Reason 13 Announced- Sequencer updated!

[musikarldererste]

nowadays many companys make bad business moves
i dont know why , because happy customers are very important
look at reason such a fun daw , but highly priced and very few improvements

and now bitwig do the same dick move
i dont understand this because they have so much potential but ....

[two_tone]

. ...

Someone should also look into whether they can legally (in the EU) force perpetual license holders into a subscription scheme to continue using products they already "own" as I guarantee you that's on the agenda between now and the current ownership selling the IP after they're sure they've wrung every last possible cent out of it while making a once beloved small company one of the most toxic brands in the industry, driving away its creative talent, and making sure the entire userbase holds them in well-earned contempt.

That's a kind of odd accusation.

You have all the rights to be upset against the current owner but:
1 - how did you know that they will sell?
2 - how do you know the next owner?
3 - how do you know the intentions of the next owner?

Either you are very very well informed either you have a creative imagination

I didn't say I know the next owner or their intentions. I 'guarantee' they'll sell because they're a private equity firm that isn't in the business of long term ownership. Obviously I don't 'know' the future but it seems highly likely given the nature of their business and their actions since acquiring a majority stake in propellerheads which have clearly demonstrated over the course of several years that they're a run of the mill vulture capitalist firm that has no other concerns beyond intentionally looting and destroying things other people have built to make as much money as possible in the least amount of time while screwing the original ownership, employees, customers, insurers, etc as needed along the way.

They are what one of my favorite characters from Succession called 'basic b***h corporate raiders' and not particularly clever ones even by the standards of EU wallstreet wannabee firms. The fact that their behavior re propellerheads has also clearly demonstrated they're utterly clueless and incompetent in addition to being wildly amoral and rapacious only makes it all the more likely they'll end up selling the IP to extract whatever value their asinine mismanagement of the company hasn't already destroyed.

[LaLivre]

. ...

Someone should also look into whether they can legally (in the EU) force perpetual license holders into a subscription scheme to continue using products they already "own" as I guarantee you that's on the agenda between now and the current ownership selling the IP after they're sure they've wrung every last possible cent out of it while making a once beloved small company one of the most toxic brands in the industry, driving away its creative talent, and making sure the entire userbase holds them in well-earned contempt.

That's a kind of odd accusation.

You have all the rights to be upset against the current owner but:
1 - how did you know that they will sell?
2 - how do you know the next owner?
3 - how do you know the intentions of the next owner?

Either you are very very well informed either you have a creative imagination

I didn't say I know the next owner or their intentions. I 'guarantee' they'll sell because they're a private equity firm that isn't in the business of long term ownership. Obviously I don't 'know' the future but it seems highly likely given the nature of their business and their actions since acquiring a majority stake in propellerheads which have clearly demonstrated over the course of several years that they're a run of the mill vulture capitalist firm that has no other concerns beyond intentionally looting and destroying things other people have built to make as much money as possible in the least amount of time while screwing the original ownership, employees, customers, insurers, etc as needed along the way.

They are what one of my favorite characters from Succession called 'basic b***h corporate raiders' and not particularly clever ones even by the standards of EU wallstreet wannabee firms. The fact that their behavior re propellerheads has also clearly demonstrated they're utterly clueless and incompetent in addition to being wildly amoral and rapacious only makes it all the more likely they'll end up selling the IP to extract whatever value their asinine mismanagement of the company hasn't already destroyed.

Mhh nah, even before the investors appeared, many users wanted markers or track folders, not a good argument in my eyes. I would simply call it catastrophic management and catastrophic communication in itself for a long, long, long time ... and thats the reason this company NEEDED investors at all!

I think at some point - maybe around the Reason 6 era - they just stopped listen to their users wishes and created devices, devices, devices and more stuff which is nice but nobody asked for - until today. I think this long lasting and ultra bad internal (product) management is the main reason, but I have no deep insights.

[Pillimees]

I've been a Reason user since version 5. But since its development wasn't going in the right direction for me, I gave up in the meantime. But if there was a sale now, I thought why not and bought the new version, one-time payment. And I quite like it. The new authorization system is very convenient and simple. I often had problems with the old system. Since I'm online all the time anyway, it's not a problem for me to authorize myself once a month (or a year). Speaking of Reason itself though, yes, the old quirks are still here. For example, the mute and solo buttons on the sequencer and mixer are not related to each other. Why? No other DAW has this. I'm also not interested in new instruments and effects, I have enough good VSTs for that. But the new browser is quite good in my opinion. If I remember correctly, the old one wasn't the most comfortable. But the main thing is that Reason is still visually very beautiful and, despite several shortcomings, compared to other DAWs, very fun to use. And it seems to be rock solid on my Mac Mini, everything works flawlessly so far.

[Jac459]

. ...

Someone should also look into whether they can legally (in the EU) force perpetual license holders into a subscription scheme to continue using products they already "own" as I guarantee you that's on the agenda between now and the current ownership selling the IP after they're sure they've wrung every last possible cent out of it while making a once beloved small company one of the most toxic brands in the industry, driving away its creative talent, and making sure the entire userbase holds them in well-earned contempt.

That's a kind of odd accusation.

You have all the rights to be upset against the current owner but:
1 - how did you know that they will sell?
2 - how do you know the next owner?
3 - how do you know the intentions of the next owner?

Either you are very very well informed either you have a creative imagination

I didn't say I know the next owner or their intentions. I 'guarantee' they'll sell because they're a private equity firm that isn't in the business of long term ownership. Obviously I don't 'know' the future but it seems highly likely given the nature of their business and their actions since acquiring a majority stake in propellerheads which have clearly demonstrated over the course of several years that they're a run of the mill vulture capitalist firm that has no other concerns beyond intentionally looting and destroying things other people have built to make as much money as possible in the least amount of time while screwing the original ownership, employees, customers, insurers, etc as needed along the way.

They are what one of my favorite characters from Succession called 'basic b***h corporate raiders' and not particularly clever ones even by the standards of EU wallstreet wannabee firms. The fact that their behavior re propellerheads has also clearly demonstrated they're utterly clueless and incompetent in addition to being wildly amoral and rapacious only makes it all the more likely they'll end up selling the IP to extract whatever value their asinine mismanagement of the company hasn't already destroyed.

Mmm, I partly agree with you. I have a deep knowledge of financial software ecosystem and private equity has totally destroyed this market (just look at finastra) to a point that banks are going back to developing their software themselves.

But these private equity are not that stupid to the point you are saying. I mean they are greedy and not that smart. But not to this caricatural point.

[Jac459]

Continuing on my point, I believe, private equities have done for this release what they do best which is chronically under-investing.

The problem of release 13 is not the quality of the release. It is ok to prioritize the DAW. It is ok to add a few extensions.

The problem is the quantity. At a turning point moment of reason history, where people starts to doubt. They propose 1 new synth... A VA on top of that. Certainly not the most complex and innovative synth to do considering the massive trend on VA of the 2010s.

Remember the v11 there was Europa AND grain, 2 ground breaking instruments.
Europa introducing a unique flavour of wavetable vs spectral synthesis and grains which remains for me one of the best granular instrument of the market (and yes, I have novum, PP, SM3...).

[SYXONEPRO]

I really wanted to love Reason 13, I really did. The update seemed very promising. I dislike the browser, I like the new sequencer but i guess I'm spoiled and want more. Reverted back to reason 12. I'm going to need more from Reason studios.

[jlgrimes11]

. ...

Someone should also look into whether they can legally (in the EU) force perpetual license holders into a subscription scheme to continue using products they already "own" as I guarantee you that's on the agenda between now and the current ownership selling the IP after they're sure they've wrung every last possible cent out of it while making a once beloved small company one of the most toxic brands in the industry, driving away its creative talent, and making sure the entire userbase holds them in well-earned contempt.

That's a kind of odd accusation.

You have all the rights to be upset against the current owner but:
1 - how did you know that they will sell?
2 - how do you know the next owner?
3 - how do you know the intentions of the next owner?

Either you are very very well informed either you have a creative imagination

I didn't say I know the next owner or their intentions. I 'guarantee' they'll sell because they're a private equity firm that isn't in the business of long term ownership. Obviously I don't 'know' the future but it seems highly likely given the nature of their business and their actions since acquiring a majority stake in propellerheads which have clearly demonstrated over the course of several years that they're a run of the mill vulture capitalist firm that has no other concerns beyond intentionally looting and destroying things other people have built to make as much money as possible in the least amount of time while screwing the original ownership, employees, customers, insurers, etc as needed along the way.

They are what one of my favorite characters from Succession called 'basic b***h corporate raiders' and not particularly clever ones even by the standards of EU wallstreet wannabee firms. The fact that their behavior re propellerheads has also clearly demonstrated they're utterly clueless and incompetent in addition to being wildly amoral and rapacious only makes it all the more likely they'll end up selling the IP to extract whatever value their asinine mismanagement of the company hasn't already destroyed.

Mhh nah, even before the investors appeared, many users wanted markers or track folders, not a good argument in my eyes. I would simply call it catastrophic management and catastrophic communication in itself for a long, long, long time ... and thats the reason this company NEEDED investors at all!

I think at some point - maybe around the Reason 6 era - they just stopped listen to their users wishes and created devices, devices, devices and more stuff which is nice but nobody asked for - until today. I think this long lasting and ultra bad internal (product) management is the main reason, but I have no deep insights.

I think Reason 7 and 8 still had a good deal of workflow focus. Yes they still made questionable and controversial decisions then but 6 they were still in a pretty highly innovative period. 6 I think was the combining of Record and Reason. It was controversial in people thought it was an unfair upgrade but Props had users name their own price which almost made the upgrade basically free. I see no problem with that.
Reasons biggest issues always has been stubbornness and slower paced development.

I think it was the upgrade where Europa, and Grain were released that really threw me for a loop. Reason were behind in synths but IMO not severely behind and at that point there were many incredible RE developers with fairly affordable synth prices for (nice synths). Many of these companies unlike RE had aggressive update cycles which made the RE market interesting. Europa and Grain are great synths but i think it was too much at one time, and put Reason in direct competition with 3rd party RE developers. A little competition is nice but to me it felt below the belt. Since then I see that alot of those developers has left. I think REs were a missed opportunity for Reason as it could have allowed them to spend less resources on developing synths and effects (or even hiring certain 3rd party developers for special projects), but put more focus on workflow development of DAW and RE technology itself. I think even a free version of Reason would have been a great idea (minimal basic stock devices, but users pick their REs either a la carte or via upgrade packages). Now it's just hindsight and I'm not even sure if it is all the Capital Investors fault as other companies also deal with them but usually the bad decisions don't always seem that bad at least initially.

But Props even in their heyday period always suffered from stubbornness and not addressing the elephant in the room. I think though in the heyday they were still innovating and Reason was a unique and stable product that offered some fresh air to their competition which tended to have faster update cycles but often buggy releases and resource hungry programs.

[jlgrimes11]

Continuing on my point, I believe, private equities have done for this release what they do best which is chronically under-investing.

The problem of release 13 is not the quality of the release. It is ok to prioritize the DAW. It is ok to add a few extensions.

The problem is the quantity. At a turning point moment of reason history, where people starts to doubt. They propose 1 new synth... A VA on top of that. Certainly not the most complex and innovative synth to do considering the massive trend on VA of the 2010s.

Remember the v11 there was Europa AND grain, 2 ground breaking instruments.
Europa introducing a unique flavour of wavetable vs spectral synthesis and grains which remains for me one of the best granular instrument of the market (and yes, I have novum, PP, SM3...).

While Europa and Grain are great devices, I think that release was the beginning of the "newer Era" of Reason. That was still a highly controversial update. Many users were highly upset that virtually no workflow improvements were delivered and those devices might have been the beginning of some bad decisions to their RE platform or at least in the perspective of a healthy 3rd party developer base. Europa and Grain were clear preparation for their next update (developing a Rack Plugin). In itself the Rack Plugin is a pretty innovative idea and opens up Reason and REs to VST users. But still no workflow improvements in two update cycles are really pissing off users. And that release was one of the skimpiest updates I remembered for any DAW. I don't remember if this is were they introduced Reason + but if it was, it was also a time were it looked like they were actively intentionally trying to hurt their 3rd party RE developers. I even saw a few innovative 3rd party developers call it quits at that time and I never understood the purpose of that move. If it was the capital investors idea, it was very stupid as I doubt that update made much short term Revenue and they Murdered alot of their long term 3rd party Re sales which I guess probably isn't that big to begin with but more 3rd party developers is more revenue, more interesting 3rd party products = more Reason users in the long term.

[Jac459]

Continuing on my point, I believe, private equities have done for this release what they do best which is chronically under-investing.

The problem of release 13 is not the quality of the release. It is ok to prioritize the DAW. It is ok to add a few extensions.

The problem is the quantity. At a turning point moment of reason history, where people starts to doubt. They propose 1 new synth... A VA on top of that. Certainly not the most complex and innovative synth to do considering the massive trend on VA of the 2010s.

Remember the v11 there was Europa AND grain, 2 ground breaking instruments.
Europa introducing a unique flavour of wavetable vs spectral synthesis and grains which remains for me one of the best granular instrument of the market (and yes, I have novum, PP, SM3...).

While Europa and Grain are great devices, I think that release was the beginning of the "newer Era" of Reason. That was still a highly controversial update. Many users were highly upset that virtually no workflow improvements were delivered and those devices might have been the beginning of some bad decisions to their RE platform or at least in the perspective of a healthy 3rd party developer base. Europa and Grain were clear preparation for their next update (developing a Rack Plugin). In itself the Rack Plugin is a pretty innovative idea and opens up Reason and REs to VST users. But still no workflow improvements in two update cycles are really pissing off users. And that release was one of the skimpiest updates I remembered for any DAW. I don't remember if this is were they introduced Reason + but if it was, it was also a time were it looked like they were actively intentionally trying to hurt their 3rd party RE developers. I even saw a few innovative 3rd party developers call it quits at that time and I never understood the purpose of that move. If it was the capital investors idea, it was very stupid as I doubt that update made much short term Revenue and they Murdered alot of their long term 3rd party Re sales which I guess probably isn't that big to begin with but more 3rd party developers is more revenue, more interesting 3rd party products = more Reason users in the long term.

Interesting, I don't have the full history as I stopped music while my kids were small, it was the reason 3 to 10 period.

[Crossinger]

That was still a highly controversial update. Many users were highly upset that virtually no workflow improvements were delivered and those devices might have been the beginning of some bad decisions to their RE platform or at least in the perspective of a healthy 3rd party developer base. Europa and Grain were clear preparation for their next update (developing a Rack Plugin).

I vaguely remember meeting Mattias at Superbooth shortly after the release of version 10, and although he didn't say it verbatim, he gave me to understand that Reason had given up the race with the competition. With the release of version 11 came the Rack plugin and the subtle advertisement: if you like other workflows (Ableton Live, Cubase) better, use them.

[Jac459]

That was still a highly controversial update. Many users were highly upset that virtually no workflow improvements were delivered and those devices might have been the beginning of some bad decisions to their RE platform or at least in the perspective of a healthy 3rd party developer base. Europa and Grain were clear preparation for their next update (developing a Rack Plugin).

I vaguely remember meeting Mattias at Superbooth shortly after the release of version 10, and although he didn't say it verbatim, he gave me to understand that Reason had given up the race with the competition. With the release of version 11 came the Rack plugin and the subtle advertisement: if you like other workflows (Ableton Live, Cubase) better, use them.

But this update isn't RRP friendly. Did they change their mind?

[Crossinger]

I vaguely remember meeting Mattias at Superbooth shortly after the release of version 10, and although he didn't say it verbatim, he gave me to understand that Reason had given up the race with the competition. With the release of version 11 came the Rack plugin and the subtle advertisement: if you like other workflows (Ableton Live, Cubase) better, use them.

But this update isn't RRP friendly. Did they change their mind?

I don’t know. At least they are bouncing back and forth. After several years with lackluster advancements to their DAW core, they maybe felt they had to appease the diehard Reason DAW fans. But it still doesn't look as if they have resumed the race. Free minor updates from competitors still have more to offer than major releases from Reason Studios.

[Jac459]

I vaguely remember meeting Mattias at Superbooth shortly after the release of version 10, and although he didn't say it verbatim, he gave me to understand that Reason had given up the race with the competition. With the release of version 11 came the Rack plugin and the subtle advertisement: if you like other workflows (Ableton Live, Cubase) better, use them.

But this update isn't RRP friendly. Did they change their mind?

I don’t know. At least they are bouncing back and forth. After several years with lackluster advancements to their DAW core, they maybe felt they had to appease the diehard Reason DAW fans. But it still doesn't look as if they have resumed the race. Free minor updates from competitors still have more to offer than major releases from Reason Studios.

I fully understand Reason DAW lovers and how seeing this DAW loosing ground against the other must be tough...
But RS is still industry leading in some area. First the RRP while imperfect is still a very nice tool and part of my top plugins. 2nd, their physical modelling synths are second to none...
I feel they should take advantage of that...

[Crossinger]

First the RRP while imperfect is still a very nice tool and part of my top plugins. 2nd, their physical modelling synths are second to none...

I fully agree on both! I‘m still a heavy user of the RRP and love both, Friktion and Objekt!