Reason sound doesn't sell is not true

[robogone]

I believe most people still judge sounds quality by volume and the looks of the graphics.
The power of imagination in the brain is not to be underestimated.

I don't blame anyone. You can find several example of top producers tweaking sounds several times before finally realising they're tweaking the wrong plugin or channel.

Yep. There's a lot of ridiculous subjective judgement going on all the time, and no one really seems to realize that "better" and "worse" as such abstract and meaningless concepts when it comes down to something like music.

[spaceman]

I believe most people still judge sounds quality by volume and the looks of the graphics.
The power of imagination in the brain is not to be underestimated.

I don't blame anyone. You can find several example of top producers tweaking sounds several times before finally realising they're tweaking the wrong plugin or channel.

Yep. There's a lot of ridiculous subjective judgement going on all the time, and no one really seems to realize that "better" and "worse" as such abstract and meaningless concepts when it comes down to something like music.

In the end, it's the notes, the intervals, the silence, the chord progressions that count, not some bloody ridiculous subjective perception of 'high quality sounds' which never makes any bloody sense at all.

[hibidy]

I always thought it was kinda fun

[Davias]

I believe most people still judge sounds quality by volume and the looks of the graphics.
The power of imagination in the brain is not to be underestimated.

I don't blame anyone. You can find several example of top producers tweaking sounds several times before finally realising they're tweaking the wrong plugin or channel.

Yep. There's a lot of ridiculous subjective judgement going on all the time, and no one really seems to realize that "better" and "worse" as such abstract and meaningless concepts when it comes down to something like music.

This is why it is better to put "IMHO" at the end of each statement u could write on the net, like that people can just tell themselves "poor fella" instead of believing you are coming with the only truth and trying to make people think same as you do ^^

[robogone]

I agree. It would be good to qualify some of the 'quality' type statement as opinions rather than state them as some sort of undeniable fact.

[V0RT3X]

Maybe the title should be "My music doesn't sell" ?

[fceramic]

I'm actually constantly surprised how good a lot of the old Reason devices sound. Maybe not in a high-quality way, but more in terms of musicality. I feel the same way with all the old Ohm Force plugins. Subtractor, RV-7k and Scream4 are incredibly musical devices that can do a whole lot and always sound musical while maybe a bit low-fi (which I actually love). One of my favorite things about Reason is that you can use it as a lo-fi DAW by setting the older devices to low-bandwidth and other lo-fi settings. Lovely way to get some digital dirt.

[Tronam]

I'm actually constantly surprised how good a lot of the old Reason devices sound. Maybe not in a high-quality way, but more in terms of musicality. I feel the same way with all the old Ohm Force plugins. Subtractor, RV-7k and Scream4 are incredibly musical devices that can do a whole lot and always sound musical while maybe a bit low-fi (which I actually love). One of my favorite things about Reason is that you can use it as a lo-fi DAW by setting the older devices to low-bandwidth and other lo-fi settings. Lovely way to get some digital dirt.

I still think Subtractor has one of the clearest, easy to use subtractive synth interfaces and it accomplishes a lot in a compact space. You can still get plenty of useful sounds out of it, but a modern overhaul of the sound engine would be very welcome. It's hard to believe the thing is nearly 15 years old now.

[murnau]

Maybe the title should be "My music doesn't sell" ?

thats true. there are enough guys out there who sell what they produce in reason. daniel kandi for example.

[spaceman]

Freemasons, Tom Middleton are a couple more names of Reason users.

[Jace-BeOS]

EDIT : I will even add something that shows even better my feeling about this. I used to be a Reason fanboy actually. So my perception was biased toward Reason at the time. I already told this story somewhere else on the forum but it is the perfect place. At the time (something like ten years before), I was with my friend using Reason and loving it (came from a DOS tracker, we were amazed by the gorgeous sound of Reason washed in FX and the lively synths comparing to dry pitched samples). Some day, just out of curiosity we tried FL Studio demo (Fruity Loops at the time), and at first glance were not impressed at all, ugly GUI, toyish feeling, the synths GUI were not appealing (we were young ). But as soon as we wrote a 4 bar beat with a stupid synthesized bassline (a saw and a filter) and it was sounding so full, so gorgeous comparing to our countless hours projects in Reason ^^

This is actually really interesting to me because you mentioned having started on trackers, and you are describing exactly my feeling about trackers: something very hard to define is missing in a sound when played back through a tracker, and this includes the top of the line Renoise. i got into a forum discussion about this problem at Renoise's site, and unintentionally started a huge mess... where exactly one person out of twenty said they agreed with me and everyone else was doing null tests and crap to prove that i was imagining it.

I came from trackers as well, going all the way back to Protracker on the Amiga and they absolutely have a "sound" which is quite distinctive, even now with Renoise. I think it's partially due to the interface and how it encourages a different approach to composing, but also the way that samples get bent and manipulated in that pattern based environment is something I can usually recognize immediately. This very often holds true for me with Ableton Live as well. Heavy use of its clip warping, glitch cutting and certain built-in effects/instruments are a dead giveaway.

These kinds of differences between music programs will be inescapable unless everyone completely bypasses their host's effects and uses only the exact same 3rd party plugins. I also think the interface can influence how you compose. What I don't believe is that any of this has to do with the mystical audio engine. That's the part that so many people keep getting hung up on.

That's stylistic stuff. i meant simply the sound of an audio sample played back in a tracker sounded less bright and somewhat quieter in a tracker as compared to, say Sound Forge. There was no comparison to playback with any effects. Both cases were dry. This also was pretty damn obvious when i went from playing something back in a plugin INSIDE Renoise, and rendering that plugin to a sampled Renoise instrument. There was a huge loss in brightness and clarity once it was playing back samples. The original sound was Kontakt. There shouldn't have been a difference, but there was.

[Jace-BeOS]

EDIT : I will even add something that shows even better my feeling about this. I used to be a Reason fanboy actually. So my perception was biased toward Reason at the time. I already told this story somewhere else on the forum but it is the perfect place. At the time (something like ten years before), I was with my friend using Reason and loving it (came from a DOS tracker, we were amazed by the gorgeous sound of Reason washed in FX and the lively synths comparing to dry pitched samples). Some day, just out of curiosity we tried FL Studio demo (Fruity Loops at the time), and at first glance were not impressed at all, ugly GUI, toyish feeling, the synths GUI were not appealing (we were young ). But as soon as we wrote a 4 bar beat with a stupid synthesized bassline (a saw and a filter) and it was sounding so full, so gorgeous comparing to our countless hours projects in Reason ^^

This is actually really interesting to me because you mentioned having started on trackers, and you are describing exactly my feeling about trackers: something very hard to define is missing in a sound when played back through a tracker, and this includes the top of the line Renoise. i got into a forum discussion about this problem at Renoise's site, and unintentionally started a huge mess... where exactly one person out of twenty said they agreed with me and everyone else was doing null tests and crap to prove that i was imagining it.

Um.. Because you were? unless re noise is faulty, it should null with other daws.

i know, that's the problem. That's why there was a large debate. But i wasn't. It was obviously different. Part of it might be that the playback through the tracker engine is going through a multitrack mixing routine and the sample is losing volume which is done to avoid clipping (see other posts about Reason's sample players doing the same).

One of the developers did some null tests and showed us, with charts, graphs, oscilloscopes and whatnot, that it was a 1 to 1 exact duplicate output. He asked me to provide some recordings showing the difference. At the time, i had already given up on trackers for this and other reasons, and had only posted my forum thread to see if there was any clear answer because, at that moment, i had just tested Renoise's plugin to instrument renderer and found a huge difference in playback volume and apparent sample quality. The developer didn't have the exact plugin to test on his end. i was not in a position to start recording samples and uploading them for discussion (in fact, i think i very soon had packed up all my studio stuff for a house reconstruction project).

i apologized for causing a debate without providing any materials for anyone to listen to, but they didn't seem to be upset whatsoever, and were really curious themselves to know what i was experiencing. And again, there was at least ONE other guy that agreed with me from his own personal experiences, so i wasn't totally alone ;hihi:. We were all quite interested in understanding the phenomenon, but there was no resolution. If i cared enough about trackers, i'd get back into figuring it out, but i just don't care enough. i have Renoise so i can resurrect old MOD and XM projects from my past, not to create final product. It's not really my environment any more. i only got into trackers at all because it was the absolute most cost-effective method to start making music back in the day

[Jace-BeOS]

I believe most people still judge sounds quality by volume and the looks of the graphics.
The power of imagination in the brain is not to be underestimated.

I don't blame anyone. You can find several example of top producers tweaking sounds several times before finally realising they're tweaking the wrong plugin or channel.

Yeah, it's funny when you are looking for that subtle change and it keeps feeling not quite right... then you realize you're on the wrong track and when you adjust for your goof, it's like "how the hell did i not notice i was not changing anything??"

[Jace-BeOS]

I believe most people still judge sounds quality by volume and the looks of the graphics.
The power of imagination in the brain is not to be underestimated.

I don't blame anyone. You can find several example of top producers tweaking sounds several times before finally realising they're tweaking the wrong plugin or channel.

Yep. There's a lot of ridiculous subjective judgement going on all the time, and no one really seems to realize that "better" and "worse" as such abstract and meaningless concepts when it comes down to something like music.

In the end, it's the notes, the intervals, the silence, the chord progressions that count, not some bloody ridiculous subjective perception of 'high quality sounds' which never makes any bloody sense at all.

Eh... there is a TON of awesome music out there in tracker format that tells you exactly what tool it was made in (as in, a tracker, not which tracker), because of 8-bit samples, aliasing, and, of course, tracker style note effects. Some of it is so good, i wish it could be mastered for CD for ease of listening access. But the aliasing is not fixable and sometimes is an essential part of the character of the sounds. But quality definitely matters to a degree.

But once we get to Reason and whatnot... meh... i think the tools sound fantastic in general. Prior to Record (and Record being merged with Reason), the only real evidence of a song being made in reason was to recognize a specific sample or preset, and ... the fact that it was largely instrumental!

[Tronam]

Aliasing is harder for me to hear with high quality samples unless pitched up quite a bit. I don't ever hear it when pitched down. It was a lot more noticeable in the 8-bit days of Protracker on Amiga, but the DACs on those systems were somehow more forgiving and sounded way different than if I play my old mods on a modern PC or Mac. I still haven't found a bitcrusher that mimics the "character" of those old systems in the way they played back and repitched samples.

Regarding audio engine comparisons between all these various programs, I think what's far more important is finding one that fuels your creativity. Everyone approaches the process of music making a little differently, so whatever program helps you be more productive should win out in the end.