Just downloaded Reason 6.5 plus a couple of RE's from the shop...

[saturdaysaint]

]
As mentioned earlier, Essential looks like pretty good value for the money. I don't care that much for most of the devices that are missing in Essential, never liked Thor for instance. Can then fill up the rack with a few good RE's instead, RE's that one would most probably buy despite owning the full version.

I'm pretty sure that by the end of the year the shop will be filled up with all kind of exciting devices. A lot of cheap & free ones too I think. Will be a lot of fun to mess with all the crazy things I think wil come. I'm buying Essential for that reason. I could never use Reason as my main DAW though. After adding 5 devices and wiring them it I think it's a total mess.

The thing with Thor is that the programmer and step sequencer have some powerful tricks that are impossible to do with anything else at the moment. Example - I wired a combinator that flips the panning and filters whenever the Buffre beat repeater gate is tripped.

The Rack can be cumbersome but gets easy with a few tricks. I recommend containing everything in a given track in a Combinator both because it has some powerful tricks for automating parameters and because it lets you easily collapse all the devices in a track. If you're rewiring a simple series of effects remember that you can always just select them all then "disconnect" and "auto-connect" in the right-click menu.

[sellyoursoul]

]The Rack can be cumbersome but gets easy with a few tricks. I recommend containing everything in a given track in a Combinator both because it has some powerful tricks for automating parameters and because it lets you easily collapse all the devices in a track. If you're rewiring a simple series of effects remember that you can always just select them all then "disconnect" and "auto-connect" in the right-click menu.

That's all good until you have multi-outs that you want to route through the mixer.

[bmrzycki]

And then there's also Reason Essentials as well. If you don't want the full package Reason 6.5 brings but still want to be able to use RE's for specific needs.

As mentioned earlier, Essential looks like pretty good value for the money. I don't care that much for most of the devices that are missing in Essential, never liked Thor for instance. Can then fill up the rack with a few good RE's instead, RE's that one would most probably buy despite owning the full version.

Be careful, it's not just devices that are missing from Reason Essentials. Essentials has a simpler SSL-style mixer than Reason 6 and doesn't have Audio Clip transpose or the Blocks feature. These may or may not matter to you -- just keep it in mind.

You can see the complete list of differences here:
http://www.propellerheads.se/products/r ... ison-chart

[damoog]

One thing I was both surprised and disappointed upon reason 6.5 release was no major synth?(korg being the culprit)....subtractor,malmstrom and Thor are all great synths but a major synth upon release would have been a serious bonus

[saturdaysaint]

One thing I was both surprised and disappointed upon reason 6.5 release was no major synth?(korg being the culprit)....subtractor,malmstrom and Thor are all great synths but a major synth upon release would have been a serious bonus

Agreed, although Pulsar creates some truly fat, tasty (albeit monophonic) tones - maybe my favorite in Reason. And Radical Piano is perfect for me. Very flexible and convincing at what it does - for my quirky indie-singer/songwriter purposes, it's more useful than anything that comes with Kontakt (which I also own).

My sense is that effects have been easier to fit within the RE spec's UI restrictions - I mean, Etch and the Softube plugs basically look like their VST counterparts - whereas modern softsynths have leaned more and more on complex/multipanel/highly-animated UI's (that don't quite fit the Reason paradigm and could take time to properly translate) as selling points. On top of that, Reason users would expect some serious audio and CV ins and outs for anything with distinct modules.

[damoog]

And Radical Piano is perfect for me. Very flexible and convincing at what it does

radical piano(and im being totally honest here) is the only buying point on 6.5 release,it sounds very good and unique to my ears

[headquest]

radical piano(and im being totally honest here) is the only buying point on 6.5 release,it sounds very good and unique to my ears

For me (as a professional pianist) it's the reverse. I had a long phone chat with PH about this a while ago, and had very high hopes. As soon as they released the audio demos I just thought... oh my god. A terrible instrument, so synthetic, and so far behind the curve in terms of what else is out there (it costs nearly as much as Pianoteq Stage for goodness sakes!!).

I have a private online group for about 300 pianists where we discussed the demos... just disbelief really at how bad it sounds. For me this was the (almost) final turning point that disauded me from going down the RE route.

Obviously the appalling terms and conditions for users of RE was the very final push away from them though. No way can I invest in something where the user has so little future guarantee of being able to carry on using the product.

[puzzlefactory]

No way can I invest in something where the user has so little future guarantee of being able to carry on using the product.

What do you mean? Why is there no guarantee of using the product in the future?

[saturdaysaint]

Have you played with Pulsar at all? It's great at producing some amazing, weird LFO shapes by modulating an LFO with another LFO and/or with CV-generated "Pulses". So if I send a delayed "blip" sound from a (silent) Subtractor to that "Pulse" input, I can create a pretty striking little slowdown in an LFO - great for subtle pitch oscillation on a pad. Heh, I'm pretty tempted to use it on some parameter for every track.

Those easy LFOs are half the fun of Reason for me these days - creating some fun, moving textures before I've recorded or automated anything often leads to some inspired sounds.

[audiobot202]

I've only just started playing piano, so I'm no expert like headquest, but even to my largely untrained ears, Radical Piano sounds flat. Not a very inviting sound for the most part. Just stock mundane sounds that need some extra effects to sound good.

[headquest]

What do you mean? Why is there no guarantee of using the product in the future?

You buy from their shop and it installs directly from their server - there is not only no physical product (which is fair enough) but also no install file (less fair in my opinion) which means that if in the future the Company - or its server - goes down than you would be unable to install on your next computer, or reinstall on yours if you needed to for any reason (e.g. if you needed to uninstall Reason at any point).

Given the high overall cost of REs (currently the shop has more than $1,000 worth on sale) that's too big a gamble for me to take, so "I'm out".

[saturdaysaint]

radical piano(and im being totally honest here) is the only buying point on 6.5 release,it sounds very good and unique to my ears

For me (as a professional pianist) it's the reverse. I had a long phone chat with PH about this a while ago, and had very high hopes. As soon as they released the audio demos I just thought... oh my god. A terrible instrument, so synthetic, and so far behind the curve in terms of what else is out there (it costs nearly as much as Pianoteq Stage for goodness sakes!!).

Yep, exactly why I qualified "for me". It's been divisive. You have to keep in mind that the needs of someone playing Chopin and Joplin will be different or even diametrically opposed to someone trying to capture something more in the vein of Sparklehorse or Neil Young. I've found it in my mixes than Pianoteq, which I have to effect pretty heavily to get the weird/swampy sounds that are more my taste.

[headquest]

Yep, exactly why I qualified "for me". It's been divisive. You have to keep in mind that the needs of someone playing Chopin and Joplin will be different or even diametrically opposed to someone trying to capture something more in the vein of Sparklehorse or Neil Young. I've found it in my mixes than Pianoteq, which I have to effect pretty heavily to get the weird/swampy sounds that are more my taste.

I think you can get those sounds from any piano simply by adding reverb/delay type effects. For "pop piano" and "jazz piano" tones, I think that Propellerhead's own "Reason Pianos" refill was/is superb, and far superior to "Radical Piano".

Problem with "Radical Pianos" is - as so often with Propellerhead - the marketing BS:

... The results are stunning... Radical Piano affords songwriters, producers, and sound designers an unprecedented level of control to craft a realistic piano ...

With Radical Piano you can do things that are otherwise impossible, not only in multi-gigabyte sample libraries but even in the recording of actual acoustic pianos. Do you wish your close mic'd grand piano sounded just a little bit more like a vintage mono upright piano? Use the microphone blend to create a hybrid modeled sound...

Radical Piano will change the way you use pianos in your music by allowing you to imagine a piano in a real space and set about creating it yourself through intuitive controls. Or like you have done with synthesizers for years, you can listen to your favorite song and emulate the recording with uncanny accuracy. Perhaps even more impressive, the realism of Radical Piano will affect the way you play because it responds like a real piano to sustain pedal movement, key noise and velocity response.

There's no question they are presenting Radical Piano not just as a novelty "different piano type instrument" (which I think is what it actually is...) but as something that can recreate realistic acoustic piano recordings.

[saturdaysaint]

What do you mean? Why is there no guarantee of using the product in the future?

You buy from their shop and it installs directly from their server - there is not only no physical product (which is fair enough) but also no install file (less fair in my opinion) which means that if in the future the Company - or its server - goes down than you would be unable to install on your next computer, or reinstall on yours if you needed to for any reason (e.g. if you needed to uninstall Reason at any point).

In a world where some of us have relied on cloud tools for over a decade this isn't much of a gamble, especially since we're talking about a company whose founding predates Google. Furthermore, I've found iOS apps, a fair analogue, uniquely *easy* to transfer from one "system" to another. If you want a second PC (say, a netbook to fool around with), once you've authorized Reason, downloading all of your plugins is a few clicks. And Propellerheads are making a pretty ambitious guarantee that if Reason runs, so will all RE's - Windows 8 and Mountain Lion will be a pretty interesting test of this. So you can buy a new system as soon as Props have verified OS compatibility. Compare that to moving to a new OS with a host and a few Native Instruments (or, God forbid, UA) plugins.

[eXode]

What do you mean? Why is there no guarantee of using the product in the future?

You buy from their shop and it installs directly from their server - there is not only no physical product (which is fair enough) but also no install file (less fair in my opinion) which means that if in the future the Company - or its server - goes down than you would be unable to install on your next computer, or reinstall on yours if you needed to for any reason (e.g. if you needed to uninstall Reason at any point).

Given the high overall cost of REs (currently the shop has more than $1,000 worth on sale) that's too big a gamble for me to take, so "I'm out".

Just want to clarify that the RE's are not tied to Reason in that way. You have to delete the RE's from within the Authorizer software and they don't get deleted just because you uninstall Reason. So you could very well uninstall Reason without it affect your RE's.

All the other points are accurate though, you need internet connection and their server to do a fresh install (I.e. after OS re-install or new computer).