Wow, Rack Extensions are expensive

[VitaminD]

I'm sure the pricing would be more palatable if the RE could be sold. Making them a one and only purchase seems really really daft. I buy and sell a lot of stuff - it's part of the fun of making music for me. I like to have new things to play with and often sell things on a couple of years later.

I still have a Sonar 7PE box on the shelf above me. It serves to remind me just how annoying a NFR license can be.

Yes.. that is main reason I try to avoid Cakewalk products... not that I resell a lot of purchases, but I like the option to do so if I so choose.


The way I see it.. Props have three choices to really make this take off and keep going.. either reduce the pricing of REs across the board by 50 or 60% less, keep current pricing but allow xfers of REs.. or the third option.. develop Reason into something really spectacularly awesome that everyone dumps their VST host and moves over.

But right now none of these things have occurred.. Props, please make your choice. Your product currently isn't so impressively incredible to convince me to rebuy all of my products and abandon my current music environment to use yours.

Of course, perhaps the market is willing to embrace the current attitude.. look at Apple for example..

[xh3rv]

Of course, perhaps the market is willing to embrace the current attitude.. look at Apple for example..

(A point only an iZombie would make:) Apple invested in some open-source tools to get there. GCC/LLVM and WebKit (which is notably beneficial to most smart-phone and tablet makers - Google/Android, BlackBerry, Amazon) come to mind immediately. A notable result of this is streamlining some things for developers. It sounds like Propellerhead made choices that did the opposite. [e] (And it seems like these were made more in the later SDK versions? Dunno, I'm assuming there was at least "confusion" though)

The comparison is different enough that it's unfair in a lot of ways. Apple simply has a lot of weight to throw around. But all the same a lot of things that could be more black or white for developers are now 50 shades of gray.

[Chad@PA]

I was hoping that the limits/features of the RE SDK would essentially make any RE editions so different that it wouldn't truly be the same as any ported VST. This would then kill the arguments/worrying about coupons and cross over discounts for existing users.

Think of all the possibilities with CV wires going everywhere.

Would everyone much rather see developers working on new FX and Synths? Vs another format to port, QA, and support.

Just my rant. We all really shouldn't be complaining much. If you do use Reason, REs are the best thing since the Tab button on the rack.

[DHR53]

That may be the point! RE's are for people who already use Reason... to add to their chosen platform, somewhat. It certainly isn't going to make anyone switch to Reason as their main DAW.

[liquidsound]

I was hoping that the limits/features of the RE SDK would essentially make any RE editions so different that it wouldn't truly be the same as any ported VST. This would then kill the arguments/worrying about coupons and cross over discounts for existing users.

Think of all the possibilities with CV wires going everywhere.

Would everyone much rather see developers working on new FX and Synths? Vs another format to port, QA, and support.

Just my rant. We all really shouldn't be complaining much. If you do use Reason, REs are the best thing since the Tab button on the rack.

That means that Developers are going to invest their time for a RE only product and earn from those sells only, while porting a VST imply profit from both worlds.

[Teksonik]

I wonder how many people own and use Reason only and don't use any Host or other Sequencer? I wonder how large the Reason user base is?

[LeVzi]

That may be the point! RE's are for people who already use Reason... to add to their chosen platform, somewhat. It certainly isn't going to make anyone switch to Reason as their main DAW.

That's not the point though, it could have been. If PH hadn't been so paranoid about all this in the 1st place, and just implemented 3rd party plug-in support, Reason suddenly gets catapulted into the mainstream, and becomes a contender, combine that with the good things in record, surely that would sway some to want to use it as a main DAW ?

But it didn't happen that way, PH had to move the goalposts and introduce these RE's which is just a way of keeping tabs on what goes into Reason, and keeps it's stability up.

[valhallasound]

The comparison is different enough that it's unfair in a lot of ways. Apple simply has a lot of weight to throw around.

Last I checked, the "average" iOS app made just shy of $6K in sales. Take Angry Birds and a few other mega apps out of that "average," and the average sales per app is a depressingly low sum.

Plus, Apple iOS install base is somewhere around 100 million at this point. Reason is probably in a few tens of thousands. Which means that Reason is a pretty popular DAW, but is dwarfed by Pro Tools, and is nowhere near as big a target as, say, VST for OSX (to say nothing of VST for Windows).

Sean Costello

[DHR53]

Uh, that's "my" point... PH will NEVER have VST support, and I'm not sure why people continue to moan about it like somehow they will change their mind? Use a DAW if you like to buy lots of plugins... That's what I do.

[eXode]

I wonder how many people own and use Reason only and don't use any Host or other Sequencer? I wonder how large the Reason user base is? :shrug:

Well I guess I pretty much do. I do own a couple of VST's, don't ask me why really because I only run them in Chainer to play with them (Ace, Alchemy, Sylenth1, Mono/Poly, ME80 and z3ta+). I guess because I'm a synth geek. I got FL Studio recently to do demo tracks for my ACE soundset but that has been an one off really.

I also have a modular synth that I can control from Reason. There's no MIDI involved, only CV (well, MIDI to CV to Audio to CV), but it's sample accurate within Reason which is incredibly nice. The visual way of Reason marries itself extremely well with a real world modular and to be able to sequence it from Reason's pattern sequencer and to be able to record automation that control CV on the modular is extremely rewarding for me. And of course being able to add LFO's and Env's from Reason to the modular.

But I admit that I've been doing less music work and more patch design the last couple of years and I really love doing patches for the Reason environment. I know that everyone owning Reason 6.0 has the same set of devices that I do, so never a question of compatibility or correct plugin issues.

[headquest]

Use a DAW if you like to buy lots of plugins... That's what I do.

This has long been an argument used, but the irony is that from this point on I suspect that it is the Reason users who will be spending a lot more of their cash on plugins.

Once again - total cost of "RE"s at launch is in excess of $1,000. Which is twice the cost of Komplete, and more than the cost of Komplete Ultimate. But offers SO LITTLE by comparison... so the users will get a taste for using RE but still need to buy a LOT more of them to get something approaching what everyone else has been using for years.

[headquest]

But I admit that I've been doing less music work and more patch design the last couple of years and I really love doing patches for the Reason environment. I know that everyone owning Reason 6.0 has the same set of devices that I do, so never a question of compatibility or correct plugin issues.

But in terms of using RE in a creative way (and you would be one of the absolute top blokes to do that!!) ... this is no longer possible. You will have to either use your RE devices and understand other users don't own them, or stick to using Reason's stock devices and waste the investment you make in RE... !!!

I don't really see how this would make sense for somebody in your position

[trimph1]

Uh, that's "my" point... PH will NEVER have VST support, and I'm not sure why people continue to moan about it like somehow they will change their mind? Use a DAW if you like to buy lots of plugins... That's what I do.

But you see, we like to grumble and complain about what Reason is doing. It seems to be the case everytime it comes up with something new.

I'm not sure why those of us who do not use Reason have to kvetch about the cost of the RE's here. I doubt that it is going to sway those who bought into it in the first place...

[valhallasound]

i watched the promo vid again and Magnus said 4 hrs, not 15 mins

Disclaimer: I haven't read this thread. I just saw this mentioned and I have to clarify, if it has not been corrected already. Bitspeek did *not* take 4 hours to port. I said I had a first version working in 4 hours. Ryan is a genius with the scissors (he is!), but this quote was taken a bit out of context. This was in 2011 when I sat with Propellerheads and tried a first port of the DSP-code only with an early SDK prototype that had way less restrictions. We didn't even make a GUI.

A more realistic number is two months of working time, but that is also because we were using alpha versions of the SDK. In a way we have been beta-testing the SDK while we were developing. I am quite positive that the next port will be much swifter.

Two months of time seems in line with what Chris Randall spoke about (it took one calendar month, but with 2 guys working crazy hours during that month).

The developer video that Propellerhead released has a lot of things in it that don't ring true to this developer, and don't seem to conform to the experiences of those that have actually developed RE plugins. The "15 minutes to get a plugin up and running" concept seems to be a meme that Propellerhead has heavily pushed. I have heard this concept (15 minutes, 4 hours, whatever) quoted and repeated numerous times on the Propellerhead forum and elsewhere. It is hard to view this concept as anything other than marketing spin, that is aimed towards Propellerhead consumers rather than developers.

Sean Costello

[mcnoone]

I wonder how many people own and use Reason only and don't use any Host or other Sequencer?

Would that mean, they would have no reason to have reason?