Next Propellerhead Reason upgrade (9.5) to include VST support

[ezelkow1]

Heh, so ernst has a blog post now about why he thought it was time,
https://www.propellerheads.se/blog/when ... -in-reason

just..................ugh

[chk071]

I just want to say something about why we did it and what it means going forward. The reason is actually pretty simple: Because your music now requires it. Musicians get inspired by a lot of things, but the instruments and effects themselves are certainly a big part, if not the biggest. There’s been an enormous explosion of cool plugins over the last few years. As a musician it’s wonderful to see so many developers unleashing their creativity in designs of all shapes and forms. And we just didn’t want Reason musicians to miss out on that. It was that simple.

True true. On the other hand, i don't think it was solely his, or their decision. I'm pretty positive now that it was a requirment by the new owners, and they sat together, and simply had to implement it. And that business wasn't as rosy as it always has been constituted.

[EnochLight]

I just want to say something about why we did it and what it means going forward. The reason is actually pretty simple: Because your music now requires it. Musicians get inspired by a lot of things, but the instruments and effects themselves are certainly a big part, if not the biggest. There’s been an enormous explosion of cool plugins over the last few years. As a musician it’s wonderful to see so many developers unleashing their creativity in designs of all shapes and forms. And we just didn’t want Reason musicians to miss out on that. It was that simple.

True true. On the other hand, i don't think it was solely his, or their decision. I'm pretty positive now that it was a requirment by the new owners, and they sat together, and simply had to implement it. And that business wasn't as rosy as it always has been constituted.

While I don't doubt having it *helped* score the investment deal, it's been said repeatedly that VST was planned before the deal. In fact, the underlying architecture was written over 10 years ago.

[Rappo Clappo]

@chk071

Oh come on, it only shows Ernst is no longer in charge of a company which once was great and promising.
In 2007 the audio world laid down at their feet.

Then they decided to lay back.. coming up with expensive promo vids and such to promote their refills. It's from that moment reason went out of the door. The name 'refill' quickly degraded; the succes of NI Kontakt speaks for itself.

I mean which plugs are developed since the last 5 years that are so great now? A load of bollocks. But no explanation, because the simple explanation is that Ernst was wrong in 2012 about VST.

I am very pleased; the customer is king. And not the hype.

[Rappo Clappo]

"In fact, the underlying architecture was written over 10 years ago."

@EnochLight

Something is only a fact when the sources prove it. But you gave no source, so the above are your own words. Which means you have to give (a) source(s) otherwise it's bollocks.

[chk071]

The Reason devices are rather on a pre-2010 state. If Propellerhead would have wanted to please the people who believe in it as a "in-the-box" solution, which it, IMO, always was supposed to be, then they should have updated all of the included devices, and update all the GUI stuff too, becase, frankly, i can't see anyone over 50 being able to work with a GUI which is so small. If that all happened, and, they'd have a real killer synth, speak Thor mk.II included, i'm sure NOONE would ask for VST support. Actually, the reason people repeatedly asked for it shows the failure of the concept as such, because, if they had a good concept to start with, and maybe RE's to expand on this concept, noone would ever have asked. Obviously people think there's so many VST's which are of higher quality than Reason's included stuff, or, available as RE's. I don't think we would have had so many requests for VST's otherwise. Other VST hosts have something like combinators too (FL Studio, Studio One), and they're way ahead regarding the implementation of VST. I don't know, this is a half-assed move, and Ernst's blog entry really, really shows that.

Actually didn't want to rant that much, but, i can't help it. Just my 2c of course.

[EnochLight]

"In fact, the underlying architecture was written over 10 years ago."

@EnochLight

Something is only a fact when the sources prove it. But you gave no source, so the above are your own words. Which means you have to give (a) source(s) otherwise it's bollocks.

Thought this was common knowledge? Though, if you're not on Twitter or haven't been following this thread, it can be easily missed:

https://mobile.twitter.com/soniccharge/ ... 5595515904

[Rappo Clappo]

@EnochLight

Uhm... you have to come up with a public source from 2007. Common knowledge. You said it yourself. It's still bollocks to me. In fact you have proven yourself wrong twice already.

But... I am willing to offer you a third chance.

[Rappo Clappo]

"Sorry, we never comment on future releases of anything. But we will stay true to the central Reason paradigm of trying to get as many people as possible to make as much music as possible and have as much fun as possible doing it."

http://speakhertz.com/6809/interview-pr ... horst-boos

So there is no 2007 statement about VST. Case closed.

https://mobile.twitter.com/soniccharge

A tweet of Magnus Lidström (5K+ followers) is no proof of anything, let aside 'common knowledge' FYI

[EnochLight]

@EnochLight

Uhm... you have to come up with a public source from 2007. Common knowledge. You said it yourself. It's still bollocks to me. In fact you have proven yourself wrong twice already.

But... I am willing to offer you a third chance.

Hmmm.... So... a respected dev, who is known very publically to have worked with Propellerhead in the past (who also made their Malstrom synth), publicly states that he coded the VST support 10+ years ago, yet you still call "bullocks" and claim I've proven myself wong twice?

Seems like you've made up your mind about what reality you choose to inhabit. I'm afraid I can't help you with that.

I don't know Magnus personally, but I have no reason to believe he would lie.

[Rappo Clappo]

@EnochLight

He has to come up with proof. That's all. That's what I said. So far it is just mustard after dinner. At least, that is my impression. And since Ernst never made any statements about the future of Reason (or people have to prove them wrong on that statement), Magnus can literally say what he wants, but no one can prove it. It's as simple as it is, I am afraid.

PS I never said Magnus lied, I said it's bollocks until proven right. That are two different things. If Magnus said something with such relevance as VST support then he has to come up with proof. Just like any other person. We are not exactly talking about peanuts here, but of the survival of Reason.

And thus the survival of Magnus as well. Very simple facts. Otherwise they would not have rejected VST support all the time and now suddenly have implemented it. Or I am crazy. Could be.

But afaik there is no single trace of mentioning VST support in the history of Reason until recently. That is proof. No single trace. On the contrary, I'd say; Reason cs always explicitly have refused to implement VST support in Reason. The fact.

And still, you prove yourself wrong, for the third time, on the subject 'common knowledge' in any way. So I'll leave this subject from here for 'the spectators' of this nonsense. I already put waaaaay too much effort in it while you just were sucking on your thumb in the meanwhile, stating NOTHING relevant. As did Magnus in his tweet. As if twitter is any relevant for human conscience. Yeah for parrots. Maybe.

[EnochLight]

@EnochLight

He has to come up with proof. That's all. That's what I said. So far it is just mustard after dinner. At least, that is my impression. And since Ernst never made any statements about the future of Reason (or people have to prove them wrong on that statement), Magnus can literally say what he wants, but no one can prove it. It's as simple as it is, I am afraid.

Well sure, it's as simple as: do I believe a respected dev who is known to have worked with them before? Or do I "demand" more "evidence"?

You're suggesting Magnus is lying (either directly or inferring), which makes absolutely no sense, IMHO. He has no reason to lie, and certainly no reason to publically post that Tweet. He is known very publically to have worked with other companies as well (his work is all over Teenage Engineering), and many of the VST-to-AU conversions that are available now (Xfer's Serum in AU is one of them) were literally made possible using technology he released - for free.

https://twitter.com/soniccharge/status/ ... 4979791872

That said, I find him to be a much more trustworthy source of information on the matter (and certainly more trustworthy than me)! But sure, go ahead and believe what you want.

[EnochLight]

I don't know, this is a half-assed move, and Ernst's blog entry really, really shows that.

Actually didn't want to rant that much, but, i can't help it. Just my 2c of course.

I'm not sure I get anything half-assed out of the choice to support VST, even if we assume the blog post is just "damage control" (which I don't get anything like that either really, but I digress)..

But I'll also say: the implementation in 9.5 doesn't feel half-assed, at all - at least from a Reason rack context. It's near perfect, IMHO - aside from a few nagging things. I certainly prefer to use my VST in Reason as opposed to Studio One or Reaper, anyway (but I realize this boils down to personal preference).

And anyway, it's a "version 1.0" implementation. I'm sure we'll see improvements over the years, especially if the influx of customers keep requesting things. According to the completely non-scientific poll I ran over here and at Reasontalk, there's a good amount of people who have chosen to upgrade to 9.5 since VST was added, as well as some new customers who are either coming back or buying for the first time since VST was added.

Like Ernst's blog post, Reason's direction, or not - but that in itself speaks volumes.

[Rappo Clappo]

@EnochLight

Symbiosis

"Who Is It For?

This is a tool for developers. It was not designed to be used by end-users. The idea is that Symbiosis is packaged into the final product, either compiled into the product on source-code level or as a “wrapper” that bridges to your VST.

Symbiosis will be of great interest to you if you already have a VST plug-in running under Mac OS X and you now wish to support the Audio Unit format. With Symbiosis, there is no need to master and implement the Audio Unit interface yourself. Although plenty of documentation and examples are available for learning the art of Audio Unit coding, it is far from trivial to understand all aspects and details of this fairly complex API. Add to this the continuous work of supporting and maintaining the source code for two different plug-in interfaces and the advantage of using Symbiosis should be obvious.

The availability of Symbiosis may also makes VST a good choice as a first plug-in format for the beginner Mac developer who one day plan to port his / her plug-in to the VST-dominant environment of Windows.

Background

I developed Symbiosis partly because I needed such a tool for my own use, but also because I felt that all developers would benefit from a unified plug-in world with a single standard API. We will probably never be able to change the fact that certain hosts only work with certain plug-in formats, but at least, Symbiosis will make it feasible to support two of these formats with a minimal amount of overhead in code, work and continuous maintenance.

Symbiosis was first used in MicroTonic 2.0 in late 2005 and my plan was to release Symbiosis as open source shortly after that but other things kept me busy and it took over four years before it finally happened. Regardless, Symbiosis is used in numerous of commercial plug-ins today and there have been exceptionally few problems reported over these years.

Notice that the coding style of Symbiosis is a bit “old-school” C++. When I began writing it back in 2004 I was still concerned about the performance of STL etc. Today I wouldn’t have hesitated 1, but Symbiosis seems solid and very efficient as it is so I see no reason to change things now."

http://nuedge.net/article/5-symbiosis

What has this to do with VST support in Reason? Lol you are just looking for straws, little wonder.

[EnochLight]

What has this to do with VST support in Reason? Lol you are just looking for straws, little wonder.

I have to say, I admire your skepticism. I'm usually just as skeptic and require loads of evidence before making an informed decision, but you seem to really, really, reaaaaaaaally take things to the unnecessary extreme. It's like arguing with a creationist who thinks the world is 6000 years old...

I referenced Symbiosis simply to illustrate that Magnus is a respected dev who has worked with other companies (and offered things for free, such as Symbiosis) as proof of his character. i.e., He has no reason to lie.

So, not sure what your deal is? I mean, I'd say there's little wonder, but it's an enigma, I'm afraid.