DISCLAIMER: This is an opinion piece. This is an editorial. This is my view of the software while it is in the beta testing stages. The software is not yet finished or finalized. I take full responsibility for my opinion. But please let’s be crystal clear on this: Your rating and thoughts on the subject of the software may be completely different than mine. You may see this software as the second coming of Christ and it may bring you to the heights of orgasm. You may run out into the street totally naked yelling “This is it! Finally. It’s here! It’s here!” If that’s your thing, great. Send me a postcard from jail. I’ll be working on Reason & Record at home, as I usually am.
This is my view on the software as it stands right now with what information I have about it currently. This is based entirely on public knowledge of said software. If you agree with me, then great. If you disagree that’s ok too. Once this software is released, more than likely no one’s going to care about our opinions anyway. The time is now June 17th, 2010. All names have been changed to protect the innocent.
So here’s the talk of the town lately: Reason 5 / Record 1.5. And in case you don’t want to read through my rant, let me give you the lowdown right upfront:
Dr. Rufus Rex, the 8-legged animal: 5 out of 10
Bricks: 4 out of 10
That Roman Sea God (there’s always a deity involved): 6 out of 10
That live audio import thingamajig: 6 out of 10
King…. well you know.: 7.5 out of 10
. . . and more (secondary features): 7.5 out of 10
Overall: 6 out of 10
*(you did read that bit about names being changed in the disclaimer right?)*
To be fair, if you are a musician who cares nothing about Sound design or if you’re brand new to the program or you care more about making your workflow faster, then these ratings may be somewhat higher than mine. But for me, that’s it in a nutshell. Now will I purchase the upgrade. Sure. Why? Because I’ve already invested $850 in Propellerhead products and an extra $129 — even for the lackluster features — is not going to kill me. When you’ve run 14 km in a 15 km race, what’s one more mile?
I’d rather not be so nonchalant. I’d much rather be jumping for joy and bursting at the seams like I was for Thor. I’d rather be itching to get my hands on the new Kong features, but somehow that’s just not happening. We’ve seen Kong before in Live’s new drum setup. We’ve seen blocks in the form of scenes. And what is Octorex really trying to do? It feels like they took out your Grandfather’s car and are busily polishing it up to be sold as a fresh new idea. Sure, I love the vintage look of the thing, and I love how it rides. But can we kick-start it into the year 2010? To be fair, blocks is starting to grow on me. And Kong is definitely better than I expected, and it’s a very welcome addition to the software.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Reason. I even love Record. I love that I don’t even need to open up Reason anymore. Just launch Record and everything is there for me. Great. But where is the “wow”? I sure didn’t see it come to me in 5 days of anticipation when they were unveiling. It just kind of left me scratching my head.
Where is Recycle integration? I had to go out and buy it separately because I want to put some rex files together. And where are all those wonderful ideas turned into reality that we’ve all been adding to the Propellerhead feature suggestion forum? The ideas keep piling up. And this is the best they’ve got? Perhaps I have more faith in their programming skills. After all, they haven’t disappointed in the past. They did give us Thor after all. So maybe they’ve set the bar too high in the past that now they just can’t live up to their reputation? I don’t know for sure. I just know I expected so much more. And if I’m reading all the forums correctly, so did you.
Revisiting the Wishlist
So I went back to my old post (here it is if you need a refresher: My Reason/Record wishlist) and I looked to see how much of my dreams will actually come true in September. Green shows features implemented in Reason 5, Purple shows features partially implemented, and Red indicates those things which have not been implemented.
First, Record:
- Automatic Routing of the Reason mixer channels to the Record Main Mixer. Somewhat there with Record 1.0.1, however this could still be improved because routings through spiders/mergers and Redrum / NN-XT individual outs are not handled correctly.
- Comping for Midi as well. Nope. No improvements here.
- Split Performance Controller Data into Separate Lanes. Nope. No improvements here.
- Record Performance Controllers as automation. I think we got this with Record 1.0.1, so kudos!
- Tempo automation/changes on a per-track basis. Well, you can timestretch audio clips. So I’ll say this is halfway there.
- Display Masked Audio portion in the Audio Clip. Nope. No improvements here. Right now, there’s no visual indicator to show how far and wide the masked area is. It’s worthwhile to note that this is already pretty much implemented in the audio comp tracks. Now if we could bring that into the main arrange view, we’d be golden.
- Synch Reason / Record Favorites. Nope. No improvements here.
- Cut Note Events in the Clips. Nope. No improvements. Sometimes you DO want to split the notes, and sometimes you don’t. Provide us with the option to split the notes or not when splitting clips apart.
- Scale Transposition of Notes. Nope. And this one is not difficult to do. This is imminently more useful than chromatic transposition of the notes.
- Multiple Left and Right locators. Nope. No improvements here.
- More Training/Tutorials and videos included in the user documentation. Documentation is starting to improve. Microtutorials, James Bernard video series. Glad to see this getting better! Green light on this one.
And now for Reason:
- Adding some new Effects, especially a glitch box such as “Glitch“ Nope. Not there.
- Having the ability to Randomize the entire Matrix or Redrum device with one click of a button. Nope. And for this one, I’m truly saddened. Especially since almost all their changes for Reason 5 are simply workflow improvements. To miss out on this one is nuts frankly.
- Combinator updates: More CV connections and a better subdivided menu system get a big thumbs up from me. I would still like to be able to switch the rotaries from “pot” mode to “step” mode. But that’s a minor nit-pick. Kudos again!
- Integrate ReCycle into Reason (or Record). Come on guys. Seriously! Big thumbs down! When is this going to happen already? Give us sampling without the ability to slice stuff up makes you look money-hungry; holding onto Recycle like an old dog clutching a tattered bone.
- The ability to reverse midi and audio for backward playback. Yes. Beautiful!
- Tap Tempo. Thank you!
- When in edit mode in the sequencer, providing the ability to move notes from one clip into another. Yup. This one is added in Record 1.0. Sweet. However, I’m only giving half points here because it’s not currently available in Reason. If this makes it into Reason 5, I’ll give it the green light.
So 4 out of 18 of my original requests made it in, and 3 are halfway there. A little over 1/3 of my features made it in. I don’t think that’s too bad. You be the judge. To be fair, there may be more to remove from my list once Record graduates to 2.0, and I will say that a few things which made it into this update I’m very glad to see and would have had on my list if I had given it more thought. To name a few:
- Neptune. I really can’t wait to get my hands on this and seeing what can be done with it from a sound design perspective. Routing Thor through it and using it in an experimental way should be really interesting.
- Kong. Although I’m less than thrilled with the implementation — It feels cluttered with all the mini-fx machines and just doesn’t look very intuitive — I’m eager to explore some routing possibilities on the back of the device. Perhaps that’s just my nature. And I am glad to see some modeling synthesis introduced. But a Guitar modeler is really what I’d like to see more than anything. Perhaps the Props are testing the waters and we’ll see this in Reason 6.0?
- As said before, the Combinator update with new CV and easier menu system. Yes. Thank you lord. Finally.
- Sampling. Sure. Great. But I have a field recorder, so is this really adding to my toolbox? Not really. Sure it’s handy. But I’ve already got a workflow for this. Still, it’s a feature that’s been wanted by many, so I’ll add it to the “glad to have it” pile.
In case you didn’t know. . .
And for those that didn’t know, don’t forget to read the fine print. There’s lots of little additions to the program that you may have missed when you were enthralled with the Big 5. Some of these surprised me in that they are not hyped more. The extra CVs in the Combinator are a huge deal and should be up there in lights. However, these are the features that are relegated “second class citizen” status. You should read them nonetheless: Secondary updates to Reason/Record.
Of course, don’t forget to check out the videos from the Props home page below, and judge for yourself if these new updates are worth your money. Most of the updates are helpful to improve workflow. But bottom line is that there is nothing here which is earth-shattering, and very little that you can’t already do with Reason 4 and Record 1.0.1. My overall take is that there are three camps:
If you are a sound engineer and have invested in purchasing both Reason and Record, then it’s probably worthwhile to upgrade.
If you are a new hobbyist or musician who has only invested in Record and/or Reason, you may not need the update at all and might be better off sticking with what you have (which is already a very powerful system).
For people working on Live recording only and who only own Record, then the only advantage is Neptune. And honestly if you’re in this boat it’s probably not worthwhile.
What’s your take on the Record 1.5 and Reason 5 package?
@Dominic,
I completely agree. Even though I bought Recycle after the R5 release, I still think it needs to be integrated into Reason/Record. Why it was not is beyond me. But I have a feeling they will have to release it in version 6 because so many people are requesting it. Not to mention even the Rex file format is a little outdated at this point. I love the Props, but sometimes they leave me scratching my head. Here’s to the future!
It really is about time they gave us Recycle – I’ve paid enough money for Rec+Reason – holding back this tiny but important piece of functionality is ridiculous.
@drno,
You didn’t come off like a tool. No worries. Many people disagreed with my Overview posting, and there’s a very long thread on the Propellerhead User Forum about it. But I digress. I’m in no way a Reason fan boy. I work in Reason and it meets my needs and I like helping to teach people about the potentials of Reason. But I can also see that there are a lot of other DAWS and VSTs out there that work better for others. I’m glad there’s so much diversity in music software. That’s a strength for the industry as a whole.
To try and answer your question about whether or not Record is worth it, I can use my own experience as an answer. I don’t play live, and I have done very little recording directly into Record. I mostly use a Tascam field recorder. Though I’ll be trying to do more live recording this year. For me, it was all about the SSL Mixer, which is a very very nice mixer. It doesn’t replace the 14:2, though it can if you want it to. But for some things, like drum submixing, for example, the 14:2 is still very handy. I mainly use the SSL for mastering a track and putting final touches on things.
I have created whole songs using Record, but for the most part I found it creates a lot of clutter because you now have to have a Mix Channel device for every sound device. And that means the wiring and cabling is spread out all over the rack, instead of contained in a single mixer. More importantly, it means double the amount of devices for each sound you want to generate. But what it lacks in a clean rack it definitely makes up for in a better sound through the mixer. You also get more sends (8) than the 14:2 (which had 4). This is more than enough for most projects. And you also get the Neptune device, which doesn’t come in Reason. There are some other smaller enhancements that make things nice for the workflow. I would say if you don’t do a lot of live recording, and you don’t need more power than the 14:2, and don’t miss Neptune, then you can probably take a pass. If, on the other hand, you’re like me and really enjoy mastering all within one mixer console, and would like to explore the features in Neptune, then it’s a very worthwhile upgrade.
And to your point about Reason and Record not being one program, once it’s installed separately, it becomes a single program (launch record, and all the Reason devices are available). From a usability standpoint, it’s one single program. And you probably don’t ever have to open Reason as a standalone again (unless you collaborate with folks that don’t have Record).
Hope that helps out. And thanks for the nice words about my site. That’s nice of you to say.
Rob
I might have come off a bit like a tool. Kong will be interesting to get into someday. Not sure what the dr rex player is trying to do yet. Reason is one of the best kept secrets out there. A truly amazing and remarkable program, and a sound designers dream. A person like myself, who mainly uses stacking and mild tweaking to achieve results, will find Reason 5 adequate. That being said I have laid my hands on some VST’s that made my jaw drop without any of the combinator stacking you would have to do to achieve the same results. Outdated synths, effects you can pick out of a police line up, keeping features off that are a no brainer and have been asked for by users for almost a decade….. I agree with your opinions on Reason 5. To the tried and true who have stuck with it all these years, yeah they should have done a LOT more, or at least combine reason and record and made a go at it. MAn did I think the 14:2 mixer was going to be replaced by that nice record mixer. Oh well, maybe next time.
Is Record worth having for someone who does little live recording?
This site is really nice by the way. Big props.
@DrNo,
Yes, the multi-core support is great. And I didn’t address that in this posting. I kept this more to the discussion of software features (outside of performance) in Reason. To that end, I love Kong and even the Dr.Rex is growing on me more and more. So I’m not saying this is a bad upgrade. There’s some nice features in R5 for sure. But there’s also a lot lacking, which even you are agreeing with – Blocks, lack of Recycle integration, etc.
Long story short, I think we’re in some agreement here. But I agree that I should have addressed the multi-core support, and if you are in a situation where R4 was giving you a headache by getting maxed out, then the R5 upgrade would be a very important upgrade indeed.
Thanks for posting!
@PhiSequence Oh boy are you wrong. There is no comparison for me what I can do with Reason 5 now that it can address all 4 of my cores vs Reason 1-4 only being able to address one. Arrangements that maxed me out on reason 4 at 95% don’t even hit 9% on my current pc with reason 5. I have very complex routing and tend to stack a lot of synths. Just stacking thors alone would suck up way too much cpu juice.
Its especially helpful with the music cues I’m doing for film and television. No limitations. All this squeezing the most out of reason and sacrifice parts you would like to have in your arrangement is non-sense to me. They want it to be your main axe, so opening it up was the best move they could have made.
The other stuff….kong, blocks, ect. Kinds of useless for me. I was getting great drum sounds before. Keeping that horrible sounding 14 channel mixer was just wrong. In fact record and reason should be one program. I agree with being able to sample but not being able to address recycle within the program. Kind of silly. They should have given more to the users out there who use this as their main axe.
Multi core support is a dream come true for me. I’d advise any reason user to upgrade just for that. The more complex your music gets, Reason 5 will be able to handle it provided you have a multi core machine.
@BeastMode: Record 1.0 and above provides this ability. You can bounce each track individually and select which tracks to bounce. You can also select if you want to bounce with or without FX. So the short answer is “yes” you can in Record.
In Reason 5, you cannot. And I doubt you will ever have the ability to do this in Reason. This is probably going to be available only in the Record software. Of course that’s my own speculation. Reason 6 is anybody’s guess. All I’m saying is that I wouldn’t hold my breath.
If you want this functionality, you’ll need Record.
Does it give you an option to export mono tracks in reason 5? >> The option to render tracks at one time but separately so that if we choose to import them into pro tools we don’t have to wait all day long soloing each track out just to have all the tracks separated?
DrNo,
Really? I’ve honestly never had a problem throwing things at Reason. I have hit the upper limit before, but nowhere near the point at which I can’t build a song. The only time I’ve hit the limit is when I’ve actually gone out and “tried” to hit it, or when my computer wasn’t up to the task. Unfortunately, software is always way ahead of hardware on this front. That’s the nature of software/hardware. It’s much easier to create a virtual construct (ie: software) to max the limits of hardware. It’s much harder to create a physical device (ie: hardware) which exceeds what that virtual construct can do. Add to that the fact that no matter how good Reason is, the wall always exists. There will always be an “upper limit” for any version of Reason run on any machine. The real question is: Can you get the job done? Can you take what’s inside your head and lay it down in Reason. For me, I’ve always been able to.
However, I have a few tricks that I’m putting together currently which touch on this creative routing idea and maximizes what you already have in your Reason rack. Those will be out shortly. So please come back and have a look. Might find some useful tidbits there.
Cheers!
Rob
Only one new feature matters for reason 5. Multi core support. Now I won’t be limited anymore. Takes a lot of creative routing to get Reason to sound street ready.
@Stonerdroner,
about the 64 bits part and RAM, I can be very simple, blunt and direct:
- reason does not need more then 4GB or ram since it uses the memory pretty descent. 4GB is 4294967296 bytes, on a 44100Khz stereo perspective this leads into 48695 seconds of data (which is 811 minutes or 13 hours). Based on the fact that 44100 Khz is 1 second of data, and in stereo that is 88200 Bytes of diskspace/RAM.
Since the synths doen’t really use much, it can only be done by using accessible amount of raw sound data to get this done. But personally I can’t believe that you either need that much of raw audio data to begin with. Even if you would record it on 192Khz, it would be reduced by 4 (more or less). Still thats a HUGE amount of sound data that you probably don’t ever need inside Reason/Record.
Second, the misconception about “64 bit is faster”. From a technical perspective there are more things into play which makes 64 bit work faster:
- the operating system
- the application that runs on 64 bit mode
- the amount of calculations
All these COMBINED, lead into performance gain. However, since most of the stuff inside Reason is all based on 16 bit integers (most values don’t cross the 65535 value, unless it is a sample. Then 32bit is the limit. which is 4billion something).
From a technical perspective 64 bit calculations can still be done on 32bit level. It requires Accumulator registers to be stacked on the stack pointer, calculate the low value, store it, pop the stack value, calculate the high value and restore the low value. This is something that can be skipped with 64bit operations since the 64 bit machine has this internally. Case and point, Reason does not have this problem since it does not utilize it.
In other words… There is no performance gain using Reason on a 64bit machine even while Reason is a 64bit application. (sorry for all the technical stuff, but i just want to make it as complete as I can
)
Signed,
0/1 Hyd.
Dan,
Thanks for the comment. And I’m glad you like the site. One thing about the CV though, couldn’t you use the same Thor trick I mentioned to automate the level on the back of the CV Merger/Splitter? It shouldn’t be any different than any other CV trim pot. If you can automate one using the level control in Thor, you can automate them all. Or perhaps I still don’t understand the request.
ps: good stuff on your requests too! I’d love to see most all of this functionality in Reason.
Actually, I should have been more clear on that CV request. I was referring to the CV amount pots on the back of the CV Merger/Splitter not the Combinator. I currently do CV level control using Thors.
It’s my opinion that allowing Combinator programming to more knobs/controls the better. There’s just a few that aren’t programmable.. it’s just a few exceptions.. and in the end really doesn’t get in the way of my process.
I enjoy your site, keep up the good work.
@Stonerdroner,
Ahhh. Ok. now I see what you’re saying. I think you’re correct. I don’t think they utilize the full RAM capabilities of a 64-bit system. I also think that for the props this is a huge undertaking and not a very simple fix. So I can’t fault them for not addressing this in the upcoming release. However, I also think they are probably working on addressing this for the future. It just may take a little more time to see this development take place. But as I said, I can’t fault them for it. And since Reason/Record is the most CPU friendly DAW out there from my experience, it’s a bit of a moot point. Though I can see where using huge sample libraries can slow down the works.
Hopefully in R6 or R7 we’ll see improvements here.
All my best,
Rob
Reason is a RAM dependent application and running at 32 bit it can only access 4GB of RAM. This is fine until you start loading in large samples/sample libraries.
64bit apps can utilize more, ALOT more RAM….about 50 times more than the 4GB limit for Windows 32bit systems. Mac OSX Snow Leopard has a RAM limit of 16 exabytes.
Not to mention that data execution on 64bit systems are faster as well.