Reason sound doesn't sell is not true

[goldenanalog]

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=388519

The Dev is a Cakewalk ex-pat. So far: only available for Reason.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

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[Davias]

The op has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. The reason audio engine nulls to infinity with every other major daw out there, and I myself have done this testing extensively. No one buy into this please, please. It's not GS here lol.
On the other hand the stock factory sounds are 95% thin and terrible, so if that is what he is indeed talking about, then yes, before RE's came around I do agree that the stock reason sound is absolutely thin and harshly digital. I experienced this myself when I could not get any decent sounds even with the best refills when only the factory devices were concerned. I could never ever get a song I was recreating in reason to sound even remotely as good as the first version I had done in logic with many third party plugins, and that was commented on by a few people, not just me. REs changed that, and hence how I got into reason heavily, but also why I left it cause of the massive RE performance problem that still exists to this day, and likely always will (cause they really won't acknowledge it). So its a double edged sword. If you want performance, use factory instruments which honestly besides Thor to some degree, I think are absolutely shocking, or use REs and be prepared to do a lot of bouncing or buy yourself the fastest machine known to mankind.
However sound wise, reason with re's like predator will sound identical to logic with au predator, for example.

Interesting. So may it be that the redrum, nn-19, nn-xt are doing something to the sound ? I admit I never tried the Record part of Reason.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

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[chk071]

Actually i was quite amazed how good Thor sounds, and how low the CPU hit is in comparison to most VSTi's. Especially the filter is really great. I agree that Subtractor and Maelstrom (not sure about that one) are a bit aged now though. And the effects i did not really like so much either. The delay and reverb sounded a bit plasticy cheap to me for example. That's only a "first sight" rating though, i didn't spend nearly enough time to be able to fully judge that.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

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[goldenanalog]

I think the reason behind Reason's substandard efficiency is simple: Reason was a closed-box entity until 6.5 when PH opened it up to third party plugins - before then, The props did not know how to do third party.

A simple case of culture shock, I'm confident that they'll learn how to adapt Reason to the big world.

Consider how much they've had to change in such a short period of time - I wouldn't think that it's been easy for them.

[chk071]

I think the reason behind Reason's substandard efficiency is simple: Reason was a closed-box entity until 6.5 when PH opened it up to third party plugins - before then, The props did not know how to do third party.

A simple case of culture shock, I'm confident that they'll learn how to adapt Reason to the big world.

Consider how much they've had to change in such a short period of time - I wouldn't think that it's been easy for them.

I would rather say, they did not want to support third party plugins. Also, i rather think, without knowing exactly of course, that the performance issue has something to do with the way rack extensions have to be implemented into Reason. Hence there won't be much space to improve, as Theo said. If there would be, then it would have been done already probably.

[Davias]

The drums are ok! NNXT sound engine is fine, its that there don't seem to be any really good banks around for it. I really meant maelstrom, subtractor, and after going back to vst and au land, even Thor, sound cheap and tinny in comparison.
I actually like redrum and kong.

I bought a vast collection of refills when I was using it, in fact like a thousand dollars worth, and I really can't understand how bad they all sound, even the multi layered combi sampled patches. Miroslav sounds ok but that's because its using the original miroslav samples which are decent. The nnxt can only pump out the quality that's pumped in and unfortunately there's not much of it.

I mean I just listen to some of the kontakt libraries and they blow my mind, nothing like that for reason. Then there are synths like spire which are rich and full of life, again nothing like that in the factory sounds. Even the current res don't sound as good as spire but I actually don't think spire could literally be programmed to work with the massive re cpu overhead on the CPUs available today.

I've been over to a mates place with a 4ghz i7 6 core and he has trouble even. We have also confirmed no RE performance improvement in reason 7. I spent a few hours with him and we concluded what I found myself with version 6. Re's have a 400 to 2,000 % performance penalty over au and vst. This factors in however BOTH the extra overhead of the RE itself and reasons own inefficiency in running them. Not just the RE overhead itself. Reason is very inefficient, and this was never really picked up before RE's cause the factory devices are so light on CPU. But reason itself chokes way earlier than other hosts cpu load wise. Combine both and no pdc or bounce in place/freeze and I start to wonder why people still use it. Then I realised.. As I predicted a year ago people are selling it in droves more than anything else. Check the MP.. It's the most sold product. Even those who have literally sworn by it have floored me when I see them selling it.
I guess it will always have its hardcore fans but really it just pales on comparison to the constantly evolving competition now, and RE is simply no match for established standards. (The shop proves after more than a year its not really taken off all that much either)

I also wonder how Reason can survive with all that. I suspect they never could add vst support because the engine is doing something to the sound in order to process it faster. Then they introduced the RE that are maybe using some optimizations in order to sound better but then are crippling the old reason engine with overheads. I never wanted to believe till I did that test : listening to high quality drum loop (at 44.1Khz 24 bits) in an audio editor, sounds nice. Open Reason, load a Redrum, load the same sample, sample rate is 44.1Khz in Reason, depth is 24 bits. Play the sample, sounds muddy. Enable HQ on the Redrum, no differences. Load a NN-19, same results. Same with NN-XT. So I recorded it and bounced to 44.1Khz 24 bits. Then I loaded the new sample into the audio editor, invert the phase and played, and I heard something.
So I zoomed on the waveforms to see better what happened, and they were looking slightly different, the transients were different. So maybe now I did something wrong in my test but I stay convinced Reason is downsampling for its internal processing or reducing the bit depth. I wonder why Predator needs 16x oversampling to sound good in Reason while it sounds directly fine in vst ? I see that you did extensive tests on your side and I guess you made that better than me so I would be interested to know what you think about the result I got ?

Now again its a shame because Reason ergonomic is great, a pure joy to stack and to patch. But the closed system (I still see RE as closed as you can't use them in other DAWs and you can't resell them), the sound quality (yes I stick to it for now ) and the very poor quality of stock content indeed ! prevent me to even consider it as a serious contender in the DAW world. I am surprised as well to read that ableton has still PDC problems and the PDC in FL Studio can be broken at some time I hate that. Haaa so many DAWs but hard to find one that can do it all... and well Now I'm sure perfectly fine music can be made with Reason, even some famous guys are using it, but I'm pretty sure they mix OTB or in a proper DAW before the final release.

[goldenanalog]

You may very well be right, chk071, but I think what will happen is that the third party SDK will improve as The props figure out how to use the resources in a more refined manner.

I believe that they're still at baseline, and that if they want Dev's to help with their revenue, then they have to adapt, or run the risk of isolation.

No argument that they probably went into RE's kicking and screaming; but it was probably inevitable, don't you think?

So what was at risk (and perhaps still is)?

That Reason becomes a essentially dead product like Rebirth.That actually would fit their culture if they weren't forced to change, IMHO.

[Davias]

Actually i was quite amazed how good Thor sounds, and how low the CPU hit is in comparison to most VSTi's. Especially the filter is really great. I agree that Subtractor and Maelstrom (not sure about that one) are a bit aged now though. And the effects i did not really like so much either. The delay and reverb sounded a bit plasticy cheap to me for example. That's only a "first sight" rating though, i didn't spend nearly enough time to be able to fully judge that.

I think Malstrom is still a beast in sound possibilities, shame that you can't load your own waveforms inside.

I wish we could have a malstrom and matrix pattern in vst

[chk071]

You may very well be right, chk071, but I think what will happen is that the third party SDK will improve as The props figure out how to use the resources in a more refined manner.

Yeah, i guess they have to do something, if some RE's are virtually unusable due to the massive CPU consumption... especially as, as i wrote, Reason's native stuff is so low on CPU.

[goldenanalog]

You may very well be right, chk071, but I think what will happen is that the third party SDK will improve as The props figure out how to use the resources in a more refined manner.

Yeah, i guess they have to do something, if some RE's are virtually unusable due to the massive CPU consumption... especially as, as i wrote, Reason's native stuff is so low on CPU.

That's a *huge* discrepancy that has to be fixed; and reinforces my theory - that their culture is one of closed boxes with tightly compiled code all done in-house (my assumption).

So they may have to share some protected IP with third party Dev's in order to get their stock more on a level playing field with what's already there.

To me: RE's are in large part The props way of protecting their content from cr*cking and distribution - RE's only work within Reason, so they represent zero value to any other environment.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

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[Tronam]

I have to agree with the OP. Just load a sample in a Redrum or a Sampler with everything else disabled and hear the difference. of course all materials will not show same perceived differences (if any, I guess it depends of our brain also).

Then if like me you think you're crazy and this is BS, why would it sound different there is no reason (sorry for the pun). A/B test it and see that the sound is changed.

Now is it better or worse ? I'll let you judge but for me it was enough to never want to invest in Reason in the first place. I tried almost any daw around and only Reason gave me that bad feeling. Now it is sad because it was a fine piece of software and great ideas inside.

The fact is that in Reason I had to struggle to make it sound good, and any other daw was sounding good from the start (of course the sources had to be good too). And this not about mixing skills, because the muffled sound was there from the start. I tried a demo of Reason when it went 64 bits, and I instantly heard the same problem as before, so I had to admit that PH will never correct this problem coz it is inherent part of their sound engine that was so CPU efficient before (I heard it broke with RE but I never tried so I'm not sure).

So my experience here stops with Reason 6 I think. My friend who had Reason all along has now upgraded to the last version and never use it because of the same problem.

Now call me a PH hater or whatever but I have no hidden agenda, this is just my own experience and I'm stunned since years that no more people complain about this.

EDIT : I will even add something that shows even better my feeling about this. I used to be a Reason fanboy actually. So my perception was biased toward Reason at the time. I already told this story somewhere else on the forum but it is the perfect place. At the time (something like ten years before), I was with my friend using Reason and loving it (came from a DOS tracker, we were amazed by the gorgeous sound of Reason washed in FX and the lively synths comparing to dry pitched samples). Some day, just out of curiosity we tried FL Studio demo (Fruity Loops at the time), and at first glance were not impressed at all, ugly GUI, toyish feeling, the synths GUI were not appealing (we were young ). But as soon as we wrote a 4 bar beat with a stupid synthesized bassline (a saw and a filter) and it was sounding so full, so gorgeous comparing to our countless hours projects in Reason ^^

It took many more years for us to get rid of Reason but it came from that day. A true revelation. We couldn't believe it, and kept not believing it and kept using reason.

Shame about the YouTube compression back then.