Reason 12 is here

[gaggle of hermits]

Only the ancient waterfall-method stricly follows a long-ahead planned roadmap.

If EnochLight has 20 years of experience as a software engineer this should be really basic stuff for him one would think.

i expect someone with years of working in software does know this better than someone reading stuff up on wikipedia.

roadmaps are common in agile environments: https://www.atlassian.com/agile/product ... t/roadmaps

the fact that reason is dribbling out improvements in updates rather than all at once in big-bang releases suggests that they are in fact following at least some agile-development practices and have some kind of continuous integration flow going on.

[WatchTheGuitar]

Actually hybrid waterfall plus agile project development methodologies are pretty common these days where the long term strategy is waterfall, but the day to day dev work is agile

[jens]

the fact that reason is dribbling out improvements in updates rather than all at once in big-bang releases suggests that they are in fact following at least some agile-development practices and have some kind of continuous integration flow going on.

Actually hybrid waterfall plus agile project development methodologies are pretty common these days where the long term strategy is waterfall, but the day to day dev work is agile

Yes, that was exactly my point - and it perfectly aligns with their CEO's own statement.

[jens]

Here's something to learn for you then:

I'm well aware of the various development methodologies.

So why did you then comment a post by EnochLight, which fundamentally contradicted/denied the existance of these different methodologies with a sweeping generalization with "exactly"?

Is it because my"none of us can possibly know" rubbed you the wrong way as you guys prefer to be experts in the know instead?

[EnochLight]

Nope, in this very case it is an uniformed and false guess by the look of it - what you claim here directly contradicts what Reasonstudio's own CEO publicly states:

Things that are under investigation are things we are looking closely at. No decision has been made as to exactly what we’ll release and when.

Um… no. You do realize that I’ve been talking about the items listed in “under development” from that very blog post, right? That is neither false nor an uninformed guess.

Reasonstudio aside, I have been closely following the development of various products such as DAWs and plugins over the years, several times partaking in what was basically alpha testing,

You think you’re the only person in this discussion who does alpha testing?

But it’s all good. These are all just “opinions” anyway. I’m just glad we’re getting the items listed as “under development” over the next 3-4 months. Whether we see anything in the “under investigation” stuff is anyone’s guess.

[jens]

Nope, in this very case it is an uniformed and false guess by the look of it - what you claim here directly contradicts what Reasonstudio's own CEO publicly states:

Things that are under investigation are things we are looking closely at. No decision has been made as to exactly what we’ll release and when.

Um… no. You do realize that I’ve been talking about the items listed in “under development” from that very blog post, right? That is neither false nor an uninformed guess.

You do realize the items which are today listed "under development" may have been on the "perhaps" list yesterday?

Sorry, but none of what you say makes any sense. Reason 12 was oficially released eight days ago. Beta-testing started months ago and so did the discussions about it. All I said is that you can't know how much this "under development"-list was possibly affected by user feedback - feedback from last week perhaps, but also feedback from the last few months - to which you replied this can not be since - acording to you - the current roadmap had been set in stone for a long time because - according to you - that is how software development is always planned and organized.

I proved you why and how this sweeping generalization regarding software development is patently false. And that is all there is to it.

[EnochLight]

Reason 12 was oficially released eight days ago. Beta-testing started months ago

And alpha testing began far before that, as you should know.

Anyway, you do you, man. Never change. I think we can both agree to fundamentally disagree, and should probably leave it at that. Cool?

[jens]

Cool with that.

[Arashi]

I know it’s a long shot, but can we maybe talk about producing music with Reason?

Yeah, seriously. Let's do that.

I'm here in this thread because the Reason 12 update, while it may be sparse in new features so far, has rekindled my interest in playing around with ideas in the rack. Not just because it looks better (much better), but the GPU acceleration has eliminated a lot of the friction that made it a bit unpleasant to use.

Despite all the negativity around here (and everywhere else, it seems), I'm feeling more optimistic about the future of Reason than I have in years. I really appreciate them sharing their plans with us. As one of those dinosaurs who still buys the upgrades, it's good to know there's more coming over the next few months.

• VST3 is gonna be big for me, because I use a lot of Roland Cloud plugins, and Moog just released an AUv2/VST3 wrapper that lets you use their excellent Model 15 (an iOS app that now runs on Big Sur) as a plugin in other DAWs (it's only been available in Logic until now).
• It'll be nice to have the rest of the UI upgraded to high res as well.
• I've always liked the Combinator, so I'm having a lot of fun with the new version and looking forward to more control types being added.

Although I eventually switched to Logic, and more recently to Ableton Live (and Maschine), Reason was my first love (since the public betas before 1.0, and ReBirth before that), and I used it alongside Logic for many years via ReWire. While it's nice to be able to use Reason as a plugin, it's a more limited experience and not the same open playground, so I'm pretty happy to be messing around with the standalone app again. It's amazing that I can still open Reason songs from 20 years ago and they still work perfectly (probably won't be the case 20 years from now, because of VSTs).

Is anyone else out there still having fun with Reason? I know there are lots of things people have been asking for and waiting for, and there's been a lot of frustration and disappointment, but surely the reason we care in the first place is (even with its shortcomings) it's still one of the most unique tools for making music or just exploring sound.

[EnochLight]

Yeah, seriously. Let's do that.

I'm here in this thread because the Reason 12 update, while it may be sparse in new features so far, has rekindled my interest in playing around with ideas in the rack. Not just because it looks better (much better), but the GPU acceleration has eliminated a lot of the friction that made it a bit unpleasant to use.

Despite all the negativity around here (and everywhere else, it seems), I'm feeling more optimistic about the future of Reason than I have in years. I really appreciate them sharing their plans with us. As one of those dinosaurs who still buys the upgrades, it's good to know there's more coming over the next few months.

• VST3 is gonna be big for me, because I use a lot of Roland Cloud plugins, and Moog just released an AUv2/VST3 wrapper that lets you use their excellent Model 15 (an iOS app that now runs on Big Sur) as a plugin in other DAWs (it's only been available in Logic until now).
• It'll be nice to have the rest of the UI upgraded to high res as well.
• I've always liked the Combinator, so I'm having a lot of fun with the new version and looking forward to more control types being added.

Although I eventually switched to Logic, and more recently to Ableton Live (and Maschine), Reason was my first love (since the public betas before 1.0, and ReBirth before that), and I used it alongside Logic for many years via ReWire. While it's nice to be able to use Reason as a plugin, it's a more limited experience and not the same open playground, so I'm pretty happy to be messing around with the standalone app again. It's amazing that I can still open Reason songs from 20 years ago and they still work perfectly (probably won't be the case 20 years from now, because of VSTs).

Is anyone else out there still having fun with Reason? I know there are lots of things people have been asking for and waiting for, and there's been a lot of frustration and disappointment, but surely the reason we care in the first place is (even with its shortcomings) it's still one of the most unique tools for making music or just exploring sound.

I’m there with you. Well, more so in the sense that I’ve been aboard using Reason as my main DAW since Record + Reason 5 (I used Reason via ReWire from the 1.0 days until then with various other DAW those first years). It’s been a slow journey, but I’m happy with the direction they’re now taking. It’s still the only DAW I can open right now and feel instantly at home and inspired. It’s just… fun to work in. I’m more of a song writer and musician first, and its approach appeals to me for that. There are obviously other DAW more suited to audio engineering and producers, but I still find Reason more inspiring. And damn it looks good zoomed in now!

I can now properly shop for some 4K display options. I’ve literally been hanging on to old fashioned 1080p displays for Reason alone, and now I’m free. It’s nice. Took long enough!

[SLiC]

I am pretty late to the party (or maybe just in time, who knows) but I have a 34inch 4K main studio monitor and tried reason a few times before they offered HD/scaling and didn't get much past the way it looked (probably my bad).

The thing is, now I am using it I am just head over heels with the workflow- maybe because I am an (old) hardware guy (with 500hp of Eurorack!) but I am just taken with the rack/CV/audio cable paradigm. It's about the way it makes me 'feel' when using it...I have the other DAWS, I can use pretty much anything...I am choosing to open Reason as the workflow is so fast and 'fun' which is why I make music. Still not convinced about subscription (and I own 12) but I am also not writing it off...especially now I can get it for about tenner a month, I pay more for Spotify. I think it's pretty fun getting several new pre-set packs every week and I don't know of any other pro audio subscription service being that prolific, if they start adding high quality Combiner 2 stuff it will be even more tempting...may kill my VST gear lust and save me money!

[jens]

What I love most about Reason is the uncluttered and clean timeline/sequencer.

One main reason is that audio-clips are containers. It was the same in energyXT 1.x, which I also loved and which was my main DAW for quite some time. I don't get why most DAWs make this so messy and hard for the user. In Reason you can comp till the cows come home and it'll always be the same clip you loop-recorded to. You can of course split them or glue two or more together but the choice is yours. But it is always one layer above your takes - and to access them you only need to double-click the clip and the comp-editor automatically makes use of the whole screen and uses its own snap and zoom-settings. Brilliant. And to make it even better of this the both the pitch- and the slice-editor are just a click away (even though I don't get why these do NOT have their own snap- and zoom-values (both share their snap-settings with the comp-editor, while the pitch-editor also shares its zoom-state with the comp-editor but the slice-editor shares it with the main timeline - odd).

This is wildly different from most - if not all - other DAWs, where it all happens on the main timeline. (In Cubase you can (semi-)manually put your takes into containers ("Audio Parts") but it's messy and convoluted.)

Also it's the only DAW I know which offers a tuner (that doubles as an input-meter) on each audio-track-header - so nice!

And then there are the brilliant Blocks - and so forth. It's just very clean and reduced, but highly efficient.


Oh, and one other thing:

right now I am re-mixing songs I produced a couple of years ago - in Reaper - and I keep hitting alt+tab to switch to the mixer, which of course doesn't work (here I'd have to hit m instead). I got so used to being able to super-quickly switch between the maximized windows of the sequencer, the Rack and the mixer that I really miss it (I'm totally used to alt+tab anyway as I use it all the time (quickest way to e.g. switch between different Powerpoint-presentations or a presentation and an external video-file). In Reason basically everything is just one or two clicks away and it is so easy and fast to reach it all - lovely!

[aMUSEd]

Would be nice if they updated their keyboard and controller support - still completely skips my NI S Series mk II (and all NI keyboards in fact)

I suppose there has been no mention of MPE in the offing?

[aMUSEd]

Another problem with the Zoom is it makes the rack too deep for my monitor when over 140% but this isn't necessary as there is plenty of unused space, it's just the rack seems to have a fixed minimum depth. It would be better if it could be more freely resized from the bottom.

HiRes is not even complete in the rack - eg blurry icons for folder items and categories and blurry arrows.

Zoom is not fully thought through, why does it also need to expand the header at the top of the rack (where options etc are)? That's just taking up extra space for no reason.

[Arashi]

Would be nice if they updated their keyboard and controller support - still completely skips my NI S Series mk II (and all NI keyboards in fact)

Although it won’t detect your Komplete Kontrol S mk2 automatically, you can get the transport controls working by adding it as a Mackie Control (the KKS mk1 and 2 both support MCU). I have a mk1 and the transport controls work fine. Note that you also have to add it as a regular controller keyboard to use the keyboard and knobs. Let me know if you need more details.