Reason 3 is simply awesome.

[diverdee]

Also ther is the refill & reason song formats to consider - use of third party plugins would affect the essentially universal nature of the .rps format (as one would need to own the third party plugins in question in order to play a song that featured their use).

No more than the Refill format already does. Possibly less, considering that many VSTs are available for free. Besides, RPS is hardly necessary when mp3's offer small enough file sizes to be useful for sharing music. The only convincing reason for the existence of the RPS was that back when Reason 1.0 was under development, broadband penetration was low. Nowadays, I don't know a single person (no exaggeration here) who doesn't have some form of high-speed access.

I'm thinking of it from a props marketing & brand name/image type perspective also, if you know what I mean.
The closed format allows them to pretty much retain control.
There are also pretty active reason using communities remixing each others work etc. & the .rps file using only internal reason stuff & refills is fairly central to that.
Inclusion of third party plugins & instruments via a wrapper would possibly have a negative impact on that.
I could be completely wrong.

[dogod]

U are 100% rite ... They shot themselves in the foot

[John Vulich]

I'm thinking of it from a props marketing & brand name/image type perspective also, if you know what I mean.
The closed format allows them to pretty much retain control.
There are also pretty active reason using communities remixing each others work etc. & the .rps file using only internal reason stuff & refills is fairly central to that.
Inclusion of third party plugins & instruments via a wrapper would possibly have a negative impact on that.
I could be completely wrong.

They already need to deal with these issues regarding 3rd party Refills. Obviously any persons wishing to engage in remixing activities need to either avoid using extra Refills or limit themselves to using readily obtainable free ones. I would imagine that the same would apply to VStis. Anyway, given this line of thinking, the Props should never have moved beyond Reason 1.0 since several instruments and effects, in newer versions, are not present in the earlier versions.

[diverdee]

I don't know about shooting themselves in the foot.
Reason, whether rightly or wrongly (if such a value judgement even has any meaning here) is bloody popular.
Wasn't there some info. somewhere equating to it being, if not the most succesful music software at least one of the most succesful pieces of music software ever?
Dis it, love it - whatever, there is no denying the fact that it has been & continues to be very succesful & the props business decisions & marketing seem to have worked very well thus far.

[diverdee]

Regarding commercial refills - do the props make any money licensing wise of them?
If so the .rps format & third party refills - it's still win/win for them isn't it? (I have no info. concerning this aspect).
Even if they don't, it's still promotion of their product, & due to the closed nature of the refill format (although there is now a way around that - which does pretty much work) it's tieing users into investing in their platform - so even if one starts using more external vsti's etc. reason will likely be kept on in a legacy fashion - even if only to enable one to utilise the refills one has invested in - for sampling purposes etc.
The props certainly don't appear to be daft.

[diverdee]

[ Anyway, given this line of thinking, the Props should never have moved beyond Reason 1.0 since several instruments and effects, in newer versions, are not present in the earlier versions.

One can still play reason 1.0 rps's though.
This backward compatibility is likely the reason they will never update the subs filters etc.
I bloody hope they include a 'fat filter' version of the sub or something similar at some point though, as that is (for me personally) the weakest link.

[headquest]

Where did I say I hate Reason? Frankly you come off a bit childish by refering to my in that context. Anyway, just for the record, I think that it's a useful, well designed and extremely CPU friendly product. I said so in an earlier post. That doesn't mean that there isn't room for improvement.

My bad then. Sorry.

Anyway, I thought that you said stability wasn't a concern. Like I said before, the mere existence of the wrapper shouldn't affect Reason's stability. People can at least make the choice at to whether they would want to use it or not. It's a lame excuse.

I think there's a danger I will contradict myself here simply because I am trying to give serious consideration to your idedas. The Rewire host idea initially sounded good, and less problematic than the idea of Reason hosting other instruments. However...

Particularly bearing in mind the excellent posts from diverdee I am realising that I don't like either idea. The closed format is best in terms of Reason as a programme. The .rps format is, I think, very important to me personally.

I take your point that Refills already pose a problem, and where users have included additional Refills in their .rps songs I tend not to download them anyway. If the song info needed to list VSts used, or even Rewire slave applications plus VSTs/AUs/DX/etc, it would be pretty unmanageable.

Stability, CPU efficiency (as a laptop user), Remote technology, flexible routing, the rps format... they are all important to me, so I'm voting to keep Reason closed!!

[headquest]

[ Anyway, given this line of thinking, the Props should never have moved beyond Reason 1.0 since several instruments and effects, in newer versions, are not present in the earlier versions.

One can still play reason 1.0 rps's though.
This backward compatibility is likely the reason they will never update the subs filters etc.
I bloody hope they include a 'fat filter' version of the sub or something similar at some point though, as that is (for me personally) the weakest link.

I'd love to see a powerful multimode filter effect module added, that could be used on any of the other stuff

[Ian B]

I didn't expect this thread to end so quickly

LOL

All it took was a gentle nudge

[Warmonger]

After thinking about it a lot, I think making the entire Reason app available as a VST would be the best solution. Of course, that would effectively render Rewire redundant, and it'll never happen, but it is, IMO, the ideal solution. At least then they could make a more reasonable claim on the "Instrument" label.

[diverdee]

I'd love to see a powerful multimode filter effect module added, that could be used on any of the other stuff

Yeah that as well

[headquest]

After thinking about it a lot, I think making the entire Reason app available as a VST would be the best solution. Of course, that would effectively render Rewire redundant, and it'll never happen, but it is, IMO, the ideal solution. At least then they could make a more reasonable claim on the "Instrument" label.

But then it couldn't be used in Pro Tools (a lot of Reason songs end up in Pro Tools) or DP, for example. That would not do their pro users any favours at all.

[John Vulich]

I think there's a danger I will contradict myself here simply because I am trying to give serious consideration to your idedas. The Rewire host idea initially sounded good, and less problematic than the idea of Reason hosting other instruments. However...

To some extent I'm playing the Devil's Advocate here. Personally I don't need reason to work as a full DAW. I use Ableton Live for that and am quite happy with it's features. If I even bother to use Reason at all, it is as a Rewire client supplying Live with an arsenal of low CPU synths.

There are actually other features that would be of more value to me with Reason.

For starters I'd like to see Reason, as a Rewire client, stay within the host window and not show up on the taskbar as a separate app. Either that or make it capable of being a VSTi itself like FL Studio.

I'd like to have the host application be able to save the Rewire clients setting, as is done with VSTis, as a part of it's native file format so that I don't have to continually worry about saving 2 different files for any given project.

I would also love to have some sort of LFO/Envelope like module similar to the FL Studio Envelope Controller.

A timestretching module similar to Dr.REX would be cool too.

[John Vulich]

After thinking about it a lot, I think making the entire Reason app available as a VST would be the best solution. Of course, that would effectively render Rewire redundant, and it'll never happen, but it is, IMO, the ideal solution. At least then they could make a more reasonable claim on the "Instrument" label.

Yeah, I'm with you on this one.

[John Vulich]

After thinking about it a lot, I think making the entire Reason app available as a VST would be the best solution. Of course, that would effectively render Rewire redundant, and it'll never happen, but it is, IMO, the ideal solution. At least then they could make a more reasonable claim on the "Instrument" label.

But then it couldn't be used in Pro Tools (a lot of Reason songs end up in Pro Tools) or DP, for example. That would not do their pro users any favours at all.

Why not? It doesn't mean that it couldn't be both a Rewire client and a VSTi plugin. FL Studio works as both.