Reason 10.2 is out!

[Psuper]

For all the stuff Propellerhead Reason severely lacks, the "Graphics" is by far the least important, and works way better in 4k than lower resolutions. Especially considering that those who demand it supposedly "make music" with Reason -- its an argument I find most hilarious, and frankly quite telling.

[EnochLight]

Ha..ha, I was teaching people how to use Reason from 2001 - up to 2014 and using it regularly till that point, I've barely opened it in 4 years though and when I have it's been to play with it vie Rewire a couple of times and look how small everything is.

Sure. I remember all of the threads you used to share featuring your GUI/UX redesigns at the PUF, and later Reasontalk. Those were interesting days, to say the least.

I'll make clearer what I said though...
When I said 'Can't', I really meant won't because that would break the current rack format (Rendering higher res RE's is possible to accommodate higher res screens as has been shown with that red and black thing they created but unworkable in the rack as it is).

That's actually changing what you said. In reference to supposedly supporting high dpi/res displays, what you actually said was:

but they can't. It would require the development of a complete new DAW and abandoning their legacy RE's on the way forward.

This is false. There is absolutely no need to develop a complete new DAW, nor abandon their legacy RE's "on the way forward". You've been absent from the Reason community and speaking with Propellerhead for many years, and you're coming off a bit naive. I know you got a lit of crap for your GUI/UX designs back in the day, and I know you're better than this. So really, just stop. I'm guessing you contribute to the Studio One community quite a bit now that it's your DAW of choice, right?

But anyway...I'm busy with other stuff, I've not eaten for 5 hours... so yeah... a new modern refreshed DAW is the way forward... I don't see that happening any time soon though, or perhaps ever... Hell they could give previous versions away of Reason away like they did with Rebirth... the first Propellerhead product I tested out way back in 2000... competition for CbB ... if they did.

Well, for all the busyness and lack of eating, you seem to make plenty of time to lurk any Reason thread, despite your disdain and workload in Studio One threads. Always nice to see you around, Scotty, but you're out of your department on this one.

For all the stuff Propellerhead Reason severely lacks, the "Graphics" is by far the least important, and works way better in 4k than lower resolutions. Especially considering that those who demand it supposedly "make music" with Reason -- its an argument I find most hilarious, and frankly quite telling.

It's certainly usable on 4K displays, though a bit blurry if you scale your apps up to make them bigger. But I can't cast judgement on those who demand proper 4K display support, and certainly don't find it funny. I mean really - 4K displays have been pushed for years, to the point were TV's now exceed on average computer displays (when it used to be the other way around)! You can't even buy any 1080p TV's at this point that aren't garbage compared to 4K displays, and computer displays have been moving in this direction for some time.

Who are we to judge those who only have 4K displays and want to work with Reason? I scale on a 1080p panel, and it's OK, but when I scale on my 4K panel, it makes me sad.

[THE INTRANCER]

........

Sounds angry today...

I'll keep it short...

New DAW called 'Reasonable'.

New devices, No more RE's, Full VST implementation, Node based building connectivity with online upload & collaboration = The Future

[Orbit-50]

All they need to do is draw higher resolution graphics that recreate the style of the original. They so far seem not to want to do this and I don’t understand why.

I can't remember who said it, i do remember it was a credible developer, but they were saying that it's a total pain in the balls, and a complete nightmare to rewrite a programs GUI for the sake of resizability and or higher resolution graphics. This is probably why so few developers have actually done this with their plugins, and probably never will. This was a plugin developer no less, so I could only imagine doing this for a DAW with so many more graphics elements would be even more of a headache. All one can do is see what the future holds as far as graphics updates are concerned. I'll bet that Propellerhead has it on their list though.

[EnochLight]

Sounds angry today...

Naaaa.. it just gets tedious.

[ATS]

All they need to do is draw higher resolution graphics that recreate the style of the original. They so far seem not to want to do this and I don’t understand why.

I can't remember who said it, i do remember it was a credible developer, but they were saying that it's a total pain in the balls, and a complete nightmare to rewrite a programs GUI for the sake of resizability and or higher resolution graphics. This is probably why so few developers have actually done this with their plugins, and probably never will. This was a plugin developer no less, so I could only imagine doing this for a DAW with so many more graphics elements would be even more of a headache. All one can do is see what the future holds as far as graphics updates are concerned. I'll bet that Propellerhead has it on their list though.

just because it is hard doesn't mean they shouldn't do it. A larger gui is expected nowadays, adapt or die.

[EnGee]

Still no Midi files preview! Come on Propellerhead!

[Tronam]

All they need to do is draw higher resolution graphics that recreate the style of the original. They so far seem not to want to do this and I don’t understand why.

They lack the artists in-house? Then outsource the work and make sure the original high resolution art materials are part of the work provided to them so small changes are easier in future.

They don’t see the profit gain in paying artists for the work?

That last one is my guess. That’s why I refuse to upgrade past version 7 until they create a version with high PPI graphics. Everyone else keeps upgrading, so my GUI protest goes alone.

I suspect that they’ll eventually replace the beautiful but tiny bitmap graphics with resizable vector graphics that are ultimately ugly, lazy, flat garbage.

I'm sure Propellerhead has been fully aware of this problem for years now. I remember a post on their blog way back in 2012 where they were joking about how Reason would look like a pencil running at native resolution on the first retina Macbook Pro.
EDIT: Found the post. https://web.archive.org/web/20120628152 ... crew/blog/

They even incorporated high-DPI "insurance" into the Rack Extension SDK from the very beginning allowing them to render out high resolution interface assets when needed. Surely there must be some technical reason why they haven't implemented it yet. Maybe quadrupling the size of all GUI assets impacts performance and/or memory footprint enough that it hasn't been practical yet. I hope we're not doomed to a flattened, simplified Reason interface in the high-DPI future.

[EnochLight]

I'm sure Propellerhead has been fully aware of this problem for years now. I remember a post on their blog way back in 2012 where they were joking about how Reason would look like a pencil running at native resolution on the first retina Macbook Pro.
EDIT: Found the post. https://web.archive.org/web/20120628152 ... crew/blog/

They even incorporated high-DPI "insurance" into the Rack Extension SDK from the very beginning allowing them to render out high resolution interface assets when needed. Surely there must be some technical reason why they haven't implemented it yet. Maybe quadrupling the size of all GUI assets impacts performance and/or memory footprint enough that it hasn't been practical yet. I hope we're not doomed to a flattened, simplified Reason interface in the high-DPI future.

hahahah - "Pencil Reason" - I remember this blog post! Man... 6 years later...

[Psuper]

It's certainly usable on 4K displays, though a bit blurry if you scale your apps up to make them bigger.

Reason is superior on 4k displays:

43" 4k at 100%, 10+ sequencer lanes, 10+ mixer channels, 3 side-by-side racks (and I hate Reasons' file browser but its showing as some people use it). Incredibly workable and quite easy on the eyes. No scaling needed, no time needing wasted here.

file.jpg

Like anything considered 'professional' you need the right equipment.

But I can't cast judgement on those who demand proper 4K display support, and certainly don't find it funny. I mean really - 4K displays have been pushed for years, to the point were TV's now exceed on average computer displays (when it used to be the other way around)! You can't even buy any 1080p TV's at this point that aren't garbage compared to 4K displays, and computer displays have been moving in this direction for some time.

4k is only useful for pure resolution numbers on LARGE displays, and makes no visible difference on smaller ones - you're far better off going 1440p on a 34" or lower as you get zero benefit. Besides, every other lower resolution monitor/tv is that can go beyond 60hz is superior to 4k --far more important for most things you use a monitor for.

Who are we to judge those who only have 4K displays and want to work with Reason? I scale on a 1080p panel, and it's OK, but when I scale on my 4K panel, it makes me sad.

The argument is not about poor you or someone else who can't run 4k successfully with your existing equipment. The argument is about what we, as users, should expect Propellerhead to put their time and effort into.

[antic604]

4k is only useful for pure resolution numbers on LARGE displays, and makes no visible difference on smaller ones - you're far better off going 1440p on a 34" or lower as you get zero benefit. Besides, every other lower resolution monitor/tv is that can go beyond 60hz is superior to 4k --far more important for most things you use a monitor for.

What if you don't have a choice because you're running it on a high-DPI laptop? For me Reason's GUI is either too big & pixelated or blurry, whereas I can - on the very same hardware - run Bitwig or Live just fine at any zoom level.

Yes, they need to fix that shit.

[keyman_sam]

Is it still the case that I can't send a midi input to 2 tracks simultaneously?

Say I wanted to layer a combinator and an external hardware synth, there seems to be no way to do this.

[EnochLight]

It's certainly usable on 4K displays, though a bit blurry if you scale your apps up to make them bigger.

Reason is superior on 4k displays:

43" 4k at 100%, 10+ sequencer lanes, 10+ mixer channels, 3 side-by-side racks (and I hate Reasons' file browser but its showing as some people use it). Incredibly workable and quite easy on the eyes. No scaling needed, no time needing wasted here.

file.jpg

Like anything considered 'professional' you need the right equipment.

Your picture demonstrates the primary problem very clearly: unless you have bionic eyesight and/or are sitting very close to your 43" panel, everything in your photo is microscopic. You suggesting this is a superior workflow seems odd (though I get that it may work for you).

4k is only useful for pure resolution numbers on LARGE displays, and makes no visible difference on smaller ones - you're far better off going 1440p on a 34" or lower as you get zero benefit. Besides, every other lower resolution monitor/tv is that can go beyond 60hz is superior to 4k --far more important for most things you use a monitor for.

Disagree. 4K is quite common on many laptops and/or Macs, and these are not large displays. But in a studio (whether it's home or pro), where one might like to have a large 65" 4K panel as a display, it only magnifies Reason's deficiency. Hell, even your photo magnifies the problem! I mean, again, it's cool you see this as a good thing, but come on, man - how far away do you sit from your monitor where you can read the text on the rack devices or sequencer??!

The argument is not about poor you or someone else who can't run 4k successfully with your existing equipment. The argument is about what we, as users, should expect Propellerhead to put their time and effort into.

The argument is that higher resolution displays are becoming the norm, not the exception, and Propellerhead were very well aware that this would be the case - which is why the assets for supporting 4K displays are provided for RE's. All of them. Every one ever submitted to the Prop Shop and put up for sale. The question is: how long is it going to take for Props to act on this, bake in the support to their legacy devices, and just "get it done"?

We can argue all day whether they should put the time in to do it or not, but we all know it needs to happen. Clearly things like fixing VST-performance needs to happen first, and that's supposedly going to appear within the next 2 and half months, so if they can do an entire "rewrite" for VST (performance) support in the time since they announced they'd address it, I would imagine adding proper 4K support shouldn't be much more difficult than that.

[EnGee]

I'll give it another 5 years before moving to 4k. It needs much more power than I have now to take an advantage of the 4k. Everything I have is configured with 1080p in mind. Reason as well.

To be honest, I'm using Ableton Live 9 (I'm digging it) and Cubase 9.5 now more than Reason 10. But I still like Reason 10 and it is my third DAW to go for now.
I'm using Reaper in auditioning drums patterns while using Reason (and Live sometimes). It is not that a great workflow! But functional (still Cubase is a king in this regard).

[Psuper]

/quote]

Your picture demonstrates the primary problem very clearly: unless you have bionic eyesight and/or are sitting very close to your 43" panel, everything in your photo is microscopic. You suggesting this is a superior workflow seems odd (though I get that it may work for you).

100% wrong Enoch.

Those icons/txt/etc is the same physical size as any daily computer user would expect -- if anything the size is bigger, since most of you have 24" or smaller 1440p screens. I sit 4' or more away from it especially when playing and see everything perfect.

Regardless, I don't buy into the "design the software for my laptop/desktop/etc specs", and Reason was FAR worse at lower resolutions trying to fit multiple fixed-size windows on <1080p displays, playing musical chairs with windows it was a huge pain in the ass for workflow.

With the ability (and necessity for everyday tasks anyway) to scale the desktop, you have a moot point. I don't even think most of you would even want the arduous task of constantly popping things bigger and smaller within reason - you'd scale it and be done with it as you do now.