Are you pissed off at Reason?

[myrna]

guess what? If I get komplete 8 and finish a song started with komplete 7 the project will run...
Again: it is not 2001, things have changed.

[drez]

Unless I missed something, rack extensions don't offer anything new that VST's can't already do - please correct me if I'm wrong.

The reason environment still offers single click modulation routing, which is a very, _very_ good thing for anyone interested in workflow. How long and how many clicks does it take to route a modulator signal from a separate LFO generator to a separate synth in any other DAW? I'm guessing more than 10 clicks, not to mention having to create multiple extraneous channels you don't need for anything else, leading to huge channel counts and complex project files.

I know this doesn't sound like much on paper, but at least to me this is a huge boon.

So how many clicks do you do to get the multiple outs of your drum machines to separate mixer channels?

For me, the first couple of times...a lot

Then I realized that was painful. So now I have a combinator that breaks them out to their own mackie's. Then I just load that combinator patch from now on.

[kae]

Mackies?

[valhallasound]

Topic answer: Not really.

What pisses me off is Reason Extensions not supporting SSE CPU instructions so it's unlikely we can get highly optimized plug-ins.

This has already been addressed to my knowledge. Besides, I see performance as one of the lesser issues in REs. Probably few devs code directly in machine language, as the code porting and maintenance is way too tedious. So it boils down to the performance difference between the compilers used- this shouldn't be more than 30%, if there's a difference at all. Furthermore, the multithreading in Reason seems to work great, making this even less of an issue.

I use SSE2 (and Altivec) instructions in a fairly lightweight vector library, but this vector library gets used for EVERYTHING. So not being able to use SSE would be a big hurdle for me.

A bigger obstacle with REs than performance is ihmo that the work involved is pretty much comparable to starting a new plugin from scratch. Sure DSP code can be reused, but this can be a small portion of the work for UI-heavy/complex plugins. So developing a big RE instrument certainly means fully committing yourself to this platform. This may be very rewarding, or fail completely - a high risk to take for sure, where each developer has to decide whether they're willing to take it.

In general, the GUI aspect of the plugin takes more work than the DSP. In my current workflow, I use Juce for a 2D vector GUI, and can use the same interface for VST, Audio Units, and RTAS (and eventually AAX). From what I gather, Propellerheads REQUIRES GUI elements to be delivered as 3D models, which are far different than the 2D vectors I use, and the filmstrip images commonly used in VST GUI. Essentially, developers need to throw out all of their graphic code and start over for RE plugins. I have heard that this is for "future proofing," as Propellerheads currently renders these models down to filmstrips, but may use the full resolution models in a future version of Reason. The whole thing seems overly skeuomorphic to me, but that's just my opinion, and having a flat 2D interface in a sea of chicken head knobs would break the paradigm.

If the work involved is "comparable to developing a new plugin from scratch," the obvious follow up question: Is the Reason market big enough to justify these efforts? Obviously, there are Reason fans out there, and some of them are developers, so in such cases cold monetary logic flies out the window (my personal soft spot is towards stompboxes, so I get this). For the remaining developers, that already have an extensive framework for generating VST, AU, and (possibly) RTAS plugins, the phrase "comparable to developing a new plugin from scratch" would imply that the sales of Reason plugins should be comparable to the sales of the same algorithm for ALL of VST, AU and RTAS, in order to be a profitable effort.

The tricky thing is that there is no way to get any answers to the above question, unless developers talk. My guess is that this is unlikely to happen, for a bunch of reasons (NDA, not wanting to share financial information). Given the 30 day trial of Reason, and the 45 day payment period from Propellerhead, it is possible that developers won't be seeing many sales until early September. It will be interesting to see which of the initial developers announce new RE plugins at that point in time.

EDIT: Richard, if you could clarify in your experience: Do you feel that the effort that is "comparable to developing a new plugin from scratch" would be necessary for EACH RE plugin, or just the FIRST RE plugin?

Sean Costello

[drez]

Mackies?

That's what the utility mixers look like in Reason

[myrna]

well, in PH forum many users (which i called "fanboys", that is why PH banned me) claimed Reason is the most popular, best selling, most sold audio workstation in the whole world after Avid/Protools (i thought it was Magix Music Maker, actually ).

[drez]

From what I gather, Propellerheads REQUIRES GUI elements to be delivered as 3D models, which are far different than the 2D vectors I use, and the filmstrip images commonly used in VST GUI. Essentially, developers need to throw out all of their graphic code and start over for RE plugins. I have heard that this is for "future proofing," as Propellerheads currently renders these models down to filmstrips, but may use the full resolution models in a future version of Reason.

I apologize for my ignorance on this piece of software design, but could this be a foreshadowing to the PH possibly allowing resizable objects within reason? I don't know if requiring it matters or not.

[valhallasound]

From what I gather, Propellerheads REQUIRES GUI elements to be delivered as 3D models, which are far different than the 2D vectors I use, and the filmstrip images commonly used in VST GUI. Essentially, developers need to throw out all of their graphic code and start over for RE plugins. I have heard that this is for "future proofing," as Propellerheads currently renders these models down to filmstrips, but may use the full resolution models in a future version of Reason.

I apologize for my ignorance on this piece of software design, but could this be a foreshadowing to the PH possibly allowing resizable objects within reason? I don't know if requiring it matters or not.

This is one way of getting resizable objects. Other ways would be through the use of vector graphics (not very common in the plugin world), or through requiring the filmstrip knobs to be delivered in a format that is large enough to be tolerant to rescaling.

My guess is that the delivery format isn't just about resizing, but is also future-proofing for other graphic operations, such as rotating objects, changing the light source, etc.

Sean Costello

[mrdr]

Sean, I think you could find some nice-looking compromise between your current creations and Propellerhead requirements. Take a look at Ozone Maximizer, it's almost 2D.

[Kriminal]

Why be mad? Because it's obviously draining developer time that could be spent on fixing existing bugs and adding functionality to existing VSTs or creating totally new ones.

agree on that point, its already happening...but its up them, if they think they can make money from it why not. It might mean getting more paid help in the dev team to push the 'normal' stuff forward...we'll see.

cant say i really give a shit myself, but i can understand that point.

[saturdaysaint]

Unless I missed something, rack extensions don't offer anything new that VST's can't already do - please correct me if I'm wrong.

The reason environment still offers single click modulation routing, which is a very, _very_ good thing for anyone interested in workflow. How long and how many clicks does it take to route a modulator signal from a separate LFO generator to a separate synth in any other DAW? I'm guessing more than 10 clicks, not to mention having to create multiple extraneous channels you don't need for anything else, leading to huge channel counts and complex project files.

I know this doesn't sound like much on paper, but at least to me this is a huge boon.

So how many clicks do you do to get the multiple outs of your drum machines to separate mixer channels?

I have a default Kong combinator with multi-outs (mostly for fast sidechaining) and pad-specific arpeggiators.

And I find setting such a thing up 10x as intuitive as multi-out routing in a more traditional DAW mixer, where routing is driven by menus and where a multi-out drum machine with aux effects that's fed into a bus appears as a scatter of channels.

[memyselfandus]

"I have a default Kong combinator with multi-outs (mostly for fast sidechaining) and pad-specific arpeggiators."

Care to share the combinator?

[saturdaysaint]

The tricky thing is that there is no way to get any answers to the above question, unless developers talk. My guess is that this is unlikely to happen, for a bunch of reasons (NDA, not wanting to share financial information). Given the 30 day trial of Reason, and the 45 day payment period from Propellerhead, it is possible that developers won't be seeing many sales until early September. It will be interesting to see which of the initial developers announce new RE plugins at that point in time.

EDIT: Richard, if you could clarify in your experience: Do you feel that the effort that is "comparable to developing a new plugin from scratch" would be necessary for EACH RE plugin, or just the FIRST RE plugin?

Interesting questions.

We can only conjecture about a lot of this, but they must have had some pretty compelling numbers (active users?) to have brought so many first rate developers to the table? Reason is the go-to "synth rack/drum machine" in a lot of studios and for a lot of big musicians.

I think there are other upsides for smaller devs, too. A perk of "app stores" is that they level the playing field in a few important respects. Just as devs nobody had heard of before 2008 routinely top EA games and Apple's own apps in the App Store, so too does the RE store diminish the drawing power of the big names - the company name is actually fairly irrelevant. Your audience immediately expands beyond Computer Music subscribers and KVR members thanks to a centralized marketplace, a nearly frictionless install process, and fewer instability worries.

But yeah, I hope Props are able to relieve some of the dev pain points sooner than later.

[saturdaysaint]

"I have a default Kong combinator with multi-outs (mostly for fast sidechaining) and pad-specific arpeggiators."

Care to share the combinator?

Heh, will do later.

[Richard_Synapse]

EDIT: Richard, if you could clarify in your experience: Do you feel that the effort that is "comparable to developing a new plugin from scratch" would be necessary for EACH RE plugin, or just the FIRST RE plugin?
Sean Costello

You can of course reuse existing stuff, as we and most others did with their effect UIs. That makes sense anyway, so that the look is consistent. What I meant is big plugins (especially instruments, might apply to very complex effects as well, though). Whether you start them as RE or VST/AU, you'll be pretty much stuck with either platform. I'm not even sure if it's legal to take stuff from RE to VST, should the plugins take advantage of PH elements (e.g. knobs they designed).

Richard