Issue With The Reason 4 Update for Sonic Refills

[ephraze619]

I don't know if the glass empty or half full. Let me just say this. The Thor-NNXT/Other Reason Synths sound excellent, full, tweakeable, and most important....radio-ready. If you're reading this Squids, I gave you much props on Reason sites for what you did with the R4 Synths. I became distraught after the December Group Buy. I tried the combis for Guitar and Ethnic refills and......... .

I couldn't believe how bad those patches sound. It was like the first guitar patch you ever heard on a keyboard. And the Thor ethnic patches????!!!! I know from your Sampletank rare and vintage collection along with StudioPhonik, that the same effort and quality DOES NOT GO INTO THESE REFILLS. If I'm wrong, please correct me on this. If Reason's samplers are not capable of producing the sound of Sampletank, then I'd accept that. It would be hard to fully accept because P-Heads Premium Refills sound excellent. They just don't have enough variety to shell out $300, but the quality is exceptional. I'm not trying to trash your products or your reputation because your record speaks for itself. I guess the Thor combinations with real instruments didn't go over as well as the synths. Thor makes the real instruments sound......well......TOO SYNTHY AND REAL FAKE. I guess my expectation were too high. I really didn't mean to bitch and whine. Not a REAL BIG DEAL, but to say that I can't wait for StudioPhonik-like refill (without synth combis). A RARE AND VINTAGE COLLECTION refill would be welcomed as well.

[Squids]

It's really a very light update. It wasn't intended to be a major rehaul. Of course with the addition of THOR the synth libs and vintage benefit the most. Acoustic, Ethnic almost don't benefit barely at all but we did some extra stuff anyway - perhaps something that would make those libs fit into urban and electronic music since that seems to be the most popular use of Reason (even though we know it is used for many styles). It still has the same sounds from the previous version though and those are quite good. We haven't had many complaints anyway. One thing for sure, at the prices they are I think it is that much more difficult to complain really. Studiophoniks and Infinite Players are a lot more money than that. Everything is relative. Overall, I look at those Sonic Refills as "workstation sounds" and since in the Gold Collection you have over 8,000 of them none of us here expect anyone to love EVERY sound. But surely there's tons of useful ones that inspire and that's the point of a workstation sound collection. TONS and TONS of variety. One person's gold is another person's trash. Someone may actually LIKE a synthetic sounding instrument (like a synth banjo... not me or you but someone else might beg to differ and that's exactly what they were hoping to find).

We're not too snobby about sounds. We like to do quality but that can sometimes be subjective. A bunch of different people work on the refills here and they each have different tastes. I didn't work on that update, I was working on Infinite Player and Studiophonik. It's not that I'm not into THOR, I actually LOVE it! But I haven't had time to do patches for it myself. So I trust my team to do interesting stuff and I think for the most part they have! Some sounds better than others and same for the combis. I agree there's room to be more elaborate and creative (also by the user because the main thing with these are the samples as material to experiment with inside Reason!). But, we're not charging any more for these than the previous versions so there's only so much time we can spend on them. We might have just left them as 3.0 and that's it. However, we thought it'd be a nice extra to have them updated for 4.0 with a few bells and whistles added. Nothing major.

Anyway, perhaps we'll do some Studiophonik-style and deluxe instrument refills for Reason (like we did with Miroslav Refills) and people who want more of that thing will appreciate that approach. That said, I have to say that Sonic Refills have been some of Sonic Reality's best selling products ever. People like them. Even people like Vinnie Colaiuta and Herbie Hancock have told me they use those refills... all sorts of people. Beyonce's band had them too. They're all over the place. I think Dr Dre has them as well.

[ephraze619]

I still use the refills, but I was just saying that Thor update on the acoustic instruments weren't working for me. That's all. On the Retro Keys, sounds of the 60s and 70s.....THE THOR COMBIS ARE KILLER. In my OPINION, that didn't go over as well with the guitars and ethnik instruments. I have Sampletank, but I can't afford the Rare and Vintage collection right now....$500 is kinda steep for me, with ANOTHER baby on the way. Thanks for your feedback, Squids....I REALLY appreciate it.

[Squids]

Well, THOR is a synth so naturally it is going to fit better with the electronic instruments than the acoustic/ethnic instruments. It's almost pointless to add them there but we wanted to at least do something extra for all of the titles... and again, some people who do electronic music may really like the mix of acoustic/ethnic with synthetic sounds. The product didn't go up in price for the update and actually it's a free update at least for people that bought their refills from esoundz as downloads (automatically shows up in your user area with both R3 and R4 versions at no extra charge).

But, anyway, we appreciate the feedback either way. Positive or negative. I just don't think there's much we could have done differently except not bothering to update acoustic/ethnic refills with Thor patches. We couldn't add samples to them because that would increase the price (we have a different cost for our samples, sometimes we pay royalties to artists etc.).

[Pete C]

Are we talking about the new Ultra Refills or something else? What about those?