Some News relative to REASON STUDIOS ?

[Lutin mutin]

At the last NAMM Show, Reason Studios presented the OBJEKT synth plugIn.

After that, they explain in the news page and in the blog page in their website, that they will work on the VST3 transition of their products (actually done), the acceptance by Reason of the VST3 plugins inside Racks and Reason DAW (actually done), on hi-resolution GUI (actually done) and on new Apple standard compatibility (actually done).

Actually on their website, no news at all for a long time : no news on products, on future strategies, on development products, etc...

This 2024 year, they are not "officially" present at the NAMM Show : the Reason Studios company is not listed in the NAMM Show exhibitors list.

Have you some news ?

[xbitz]

A bug fix beta version was released a few hours ago, still fixing the VST3s, hopefully by no more than one person.

[Trensharo]

Giving roadmaps obligates them. Companies prefer not being obligated. It hamstrings them, and forces them into a specific development path that they may later decide they'd rather abandon - but cannot without heavily damaging their credibility and reputation.

This is why most companies don't make these types of announcements anymore. Not even PreSonus, who release big feature updates, gives forecasts on what they "plan" to develop. Users simply wait and see.

The only companies that do this are those who use different business models - like buy once and upgrade forever (FL Studio) - and they are very much minority exceptions.

Reason's damage has been done, IMO. I think they are all in on the Rack Plug-in and will do bare minimum to make the base DAW worth upgrading moving forwards. The work they needed to do to set themselves up better at the current time was lost to a lack of development over a decade+ time. It's baiscally in the same place that software like Vegas, Sound Forge and Acid Pro are in. No matter how enthusiastic MAGIX may have been to revive those titles, there was no way to really get them back to their previous places in their markets because the opportunity cost had already been paid by Sony's lack of development of the product.

Reason Studios has a similar problem.

Competitors lapped them while they did very little, and because competitors are still going full steam ahead, they will always be in a position where the disparity is so huge that they cannot compete - except among their own current/legacy user community.

-----

I do hope they are hard at work on improving the base DAW. Their users deserve it, especially with how much they have risen the price of both the DAW and Upgrades.

I hate Reason 12, but I never use it because it just doesn't bring any value or improvement in workflow when used as a Rack Plug-in. The instruments aren't good enough to eat any perceived inconvenience on my end, either. I actually removed it from my systems, because it's like 13-15GB of wasted space utilization on my system SSD, and on Windows it pollutes my User Music Folder (where I actually have... Music) with application data.

[Jac459]

On my side I hope they will go full throttle on RRP.
I share the feeling than catching up on DAW will be hard. So why fight lost battles?

On the other hand they still are among the best instrument makers. They should refocus on that. If they publish Objekt as a VST3, can you imagine the splashing success it would be? Certainly instrument of the year....

[Psuper]

I used and loved Reason from v3 to v9...

...but their ship left ages ago in their DAW department, burned their sails to ashes in the 3rd party RE development, blew a hole in their hull in their R&D department and tossed out their last corked 'save me! bottle which sank immediately after striking a 'customer service life boat'... which also sank.

[Atlatnesiti]

I used and loved Reason from v3 to v9...

...but their ship left ages ago in their DAW department, burned their sails to ashes in the 3rd party RE development, blew a hole in their hull in their R&D department and tossed out their last corked 'save me! bottle which sank immediately after striking a 'customer service life boat'... which also sank.

Don’t necessarily agree with you as I’m happy Reason Sub user but I have to admit that your post is witty and very funny

[i need Help]

IMO the brightest future for Reason is ditch the DAW and just focus on the RRP.

Most of the user base complains and criticizes about most everything about the DAW anyways. Idk where it came from but “Making Reason as good as it can be” is the go-to sarcastic remark when someone asks anything about Reason news or it’s future over on the Reasontalk forums.

Just put the horse down and get it over with.

[jjpscott01]

Nah I love the DAW and it does everything I need. In many cases it does it much better than other DAW's do for me. I hope they continue to focus on the standalone software. I've used every other DAW outside of Logic and Reason just works exactly the way I want it to and I make more music in it than any other software.

Go to any other DAW's forum thread and you'll find all the same comments about how the company has abandoned its users and don't care about the software anymore. I don't buy it in those comments and I certainly don't here either. Reason has a huge user base and the are plenty of YouTube channels with artists making great music using the standalone DAW. It's not going anywhere any time soon.

[jclosed]

While I had fun with Reason for a few years (although it never was my main DAW), I felt they started lagging with upgrades already a few years ago. The final blow came when they went for the subscription model. If there is one thing that put me directly off with programs (and that's not only with DAW's), it is a subscription model. It's one of the reasons (there are some more of course) that I never wanted to have Protools, and it's the main reason I dropped Reason (sounds funny by the way).

So - I sold the Reason license (together with my Ableton Live license, but that one for another reason), and bought Bitwig in stead. I would maybe have kept Reason if they had not went down the subscription route, but they have, and so I moved on.

Still - I wonder if there will be significant updates in the future. For now it feels like stagnation with some maintenance. And I have the feeling it does not go well. But maybe I will be surprised. We will see...

[apoclypse]

I kind of feel like Reason's "gimmick" got old real fast. Like it was cool when it first came out but dragging and dropping tiny cables behind a mess of other cables was annoying. Especially if I wanted to a create a drum bus, or do something as simple as a return channel. Their adherence to skeuomorphism (in most cases unnecessarily) has become tedious. When I was younger I thought it was cool, but now I don't really want to deal with all of that. Something that takes forever to do in Reason I can do in a few minutes in another DAW. When you start doing heavier sessions things become a mess of cables, racks, and managing the different views quickly. I just don't have the bandwidth to deal with that anymore.

[i need Help]

I’d have to look for it, if it hasn’t been taken down, but Matius from Reason Studios did an ad-hoc interview a few years ago (NAMM or some other music trade show where ppl walk up and stick a camera in your face) where he basically said the quiet part out loud; that (paraphrasing) the goal of Reason isn't to be an actual start-to-finish DAW, but to be a tool to get your creativity going and to start a song idea, not finish it.

Literally said something to the effect of “If you’re wanting to get very technical and master a final project, maybe Reason is not for you.”

It caused a little bit of a fire in the corner of the basement of the empty house in the ghost town where most Reason user reside lol.

I say that last part as a reason user myself, albeit a self-aware reason user. It’s fun. It’s creative. It’s inspiring. But it’s like the red headed stepchild of the DAW family.

That’s why I say trim the fat and ditch the DAW. Reason is more viable as an instrument and effects rack plugin.

[jens]

I kind of feel like Reason's "gimmick" got old real fast. Like it was cool when it first came out but dragging and dropping tiny cables behind a mess of other cables was annoying. Especially if I wanted to a create a drum bus, or do something as simple as a return channel. .

No, that is incorrect - you do not need to touch any virtual cables for this at all. There's a lot of great Reason tutorial-videos around. If you are interested in usign Reason, I can whleheartedly recommend them. The programm is actually quite easy to learn - imo easier than most other DAWs.

[jens]

I’d have to look for it, if it hasn’t been taken down, but Matius from Reason Studios did an ad-hoc interview a few years ago (NAMM or some other music trade show where ppl walk up and stick a camera in your face) where he basically said the quiet part out loud; that (paraphrasing) the goal of Reason isn't to be an actual start-to-finish DAW, but to be a tool to get your creativity going and to start a song idea, not finish it.

Literally said something to the effect of “If you’re wanting to get very technical and master a final project, maybe Reason is not for you.”

It caused a little bit of a fire in the corner of the basement of the empty house in the ghost town where most Reason user reside lol.

I say that last part as a reason user myself, albeit a self-aware reason user. It’s fun. It’s creative. It’s inspiring. But it’s like the red headed stepchild of the DAW family.

That’s why I say trim the fat and ditch the DAW. Reason is more viable as an instrument and effects rack plugin.

Sorry, but that is complete nonsense in its entirety - that your remember someone saying something somwhere at some point in time is your argument for Reason not being useful as a DAW?

Don't you realise how silly saying something like this is? What happened to facts and arguments?

For the record: it is perfectly possible to use Reason as your DAW to create entire songs start to finish, multitrack-audio (if need be) and all.

[Jac459]

I don't think we can have any doubt on the fact that Reason 12 is plenty of power to do songs start to finish... It is a fantastic tool, like many of the top DAWs.

That being said, we can also agree that Reason Studios has had some strong delays on delivering key features that has upset their core users to the max.
I am thinking of VST3 support and Apple Silicon native.

To me, it was never blocking issues but I really started to look outside Reason because of the negativity and aggressivity of its community.
If you look at ReadonTalk forum, KVR is a peaceful heaven in comparison.

I don't really understand this mindset. If you don't like something, just buy something else and shut the F.... up.

[apoclypse]

I kind of feel like Reason's "gimmick" got old real fast. Like it was cool when it first came out but dragging and dropping tiny cables behind a mess of other cables was annoying. Especially if I wanted to a create a drum bus, or do something as simple as a return channel. .

No, that is incorrect - you do not need to touch any virtual cables for this at all. There's a lot of great Reason tutorial-videos around. If you are interested in usign Reason, I can whleheartedly recommend them. The programm is actually quite easy to learn - imo easier than most other DAWs.

I think we've been through this before. I've been a Reason user since 2.5. I know how to use Reason. I was a fairly advanced Reason user for years.

One thing I used to do all the time is take all the outputs of Redrum and pass them to a 14:2 mixer (to add compressors EQs etc to each drum). It's how I've worked with Reason since at least 3.0. It's why I work like that on my current DAWs. This is extremely tedious to do in Reason. In Logic, mixer channels for each drum pad gets added automatically by DMD in the mixer. I can drop inserts and re-order at my leisure without having to worry about cable routing (or use a tedious to use drop down). In Studio One, I just have to assign an output to a pad in Impact, it will automatically assign mixer channels for me. Live, Bitwig, etc automatically route each drum to their own channel inside of the Rack. In Reason I have to tediously go though each drum output and either pass the cable to individually created mixer channels (so they show up in the mixer view as channels) or in my case 14:2 mixer input manually. That's what I mean by Drum Bus.

For Return channels you do need to route cables. Sure you can right click and add a send and it will autoroute for you, but then when you start adding EQs, compressors, etc to the send chain you are dealing with..cables. It's tedious and Reason's autorouting is sometimes stupid. To avoid that I create aux tracks in Reason and then I have to manually route those aux tracks into the send channels on the Master Section. Now the sends show up in the mixer as a mix channels (like almost every DAW out there). I can use the insert section to add effect in whatever order I want and can use the mix channel to level everything out, compress, eq, even pass into other sends. But you need to do that manually (with routing/cabling), Reason won't do that for you. In most other DAWs all this is handled automatically for you.