KVR Audio

toitoi · Post by **toitoi** » Thu Oct 09, 2025 12:30 pm

The expression that comes to mind is: ‘rats are the first to flee a sinking ship.’ Maybe the company isn’t doing very well

oscillik · Post by **oscillik** » Thu Oct 09, 2025 2:09 pm

Gee I wonder why that is? Couldn't have anything to do with turning the software into a SaaS that bilks customers, and also killing decades of goodwill with previous customers who bought previous versions of the software by killing the authentication of said software.

I will never purchase anything from them ever again.

LaLivre · Post by **LaLivre** » Thu Oct 09, 2025 10:55 pm

oscillik wrote: Thu Oct 09, 2025 2:09 pm Gee I wonder why that is? Couldn't have anything to do with turning the software into a SaaS that bilks customers, and also killing decades of goodwill with previous customers who bought previous versions of the software by killing the authentication of said software.

I will never purchase anything from them ever again.

Expeacially no Rack Extensions, because you never can sell (or even transfer them for free) again. Yes, you even can't transfer them for free if you sell your Reason licence.

This is all so absurd. This company leaves you speechless (in a negative sense).

sin night · Post by **sin night** » Fri Oct 10, 2025 6:48 am

So, now it’s time for them to make a product with the name “REbuild”.

I’m still on an older version of Reason and it didn’t make it to my current computer, I have the dongle (so I’m safe from any drive issue, which are more likely to happen… years ago I had problems with the hard drive authorization once) attached to my previous computer just in case I need it.

As a user, I don’t like SaaS.

sellyoursoul · Post by **sellyoursoul** » Fri Oct 10, 2025 3:30 pm

Doesn't look like a good sign. I hope Propellerhead gets it together. I'm not a fan of SaaS and non-transferrable licenses for RE's. No RE's for me. I did upgrade during a recent sale from 6 to 13, just because the Reason rack VST and being able to run VST's. It would be good to see Reason get daw basics in place (and beyond), updated sound quality of old devices, and a modern sampler and sample library. More ok'ish synths and MIDI plugins isn't very exciting.

Sdav · Post by **Sdav** » Fri Oct 10, 2025 3:32 pm

I’ve just moved away from reason as a sequencer after 25 years, it was just getting too buggy.
The last straw was when synth 1 started crashing in Reason 13.
I filed a bug report and apparently the bug is in synth 1 (despite it working fine in Reason 12).
I’m now happily using a bug free synth 1 in Reaper.

jens · Post by **jens** » Mon Oct 13, 2025 2:00 pm

It's a bit of a bummer that he doesn't seem to have been kicked out, no? But maybe they suggested to him he'd better move on after all because they think it looks better for both of them (it doesn't) - and now he'll move on to ruin the next company.

Either way, the most important thing is he's gone - Mattias next please!

jens · Post by **jens** » Mon Oct 13, 2025 2:12 pm

And something I have been saying for years: dude never understood the market at all, because he absolutely isn't part of it at all - never was, never will be. He's not a musician, not an audio-engineer, not a coder. He came from a completely different market and now he left to a completely different market and any enthusiam whatsoever for the products sold was 100% fake.

VOODOO U · Post by **VOODOO U** » Mon Oct 13, 2025 2:53 pm

Who gives a f**k. You people supported it. It's that old saying, vote with your dollars and RS Studios is still around because people supported whatever was thrown at them. I left a loooong time ago and never looked back. Now I'm interested to see where it goes.

Crossinger · Post by **Crossinger** » Mon Oct 13, 2025 3:19 pm

toitoi wrote: Thu Oct 09, 2025 12:30 pm The expression that comes to mind is: ‘rats are the first to flee a sinking ship.’ Maybe the company isn’t doing very well

Doesn‘t look that bad:

https://www.allabolag.se/foretag/reason ... J64EI5YFHL

EBIT has even increased in 2024.

jens · Post by **jens** » Mon Oct 13, 2025 7:23 pm

Crossinger wrote: Mon Oct 13, 2025 3:19 pm
toitoi wrote: Thu Oct 09, 2025 12:30 pm The expression that comes to mind is: ‘rats are the first to flee a sinking ship.’ Maybe the company isn’t doing very well
Doesn‘t look that bad:

https://www.allabolag.se/foretag/reason ... J64EI5YFHL

EBIT has even increased in 2024.

Has increased after it got slashed almost in two from 2020 to 2021. Now it's back to about 75% of 2020. Agevik took over in 2019, so I wouldn't expect him to be able to affect 2020 very much, be it positively or negatively. And if you look at the net gain, you'll see how he drove the company properly into the red for a while - at least for now they seem to be back out of it, but again not quite to where it was. Mind you: we don't see how it was before 2020, so that might have been an exceptionally good year (due to covid perhaps), but I doubt it. Looks more like he took over a completely solid&healthy business and drove it near insolvency.

(And I for one am on the record having predicted as much. It's what you get when you let people run a business who don't really understand what they are actually selling.)

osiris · Post by **osiris** » Mon Oct 13, 2025 8:30 pm

Are you kidding me? You know what kind of golden parachute these companies (even one's not doing well) give their departing CEO's.
He's probably off to build a panic bunker mansion.

jens · Post by **jens** » Mon Oct 13, 2025 8:40 pm

osiris wrote: Mon Oct 13, 2025 8:30 pm You know what kind of golden parachute these companies (even one's not doing well) give their departing CEO's.

Yes, that's the f**ked up thing about it. A major ingredient to the recipe is that all management staff possesses an amazing talent for euphemisms that often borders outright magic. And in countries where it's considered to be the polite thing to lie at people in order to avoid saying something that could be considered negative or *gasp* even straight up criticizing it's especially bad.

machinesworking · Post by **machinesworking** » Mon Oct 13, 2025 9:38 pm

Hopefully the new CEO is more forward thinking. It's a real sad thing that by the time Rewire got solid, with great access in Reason and Live, allowing all kinds of bi directional operations it was killed off. There's a hole in the industry IMO where Rewire used to be. I upgraded Reason from a decades old 2.5 to 12 to get Reason Rack and the first thing that dawns on me is no MPE, and from what I can tell no MPE in Reason as a DAW. This among other things made Reason seem like it was good in 2005, not so great once it decided to be a full blown DAW instead of the bad ass workstation sequencer it was.

swilow11 · Post by **swilow11** » Mon Oct 13, 2025 10:37 pm

I would 100% purchase a Reason Rack VST. I'm not interested in the DAW at all but some of the instruments are great. Why not offer this? You just purchase the rack and a bunch of instruments with the potential to add more for more $$. I truly think they'd expand their user base significantly if they did this.

Reason CEO quits at RS