp lp out 12", "tempo 120 to 104", "fade out". Can Orion do that? I didn't think so.

Well, apart from the redundant pattern naming, the answer is yes. It has the flexibility to do any of that stuff just as easily.

Keep your workspace organized - have only those windows open that you need.

What if you need two channel windows open at the same time? Can you do that?

LAying down a fat drum line? Step sequencer, mixer, channel settings. Rearranging the song? Fullscreen playlist. Adding effects as the song is playing? Step sequencer, mixer, and the effect windows. Close everything else, because you can reopen it if you need to.

Same here, except I don't ever need to close anything.

Don't click around 13 million windows to find what you need, just keep open what you need at that precise moment and close the rest, without losing anything. Can Orion do that? I didn't think so.

Are you insane? Of course it can, only with infinitely greater ease. Every single thing in ORION is just one click away - every instrument, every effect, every piano roll, never more than a single mouse-click away at any time. Ever instrument interface visible at one time, every effect window, every mixer channel.

Make a cool synth sound with the 3xOsc. Make another cool 3xOsc sound. Make yet another, this time with the TS-404. To round it off, add a part with the DX-10. Add a layer channel, and layer them all. Guess what, they all are triggered at the same time with the layer channel. Since they're selected already, go to the mixer, press ctrl+l, and they all route to the same track. Or in the menu, say "Starting from", and they're assigned to sequential tracks. Make the fattest synth lines by layering as many synths as you want, and hide them all by zipping them up and putting them in a channel group. Can Orion do that? I didn't think so.

No, and I'll tell you why. Rich is so embarrassed at the appalling quality of his TS404 that he refuses to port it to ORION. Toys vs quality. And if zipping isn't the workaround to beat them all, I don't know what is. Everything else you describe here can be done.

Pick out the select few plugins that you actually use, put the F in front in the "More..." dialog, and clear it on all others. Voila! You have a concise list of plugins - exactly those that you will want to use, and if theres one not in the list for that special effect you can always still click on more. No navigating through endless lists of installed plugs. Can Orion do that? I didn't think so.

Sure it can - you can organise your plugins any way you want byplacing them in folders, only leaving your favourites in the root of the list. Much more flexible.

you'll find them all using some sort of toy like the Peak Controller or Formula Controller or Fruity Scratcher or any of those that is just a "toy" in your eyes.

Whilst the pro's are using proper sidechaining which has an infintely better effect.

But please - before you bash on something, make sure its not made out of steel because it'll just end up hurting YOUR hand. Orion is not The One Host, and neither is FL, or Reason, or Live, or .. or ... or ... all of them have strengths and weaknesses and its up to the individual person to find what tradeoffs suite them the best.

Sure, but like I said, most of you guys seem far more interested in the process than the results and you post shows that very clearly. You never noticed that TS404 sounds bad. 3xOsc is a nice synth but with it GUI spread over 6 pages it is far less than useful.

Addendum: I had to go as I was being picked up from my hotel but I didn't want to leave a big gap in my reply, where you talked about ghost notes and such. Agreed, it is a nice feature but it has come up on the ORION forums before and I just don't see the benefit at the end of the day. We should be able to use our ears to hear what works with what, without having to see it in the PR. Even though I have zero training, I have always found this to be the best way to work. Things can look perfectly nice in the PR but sound horrible together.
I would much rather have things that are useful. In another thread I used the example of being able to see all my channel EQ together at once. Maybe its just that I have always worked this way but it seems to me to be an indispensible feature. If your mix is muddy and you have things clashing, there is no better way to solve the problem than by seeing what is boosted/cut and where so that you can fit it all together like a jigsaw puzzle, filling out your frequency spectrum. Sure, you can hear that x is clashing with y but changing one thing will invaribly lead to changing others to fit into the new matrix, so being able to see them all at once is not something I could be efficient without.
Those are the things that work for me, not formula controllers or peak controllers, which do nothing that cannot already be done in other ways.
Its great that you like using FL and that it works for you but to suggest that its workflow is anything but an unmapped sewer really stretches the bounds of credulity. Things like channel zipping, which has also been there forever, are cludged together workarounds that, at the end of the day, make the process worse rather than better in most situations.

[zircon]

Bones, I'll say it again. I do professional work every single day with nothing but FL. I've used Logic, Sonar, Cubase, and Reason, and the difference is like night and day. I feel literally crippled and unable to write music with anything else because FL is *so damn easy* to use. It's almost mind-boggling. The workflow is incredible.

I'm not saying anything about Orion, because I haven't used it. I probably will check it out at some point, though.

[vtx]

I'm not gunna get in the middle of a one or the other thing cause really I like'em all.
After owning Orion for a year now, I can say the original feature of tying synth to piano roll is still inovative and my favorite option.

[BONES]

Bones, I'll say it again. I do professional work every single day with nothing but FL.

So you don't use any VST or VSTi, internal instruments and effects all the way? I would truly love to hear some of the results if you do. Of course, I am not saying it would be impossible, I did plenty of stuff that I was happy enough with before Fruity even supported VSTi, but you have to admit that it would be rather limiting, unless you add the XXL plugins which a lot of Fruity users seem to forget are extras that fall outside your so-called "lifetime free updates".

I've used Logic, Sonar, Cubase, and Reason, and the difference is like night and day.

You will get absolutely no disagreement from me on that score. The big sequencers are the death of creativity for me.

I feel literally crippled and unable to write music with anything else because FL is *so damn easy* to use. It's almost mind-boggling. The workflow is incredible.

What freakin' workflow? Its all over the place. Sure, if you are methodical you can get it all done but if you are just going with the flow and you start zipping channels to clear things up and you don't name any of your patterns, etc., you end up with something that 6 weeks later will take you ages to get your head around again. Sik does that to me all the time, it takes me forever to decipher his .flp files whereas I can load anything he gives me from ORION and make sense of it straight away, largely because the Playlist is organised by instrument rather than by pattern so I can tell at a glance which instrument is playing what. Most times in Fruity I have to solo every instrument whose activity light is flashing to work out, one-by-one, what goes where. i.e. a pattern cannot be associated with a specific instrument which is cool when you are being creative but a PITA when you are trying to be collaborative, or even just organised. As around 99% of what I do is not creative, Fruity's workflow only works about 1% of the time for me.

[blurk]

So you don't use any VST or VSTi, internal instruments and effects all the way?

I'm just curious that you've made a bunch of VSTi plugins, but you reckon you don't need them in Orion?

BTW, I do agree that the workflow in FL has problems. I've always found it easy to sketch out stuff, but tweaking and editing that stuff later is more difficult than it could be. But I've taken the completely opposite approach and gone to Bidule where I can explicitly see the relationships between things.

[audiojunkie]

Just quickly, FL is full of little toys, ORION has serious, professional [that word] instruments and effects. I'm not talking about putting this reference tone through the signal path and see how it comes out. I'm sure that most hosts would do marvelously, given that the entire process takes place in the digital world. What I am talking about is the sound quality of the included instruments and effects. All the little things that I used to have to spend thousands of dollars at a studio, just to be able to use. I never even thought of owning any of them.
Sure, you can buy some pretty cool VSTi that do a reasonable job but that all costs extra and kind of defeats the purpose of having native generators/effects, doesn't it? I have come to realise that I am severe on a lot of popular VSTi largely because in a host with as many high quality things in it as ORION, it is very difficult indeed to justify spending money. The only reason I use any VSTi at all is to make up for a few features absent from ORION's generators like Hard Sync and big, fat Unison. Plus I use Classic Chorus because I think it works better on Strings than ORION's, but it and PSP MixSaturator are the only plugin effects I use.
We have released two albums where 90% or more of the sound, not including vocals, has come from ORION itself. Point me to another commercailly available CD that can say the same of Fruity or Reason.

Ok, so we're talking about plug-in quality, not sound quality. I think the new FL6 plugins are looking pretty good to me. Besides, I like VSTi's.

I guess it all boils down to opinions...and we all know about those.

--Sean

[arke]

Alright, how nice. You made the switch to Orion when FL
- Did not have a Piano Roll
- Had 8 mixer tracks, 4 effects each, and no sends
- Did not have an arpeggiator
- Did not have the 3xOsc
- Still had per-song automation instead of the much more flexible and powerful per-pattern automation
- Did not have a granulizer (does Orion have one?)
- Did not have an included slicer
- Did not have portamento
- Did not have ASIO support
- had a limited Playlist
... and the list goes on. You are still judging it mostly on its origins as a toy music app, like Rebirth with a friendlier interface.

Wrong, they didn't ban me until around 3.4, I was still beta-testing for them well after v3 was released. The thing was, the new stuff made things worse, not better. Workflow just spiralled down the toilet at an ever-increasing rate. Interestingly, the other half of the band still uses Fruity most of the time but, despite having the latest version, he still prefers doodling in 2.7. When he's ready to take his ideas and get serious with them, he moves them to ORION, not FL. To be fair, that is probably in part so that I can easily access them, although I do have an FL demo version sitting on my machine so that I can open his files and copy patterns and stuff over.

Why did they ban you? Because you were so open about the workflow?

Something I should have noted previously is that I've started to find a nice combination of hosts. I use FL to come up with ideas, maybe work on them, arrange them in the playlist, etc., but before I take the time after I've arranged things to my liking I take the time to move things over to Reason. The sequencing is not as nice to work with as FL but it sounds infinetely better and allows some nice tricks you could never do with FL without outside help (multiband compression, for example, or a pitch up effect using a delay).

Have you even tried FL for longer than 3 seconds since?

See above.

It's matured to be quite a beast.

A bloated beast.

I'll give you that, bloated, but you can still find (almost) everything you could want to do by just looking around the menus and stuff. I was on Sonar at a friend's house and it was a completely different story.

Give meaningful names to your patterns so that you can remember what they are - I'd rather see "arp single" or "bass melody accented" than A1, C4, or whatever. Can Orion do that? I didn't think so.

ORION doesn't need to as Patterns are tied to a specific generator. In FL's playlist, a pattern can contain as many different instruments as you like so naming them is absolutely essential [and its always been there].

You missed my point. Patterns are still called "A1", "C4", so you'd have to know what you put in it or you have to look at it to see what it is. I don't have the best of memory sometimes, so its helpful to know that this is the accentuated melody, or this is just a single C, or whatever.

Add automation as separate patterns, reuse automation, add automation, layer automation, move automation with the rest of the song without any hassle, because its just another pattern like everything else. If its part of the pattern itself, include the automation in the pattern. If not? Make it a separate pattern. Give names to the automation - "arp lp out 12", "tempo 120 to 104", "fade out". Can Orion do that? I didn't think so.

Well, apart from the redundant pattern naming, the answer is yes. It has the flexibility to do any of that stuff just as easily.

How? All I saw was per-pattern events which had to play at the same time as some notes and were restricted to the generator, and the usual per-song event list. Sure, you can copy and paste, but I find it easier to move around a few bars than copy and paste the actual data. Please enlighten me...

Keep your workspace organized - have only those windows open that you need.

What if you need two channel windows open at the same time? Can you do that?

Unfortunately not but I simply keep the step sequencer there too and use it like a tab selector for the generators. I hope its something they fix in FL6 but truthfully I find it a minor issue (although its a pain when trying to layer channels).

LAying down a fat drum line? Step sequencer, mixer, channel settings. Rearranging the song? Fullscreen playlist. Adding effects as the song is playing? Step sequencer, mixer, and the effect windows. Close everything else, because you can reopen it if you need to.

Same here, except I don't ever need to close anything.

That's for the simple reason that you _can't_ close anything because otherwise it'd be deleted . Looking at the demo songs and making a few myself I find it quite messy to have everything stacked up at the bottom and having to find it again with the short names that you've got available there - so usually I'd just sequentially open everything until I found what I want and close the rest.

Don't click around 13 million windows to find what you need, just keep open what you need at that precise moment and close the rest, without losing anything. Can Orion do that? I didn't think so.

Are you insane? Of course it can, only with infinitely greater ease. Every single thing in ORION is just one click away - every instrument, every effect, every piano roll, never more than a single mouse-click away at any time. Ever instrument interface visible at one time, every effect window, every mixer channel.

....? Either I missed some sort of fundamental feature of Orion or you only use 2 generators and maybe 2 effects in your songs. The mixer filled up quickly, which wasn't helped by the fact that each channel was soo damn wide. Of course, selecting the "slim mixer" skin helped. But not much. I only have a 1024x768 laptop display. From a different comment of yours, I think you have quite a bit more

Make a cool synth sound with the 3xOsc. Make another cool 3xOsc sound. Make yet another, this time with the TS-404. To round it off, add a part with the DX-10. Add a layer channel, and layer them all. Guess what, they all are triggered at the same time with the layer channel. Since they're selected already, go to the mixer, press ctrl+l, and they all route to the same track. Or in the menu, say "Starting from", and they're assigned to sequential tracks. Make the fattest synth lines by layering as many synths as you want, and hide them all by zipping them up and putting them in a channel group. Can Orion do that? I didn't think so.

No, and I'll tell you why. Rich is so embarrassed at the appalling quality of his TS404 that he refuses to port it to ORION. Toys vs quality. And if zipping isn't the workaround to beat them all, I don't know what is. Everything else you describe here can be done.

TS404 != 3xOsc. The TS404 is what the Roland TB-404 or something would have been, most likely. The TB-303 didn't have good sound quality either but that's exactly what made it so popular - the dirty stabby sound, which the TS404 can reproduce pretty good. The 3xOsc, however, is a "pure" synth - 3 oscillators, driven through the sampler channel, and thats about it, which makes it inherently "clean" - perfect for a pad or one of those "bright" synth sounds.

Also, how do you layer stuff together so that its controlled by the same patterns and piano roll? I couldn't figure it out (was trying to layer two Wasp XTs somehow, which is a great plug, by the way).

Zipping is a workaround for ... what?

Pick out the select few plugins that you actually use, put the F in front in the "More..." dialog, and clear it on all others. Voila! You have a concise list of plugins - exactly those that you will want to use, and if theres one not in the list for that special effect you can always still click on more. No navigating through endless lists of installed plugs. Can Orion do that? I didn't think so.

Sure it can - you can organise your plugins any way you want byplacing them in folders, only leaving your favourites in the root of the list. Much more flexible.

True.

you'll find them all using some sort of toy like the Peak Controller or Formula Controller or Fruity Scratcher or any of those that is just a "toy" in your eyes.

Whilst the pro's are using proper sidechaining which has an infintely better effect.

...and what makes them not qualify as "pro"? These are people that have been doing this stuff for a living for years. The Peak section of the Peak controller is like a side chain that can control everything. True, you need a second or two more to set it up but its inherently more flexible. The LFO section should probably be in a separate generator, I think, but its useful too. Beats having to do it manually in automation, especially if you want to automate speed or something.

But please - before you bash on something, make sure its not made out of steel because it'll just end up hurting YOUR hand. Orion is not The One Host, and neither is FL, or Reason, or Live, or .. or ... or ... all of them have strengths and weaknesses and its up to the individual person to find what tradeoffs suite them the best.

Sure, but like I said, most of you guys seem far more interested in the process than the results and you post shows that very clearly. You never noticed that TS404 sounds bad. 3xOsc is a nice synth but with it GUI spread over 6 pages it is far less than useful.

TS404 sounds bad. I know. Doesn't stop anyone from using it. Hey, distortion can sound bad, doesn't stop anyone from using that either. Listen to some trance music and find some of the dirty 303 effects. They're all purposely made to sound low quality and dirty because thats the intended sound - distorted, grungy, stabby.

Addendum: I had to go as I was being picked up from my hotel but I didn't want to leave a big gap in my reply, where you talked about ghost notes and such. Agreed, it is a nice feature but it has come up on the ORION forums before and I just don't see the benefit at the end of the day. We should be able to use our ears to hear what works with what, without having to see it in the PR. Even though I have zero training, I have always found this to be the best way to work. Things can look perfectly nice in the PR but sound horrible together.
I would much rather have things that are useful. In another thread I used the example of being able to see all my channel EQ together at once. Maybe its just that I have always worked this way but it seems to me to be an indispensible feature. If your mix is muddy and you have things clashing, there is no better way to solve the problem than by seeing what is boosted/cut and where so that you can fit it all together like a jigsaw puzzle, filling out your frequency spectrum. Sure, you can hear that x is clashing with y but changing one thing will invaribly lead to changing others to fit into the new matrix, so being able to see them all at once is not something I could be efficient without.

Agreed, that's nice, although I prefer the flexibility of a parametric EQ. You're right about the EQ - I've often spent quite a bit of time loading up the parametric EQ for every channel and lining it up as I listen to the song. Now with Reason, its a bit worse too. Then again, I like having relatively few parts so its not too much of a hassle to do this. In reason, I have every instrument route to a final MClass Equalizer below the mixer. Sometimes I wish I had a bigger screen so that I could see more of the rack, but I guess it's not too bad this way either.

Those are the things that work for me, not formula controllers or peak controllers, which do nothing that cannot already be done in other ways.
Its great that you like using FL and that it works for you but to suggest that its workflow is anything but an unmapped sewer really stretches the bounds of credulity. Things like channel zipping, which has also been there forever, are cludged together workarounds that, at the end of the day, make the process worse rather than better in most situations.

It's one of the Reasons (pun intended) I've been getting away from it too. Yes, its all there, but then some of the more useful stuff like Multiband compression, or maybe a playlist that previews the pattern in it is skipped. What makes it nice is how dead easy it is to create a small melody with it, add some bass and drums, and it sounds nice without working much with it. Going too far beyond this point is what's killed it for me. Reason was nice because I instantly felt familiar with the cable patching thing, as I used to do that sort of thing alot years ago (not to make music, but rather to set up for Live bands and stuff). While the sequencer really isn't too nice the rack is what made my choice. You really only have two synths but its all you ever need - The Maelstrom for pads and the Subtractor which is like the TS-404 with better sound and on some intense stereoids. Throwing evreything in a Combinator subrack and controlling that makes it just so much easier to create nice layered sounds that really come out at you from the headphones or speakers.

Let's hope the next version of Reason has a nicer Sequencer folks, because it would eliminate the FL step completely for me.

[speccyteccy]

If I were looking to choose a host again, I could do worse than asking members here to vote for their favorite - the CM review may only be one person's opinion, but if you could get hundreds to vote, you're going to get some very useful information.

Oh, wait a minute, it's already done

http://www.kvraudio.com/new_year_survey ... esults.php