Reason 12 is here

[festeringheap]

I get the sneaky feeling that Propellerheads are not putting any effort into improving the sequencing cause they see the future of Reason as a plugin rack for other hosts.

Arguably, they put more workflow stuff in R11.0 than in any other version in the last decade, but they put in a paltry amount of FX for standalone users. R10 had tons of devices and content, but no workflow stuff on initial launch, but 10.2 gave a whack of things.
This version gets nada at launch. I'd like to think that a point update will bring a bunch of needed things , like in 10.2. But, it looks like there is a ton of stuff that needs to be addressed first to make the version stable before they can consider any QOL offerings. (they could do both, but I think they won't)

[festeringheap]

A lot can happen in 4 months, yes.

But this is Propellerhead/Reason Studios we're talkin' bout

I mean, you're not wrong - but the way I look at it is like this: in the past 4 months, for almost 3 of those months most of Sweden (including most of Propellerhead/Reason Studios) has been on summer vacation, yet they were still able to crank out not only a new sampler, but a brand new customizable Combinator (that was designed to have features added), and GPU accelerated graphics/hi-res graphics

I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that RS just banged out their new Sampler and Combinator over the past few months! Like the VST wrapper that was apparently largely sussed out a decade ago, I'd say that they have a bunch of things in varying degrees of readiness. Even their devices made over the past decade surely must have had hi-rez graphics ready to go. Just like all the indy RE developers had to do from the start.

So if they can't add some meat-and-potatoes updates to the core DAW app over the next 4 months, and finish off the missing hi-res assets at least, I would literally be shocked.

I'm sure those missing assets will be here shortly. Those other QOL things by year end? I really hope so. That would take the edge off a somewhat disappointing launch.

[Arashi]

There’s very few actually, but things aren’t quite “finished” yet. There’s still some hi-res assets missing in Reason DAW proper - not so much a bug, but it’s annoying.

Yeah, the sequencer and transport bar. No big deal. Those things will be easy to update. The rack was definitely the hard part. Reason looked great on my 1152x870 monitor in 2000, but started to look silly as we got bigger monitors, and has looked downright ugly ever since I moved to retina displays. I upgraded on day one without even thinking about it just for the long-overdue high-res rack, and it looks so great that I actually want to play around in Reason again, for the first time in years. It reminds me that the look of the rack was such a big part of the appeal. Not just eye candy — it invites you to explore and experiment.

I think they did a great job retaining the classic look of the devices too. For example, pixel-based fonts in on-device displays still looks right and didn't turn into boring antialiased text. You can read Kosh Dukai's signature on the QC sticker on the back of Kong's editor panel too. Impressively, scrolling through the rack is much smoother now than it was before, despite pushing 4x as many pixels. I used to measure Reason's GUI performance in seconds-per-frame.

Okay…here's a bug report: it's a lot harder to remove the screws from the SubTractor now. I hope someone got fired for that blunder!

[Arashi]

I get the sneaky feeling that Propellerheads are not putting any effort into improving the sequencing cause they see the future of Reason as a plugin rack for other hosts. I'm probably stating something obvious.

I don't think that's the case. While it's pretty clear that Reason's sequencer will probably never catch up to the competition (especially not at its current pace of never improving at all), the rack plugin is missing one of the most unique features of Reason — the ability to connect anything to anything. You need a separate rack plugin instance for each instrument or effects chain, which puts them all in silos and loses a lot of the value of the unified rack.

[bharris22]

Does anyone know whether legacy combinators can be opened the new combinator? If so, can you add additional knobs and other controls to those legacy combinators?

Yes you can do that.
Your saved patch with those changes can only be opened in R12 though. Opening it in earlier versions will give you a bad format prompt.

Very good to know - thanks!

[festeringheap]

Does anyone know whether legacy combinators can be opened the new combinator? If so, can you add additional knobs and other controls to those legacy combinators?

Yes you can do that.
Your saved patch with those changes can only be opened in R12 though. Opening it in earlier versions will give you a bad format prompt.

Very good to know - thanks!

Cheers!

...the rack plugin is missing one of the most unique features of Reason — the ability to connect anything to anything. You need a separate rack plugin instance for each instrument or effects chain, which puts them all in silos and loses a lot of the value of the unified rack.

Yeah, this ^^ . I'm on a mac, and I thought maybe that in the near future I might switch over to Windows and I could use the ReasonPlug in Reaper. Wow, I really hate that experience! Just like you said, they are all in "silos", so no interconnection, and it's just a real awkward experience having separate RRPs on each track. In Reaper and in Logic.The browser opens up and constantly shifts the plug over out of view. It's a messy thing to go through.

I thought maybe, then, I would just use the RPP for "sweetening", with a few of my favorite patches and Rex loops here and there. But the drag/drop of Rex/midi is inconsistent in both Reaper and Logic, and there's a heavy footprint:
I can open up Reaper and the memory hit is under 50mB. Then I just load in an instance of RRP and we're at 550+mB* with ReasonRack Plugin 12. Logic goes from 190 to 690mB*.
Playing a few Alchemy pad patches had a 4-5% CPU hit, and a reset Europa was hitting 9%. The RPP uses too many resources to just use it sparingly on a few tracks in another DAW.

(It's possible that it's just a current R12 thing and not the RPP in general. I couldn't test out a Lite version of the RPP because it now defaults to Reason 12 when opening it up in Reaper or Logic. In any event, I'm likely not using the RPP in the future. Clunkville. So I'm really hoping for some good ole Quality of Life workflow additions comming soon to standalone Reason12.).


*By comparision, Reason Standalone 12 clocks in at just under 1gB memory - 940mB . Maybe there's hi-rez assets being loaded in as well, I don't know, but I haven't even downloaded any of my REs or the extra Reason Studios devices: Rad piano etc yet.

[antic604]

...the rack plugin is missing one of the most unique features of Reason — the ability to connect anything to anything. You need a separate rack plugin instance for each instrument or effects chain, which puts them all in silos and loses a lot of the value of the unified rack.

Yeah, this ^^

Plus:
- properly working pattern devices
- re-groove mixer
- blocks mode

I'm not even gonna mention the Mixer, which although perhaps not as sophisticated as Cubase's still beats most other DAWs in terms of feature set & speed of workflow for typical mixing duties.

[JackJackdaw]

Yeah, I find the RRP experience lacking. Pattern lanes and direct to Device sampling along with the lack of interconnection keep driving me back to standalone when ideally I want to run the rack in Cubase. If they just added multi timbral midi (that was possible with Rewire) and a side chain sampling input I would be perfectly happy with it.

[bharris22]

IIRC, the $129 upgrade price to Reason 12 is the usual price for upgrades, and not an intro price - is that correct? If so, no need to rush, then, and maybe there would be a small sale on upgrades on Black Friday?

[chk071]

Yes, $129 is the usual upgrade price.

[JackJackdaw]

It was just pointed out on Reasontalk that the new combi allows for pattern changing via midi notes. So in the RRP you can sequence pattern changes with note clips instead of messing around with automation. I've done a quick test with Drum sequencer in Cubase and its great. I wonder why more noise is not being made about it.

[antic604]

It was just pointed out on Reasontalk that the new combi allows for pattern changing via midi notes. So in the RRP you can sequence pattern changes with note clips instead of messing around with automation. I've done a quick test with Drum sequencer in Cubase and its great. I wonder why more noise is not being made about it.

That's "nice"! It makes Reason DAW obsolete in yet another way...

[jens]

the rack plugin is missing one of the most unique features of Reason — the ability to connect anything to anything. You need a separate rack plugin instance for each instrument or effects chain, which puts them all in silos and loses a lot of the value of the unified rack.

Yes, exactly - for this reason I already called RRP a parody of Reason DAW - it's like someone (and who could that be? ) from the Props themselves has zero clue what's actually great about Reason and how to market it to whom ("the market for plugins is much bigger than the market for DAWs - so let's market it as a plugin instead" "but but but... " "I have made up my mind about this" (yes, of course the market for plugins is bigger, but the competition is also much much bigger - is your plugin-product highly competitive? Is it priced quite competitively? Does it exhibit your company's and your main product's core strengths?))

Looking at the current iteration of their website, they seem to have back-pedaled quite a bit already
(they now call it "VST, AU, AAX Plugin Standalone DAW" and "plugin and DAW" (and does that not sound versatile and inclusive? I certainly like the sound of that!) and the normal shop is back up in the main page-menu).So it seems there's still hope.

[EnochLight]

[jens]

I toned it down a little - I almost start feeling bad about picking on him - who knows? Perhaps he really has the best intentions after all and just needs to learn his bits about the topic at hand? If so I don't want to be one of the pricks who makes his life even harder.