Musikmesse 2012: Propellerhead to share "exciting news"

[liquid wind]

All the big reputable companies are doing it



oops

[spaceman]

Interview here with some guy called Ernst

that's one annoying interviewer....

goodness gracious.
rsp

Yes, why do they always pick socially awkward guys for this who look drunk, stoned or stuck in a 12 year old's mindset?

I've seen him do interviews and demos before and fwir he wasn't acting like that.

Maybe the booze was free on this occasion?

[riley4reason]

This is taken from the website announcement today:

Instead of unstable plug-ins, authentication nightmares and compatibility complications, Propellerhead offers an alternative...

With the Props you will still have these problems, you have to get them ported over first though..

[headquest]

In fairness to Propellerhead it's possible they aren't deliberately being misleading, but are simply completely out of touch with the way the main hosts and plug-ins work these days...

[pc999]

This is nice but I would prefer just new instruments.

Personally I like the "all in the box" format, the "all you need is reason" way of thought, I like to be able to buy the DAW and have all I need in it, if this make them not develop new instruments/fx it is bad, very bad.

I also think it does need quite a few workflow/GUI improvemets.

Add a performance mode and it gets almost perfect IMO.

[spaceman]

In fairness to Propellerhead it's possible they aren't deliberately being misleading, but are simply completely out of touch with the way the main hosts and plug-ins work these days...

What they should have said is that those things aren't universal. Some indeed don't allow undo or cut/paste, etc.

[Anosou]

i'm excited to have Uhbiks in Reason, but do i have to pay for them again ... and for Synplant and for Microtonic etc?

I'm betting YES since Propellerheads are taking 30% from sales and they didn't get anything from your VST's.

We'll allow completely free plug-ins so the 30% isn't relevant there, is it? This was an early tech demo though so we can't say for certain how/if any crossgrades will work or similar. What we can say is that devs set the price and can set it to $0.

[rant]

[/rant]

A quick note, plug-ins do allow undo in many cases - that's true! However it's often isolated to the plug-in, i.e. they incorporated undo themselves. This means that if you do something in one instrument, then open an effect, do something there and finally do some mixing in the DAW it is very hard to undo your settings in the instrument. Right?

Regarding automation parameters having names or not I think the inherent problem is that it's up to the developer to put that in or not. There's no "standard" for these types of things, much like how it is with the UI, which could make it a bit more of a headache to get used to different devices.

Also, we actually do think it's pretty hard to have one different type of authentication for every plug-in manufacturer out there (almost). It isn't exactly user friendly in any way. In the same way - there ARE compatibility complications, including 32/64-bit, opening old songs with a new version of a plug-in etc. I'm not the biggest plug-in user in the world so I don't know how common this is right now but it has been a problem for me personally in the past at least.

Regardless, we appreciate all feedback - good, bad, rude, true, false - and I really do like that you take the time to react here and raise any issues you might have so we know what you think. In the end though I'm just a music maker like you guys, I just happen to like Propellerhead a lot - so much I now work there demonstrating there products, products I'm using anyway.

[headquest]

What they should have said is that those things aren't universal. Some indeed don't allow undo or cut/paste, etc.
----

...but they portray themselves as the only right way to do things.... never a good plan

[Dogboy73]

I suspect that porting VSTs is not what this is ultimately about. I think we will see separate instruments and effects developed for Re that are different entirely from the major VSTs out there... ones which play to the stgrengths of Reason while also dealing with its limitations.

That's the way I see it. I imagined bespoke devices created for Reason rather than ports of existing plug-ins. But who knows? There's a lot of potential for all kinds of things here.

As for whether this will attract users of other DAWs to switch to the Reason platform... like you, I very much doubt that will happen. I think that many users of other DAWs simply wouldn't like Reason's many other limitations - e.g. no MIDI OUT, very limited audio editing, reliance on three separate windows to get basic stuff done, etc.

Same here. This is all about Reason users. I doubt many will come from other DAW's to Reason because of RE for the reasons you mentioned. But as a long term Reason user I'm very excited about the potential of RE.

[arp_laszlo]

Personally I'm kind of baffled as to why they are taking this route..

They have their own app store, seeing how Apple is making megabucks from theirs. It's a very smart move, imho. I'm not a fan of the walled garden approach but what Urs said makes it seem like development won't be too onerous.

[Urs]

i'm excited to have Uhbiks in Reason, but do i have to pay for them again ... and for Synplant and for Microtonic etc?

I seriously don't know yet. However...

... firstly we'll make them really affordable. Buying them all will be way cheaper than buying the normal bundle. We're toying with

Secondly we'll try to set up some sort of discount system for existing users. I have no idea what it'll look like, e.g. if it's going to be a promo code or a crossgrade or whatsoever.

Thing is, more and more stuff is moving towards all-in-one online stores. Even Audio Units will eventually move into the App Store. We have no clue how to deal with this yet. But we're trying to make this as painless as possible.

Urs

[cytone]

The main advantages over VST from my view:

CV and Audio in/out which can't be done in VST. For example the Reason Echo device has breakout points so you can send the audio out to any other device(s) to process the feedback loop.

Reasons own patch management. This is a big feature really. VST's use different systems - where do you store your presets, within the plugins directory or your own. I'm assuming this will work like the current system so when you preview patches it will swap to the relevant device - so it's easy to compare different plugins.

VST Standards/Compatibility. From what devs have said the VST standards documentation is pretty vague. It's not uncommon to have a plugin work perfectly on one host but experience problems on another.

Integration. Don't have to worry about installing multiple apps if you move computers or HDD crashes. Just install Reason and all the licenses are managed on the USB key/online. No multiple different authentication systems you have to do or remember to keep your license files safe. Also if you decide to move from PC to Mac (or the other way) no additional cost and hassle of repurchase. I'm sure most people have lots of tracks which won't load correctly because they are missing old plugins. With Reason 6 you can load a track from Reason 1 with no problems and I expect they will continue this advantage with ReRack.

[arp_laszlo]

...but they portray themselves as the only right way to do things.... never a good plan

So you have an opportunity to start a more altruistic music software company

[LawrenceF]

Looks good. I hope it's very successful for them. As to VST (or AU) plugs and all that... well...

Personally (to each his own) I've never seen the logic in buying into a proprietary plugin format that ties you to one product. It never made financial sense for me (mmv and all that). I mean, look at Sonar's new plug thing. If you can buy one of those and still have direct access to the typical VST versions in the same purchase, cool. If not, not so cool... as you may spend $500 on plugs only to move to another host one day and find that investment unusable.

So my hypothetical question to developers of these plugs for Reason would be similar. If I buy X plug for Reason, would that also give me access to the same plug (where that applies with plugs being "ported" to Reason) in the other formats as normal? If so, cool. If not, maybe not so cool.

I mean, most plugs give you VST, AU, RTAS in one purchase. If the Reason plugs are Reason only (with no other formats included) ... then they should be much, much cheaper.

So I get that you can't use VST in Reason. What I'd wonder is if buying a plug for Reason under this system also distributes the VST/AU versions for use elsewhere?

[headquest]

A quick note...

With the greatest respect Mattias - I think the big problem word that is thrown around by Ernst and in the marketing is the characterisation of VST plugs as:

...unstable plugins...

Seriously??

Do you think that the VST plugins created by Urs, Softube, KORG, etc are all unstable in their current format??

Isn't this genuinely an unfair and grossly over-simplified statement?

To those of us who use VST plugs every day - and in my case I also use Reason pretty much every day - this is a very wrong statement on your behalf, and one that many of us simply can't identify with.

Software in general - or the computer hardware we run it on - can basically freeze and crash. But I've never found VST particularly unstable, or the cause of any crash I ever had in Cubase, Ableton, etc. Sure, it happens. but it's not something I've experienced (and as you know, I have experienced Reason crash).